Shining Armor wasn’t an abusive father, not in the traditional sense. He had tried to love his child, he really did! When he had discovered an egg on his balcony, glowing with a faint blue light from deep within, he had known right away what the future held, what that egg held. He didn’t want it. He didn’t want a constant reminder of his faux romance with the Changeling Queen, but he didn’t have a choice.
 
He had truly loved Cadance. He had been so unbelievably shocked when Cadance had taken him aside and asked him to lunch, but he accepted and from then on, he was falling head over hooves for her. A year into their romance, before their wedding, everything came apart, unraveled like a poorly sewn garment. Cadance had never loved him, she had been impersonated from their very first date. None of what they shared–the late night rendezvous, the picnics, the love letters exchanged–none of it was true.
 
Why would he want a child made from that heartbreaking lie?
 
He couldn’t give the egg away. All of Canterlot knew of the false relationship, though none knew it had been from the first date, so a half pony, half changeling creature would be easy to trace back to him.
 
So he tried to love it. He really and truly did. Shining tried not to gag when the egg hatched, a maggot writhing in the slime that had encased it. He tried to give it a nice name, deciding on Cupid (in a vague dedication to Cadance). He tried to smile as the maggot grew, but he only ever managed a pained grimace. He made sure it was cared for (by the castle’s help, not by his own hooves) and once it had grown into a somewhat pony shaped form, he gave it a bedroom in a lesser used part of the castle so that the creature wouldn’t be disturbed by the hustle and bustle of normal castle life.
 
Shining’s next child, the only one he truly considered his, was born soon after the changeling creature had learned to walk. Iron Gauntlet they called him, a beautiful colt with sparkling eyes and no trace of hard chitin or holed legs. The colt had Big Macintosh’s size, Shining’s mane, he was a perfect combination of the two stallions. He was a full blooded pony, through and through.
 
Shining’s attention and love was focused on that child, his only true child, he gave it everything that it could ever want. Cupid was put on a back burner.
 
He was never called that anyways, the castle’s nannies only referred to his as ‘the changeling’ rather than by name, and his father would sooner eat his own hoof than speak of the bastard child.
 
So while he was never struck, insulted, or abused, he wasn’t pampered. He was fed pony food, taught pony ways, and lived in a pony castle. Being half pony, he could survive without consuming love, but the lack of it kept him from ever ‘evolving’ into the new changelings, the ones with antlers and glittering chitin and sparkling wings and tails.