Hollyleaf and why she is a good , but broken protagonist by Drizzledash

Drizzledash shares their thoughts on Hollyleaf.

I don’t get why so many people hate Holly leaf. All because she brutally killed a traitor that was sent to starclan for ‘loving too much’? To find out that her real mother had lied to her whole life?
I think she’s a great character, but everything went down, but in a good way. She’s a strong but broken female character. She was born as part of the supposed three, thought she like her brothers but they got powers, and she didn’t. She was going through a whole lot with the Sol incident, and the clans breaking apart ,and going against the warrior code.

And she was loyal to the warrior code, being Starclan’s , only to find out that her own mother broke it with some dude in another clan for having her and her brothers. Now she’s distressed. She doesn’t want to break the warrior code, but now she’s the moral personification of it! Imagine ,that you were born into an important family, and you thought you were perfect, meant for something, then you find out your entire existence was a lie.
And soon, the traitor that had killed many cats for her “mother’s” love then tries to BURN her and her brothers in a fire.
Then her “mother” then says ‘They’re not my kits’.
Wouldn’t you react badly? How would you feel, if your auntie’s ex, tried to kill you by cornering you in a burning building, then your mom reveals she wasn’t really your mom, and you nearly die?

All of that is just . And sure, she’s described as a calm and collected and intelligent cat, and I’d get that she was being too, I dunno freaky . Oh, she did try to kill her real mother, but at that point, she was already in denial in whether life had a meaning .
Then, she kills him. Boy could’ve done worse things when he was alive, so she did the right thing. He was already a bad cat anyways. And then she reveals Squirrel’s and Leaf’s secret, but that’s totally okay with me. It was coming to that whether they liked it or not. It was going to find it’s way out .
So, she then save Ivypool , a brave but forgotten act. It think she should be remembered more than the weird powerless third cat. If it weren’t for the toxicity of the place she was living in , well, that’s just it for her sanity.