Why Thistleclaw is just as good as Bramblestar by Loudfern

Loudfern shares their opinion on Thistleclaw.

In this article, I, Loudfern, will take a deep look at Thistleclaw, comparing him to Bramblestar and explaining why he deserves more respect.

I’m sure we are all familiar with Thistleclaw; the cat who would lead ThunderClan to hell (basically) if Bluefur didn’t become leader.

So lets start with one of the most obvious reasons that Thistleclaw is “evil”. He trained in the dark forest. As, did Bramblestar. Now you can probably see where this is going and you’re probably thinking: “yes but Bramblestar just wanted to be a good warrior and protect his clanmates”, which is true but we all seem to forget that this is the exact same reason why Thistleclaw trained here too.

Sure, Bluefur had dreams about Thistleclaw’s possible leadership which were all about blood and horror, but let’s not forget that Leafpool had similar dreams about Brambleclaw. And yes, Brambleclaw did end up being the hero but that was after he realised that what he was doing was wrong. Since Thistleclaw was conveniently killed, he never had the chance to learn that he was following a not-so-great path. Let me put it this way, if Brambleclaw and Thistleclaw swapped books, Bluefur would be scared of Brambleclaw’s leadership and we would all hate Brambleclaw.

The fact that Thistleclaw loved two cats also says that he probably would have turned around if given the chance. You may think this means nothing but let’s just look at the other Dark Forest cats (with the exception of Mapleshade who shouldn’t even be in the dark forest but I’ll get to that some other day). Hawkfrost loved no one. He even came to despise his own sister. Brokenstar…well I don’t even need to explain and as for Tigerstar, I’m pretty sure we can all agree that he never really “loved” Goldenflower. Basically I’m saying that because Thistleclaw loved, it meant he had love inside of him and all Thistleclaw needed was for this love to really show. If Snowfur has still been around Thistleclaw actually might have changed earlier.

In reality Thistleclaw, was a hard working, incredibly loyal warrior. Mapleshade saw this and decided to use it for her own good and as Thistleclaw was still a very young warrior who didn’t know any better, he was easily swayed. And must I also say, Mapleshade is a very convincing cat; we all know what happened to Crookedstar. If Brambleclaw had of been mentored by Mapleshade, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have been lured by her “innocent” tones?

So to conclude, Thistleclaw deserves as much respect as Bramblestar.

P.S. this is my first article on BlogClan (since I’m new XD) so I’m sorry for the messiness of it and I do hope to improve my article writing skills XD