I mean, I get the impression that Garden Lily as a separate entity from Perplex is entirely fictitious (she's a persona that Perplex adopted and got herself hired as, rather than somepony that Perplex replaced).
I can't say I love the changed aesthetics of the changelings in later seasons but the other changes make a decent amount of sense. In a universe where Friendship is key to magic, why would Love be something anyone can run out of? That's not how it works. You can get tired, your feelings might change over time or whatever, but a Changeling feeding on someone doesn't stop that person from loving people.
Do they have to? Or does Chrysalis control everything about their education and civilisation so she can get what she wants, with little regard for her subjects?
It isn't just sharing. It is production of food, of love.
Why would anything come into existence in the first place? You could blame Discord, Harmony, Hasbro or any number of causes for why changelings are the way they are. Maybe changelings originally arrived from another dimension. Maybe they are some weird magical experiment. Maybe Chrysalis has genetic defects.
Chrysalis is an idiot in the same way Sunset Shimmer is an idiot. She regards love as something she eats instead of something she feels, only thinks of her followers in how they can serve her and thinks she can hijack the Elements of Harmony with evil clones of the Mane 6.
The difference is that Chrysalis is directly empowered by love and knows this while Sunset would be more ephemerally empowered by friends and doesn't think it's worth it. "Only thinks of her followers in how they can serve her" they can serve her by making the thing she eats which will directly empower her, this isn't a lessen in teamwork making them better than they are individually this increases her own personal combat ability.
And yet Chrysalis gloats about starving her subjects of love in her second or third appearance right in front of said subjects, leading to them turning against her. She doesn't want them to be happy, she doesn't want a perfect optimised love farm that brings everyone peace and prosperity. She wants to be top dog, served by endless loyal minions and for everyone else to suffer.
Chrsyalis, as the first Changling, was was born from a carnivorous plant in a magical pond that fed on insects and bones. No, I don't see how the hell that resulted in the Changling race either. But what you have to understand is-
Yeah, that. Chrysalis doesn't want what's best for her children or the optimal way to rule, she just wants to rule the world and make it how she wants it; in this case, that's every nonChangling acting as a servile food supply, with all of her children grovelling underneath her. If nothing else, her rather random origin does do a bit to explain why her behavior is extremely... unoptimized, for gathering food. Her species was born to be loved, and yet she almost abhors the concept.
IIRC the comics are of dubious canonicity, so that might not be her actual origin in this story.
Exactly. As the saying goes, sometimes the cruelty is the point.
The idea would be the same, though. If Changelings didn't evolve, it goes a long way to explain why their society is so bad and unoptimal. They simply didn't have the instincts to guide them. And being stuck with Chrysalis as their ruler for as long as their species existed, they don't have the mechanisms to explore other forms of societal order.
