Twilight's Equestria Royal Manticore

The concept one is actuallly a carryover from an ealier concept for Twilight's Equestria, which featured Fluttershy as the Lady of the Wild Hunt, basically a whole lot of critters and forest sprites.
I originally shelved the idea, and might still end up not including it, but playing the Empire campaign in Total Warhammer and experiences the awesome blend of cuteness and ferociousness that are the Demigryph Knights gave me an urgent craving to draw some kind of monstrous cavalry.

 Anyways, the background for these guys is, that under Twilight's rule Equestria has become a more advanced, if somewhat disenchanted place, with places like the Everfree Forest long since cleared out and made safe.
This would include preserving certain species in captivity. I kinda imagine a huge menagerie in Canterlot, perhaps dedicated to Fluttershy's memory, filled with all kinds of creatures.
Seeing as they seem to be somewhat good natured, as well as being able to be trained, manticores would probably be at the very top of that list. It probably also wouldn't take long for some one training a manticore to ride it, because why wouldn't you want to ride a manticore?

UPDATE: did some cleanup, moved the manticore's head back a little to lessen the longcat effect