At least, not within their histories, and this was despite the empire being at the center of the expanding pony dominions for the better part of five centuries before... before the princesses became the princesses and ruled the colonies as their own fiefs. Before the empty throne was stolen and the Empire buried under unnatural snow and ice. The windigos of ancient myth haunting the skies above it and the countless towns. Villages and cities that formed the heartlands were lost to the scarce mercy of eternal winter. Before they lost the Valley and everypony within it that had not been enslaved by Sombra.