"It's not a fashionable place to serve. We're a bunch of non-ponies in a podunk village just a little too far from Canterlot, or anywhere else, to be important or stylish. The Royal Guard has a shortage of qualified officers across the board from what I've heard, and no noblepony wants to commission into something like the Princess-Cadenza's. Even ponies graduating from the academy put as us their last choice."