Tigerstar II: An Exercise In Frustration by Viperfrost

Viperfrost dissects Tigerstar II’s character.

Hi folks! It’s Viper again! 😛 If you’ve been around for a while, you might notice that this is the first article I’ve written in nearly four years. I’ve returned to discuss a topic very near and dear to my heart: my intense hatred for Tigerstar II. I’ve spoken a bit about this in a prior article about Tigerstar I’s descendants and I feel the need to talk about it again after reading River.

Tigerstar II has never earned anything in his entire life. I can’t emphasize enough how everything he wants just falls into his lap in a neatly wrapped package. He has been handed opportunities and power throughout the course of the books, and has utilized that to neglect his Clan, squander his reputation, and commit actual atrocities. He has an ego the size of the Eiffel Tower and seems to not regret all the problems he’s caused for everyone around him. I would like to now examine a timeline of Tigerstar II’s poor decisions as a warrior, mate, son, brother, father, and leader.

We will begin with him as a young warrior since that’s when he became relevant to the story. While he appeared as a kit and apprentice, he served only a minor role. As a new warrior, Tigerheart is chosen as one of ShadowClan’s two representatives for an extremely important mission: restoring water to the dried-up lake. The Beaver Dam mission involved two cats from each Clan that were clearly considered qualified, experienced, and capable. The two exceptions to this are Dovepaw, who was sent because she received the prophetic vision in the first place, and Tigerheart, who was sent for reasons. The other representative from ShadowClan was Toadfoot, an older, experienced warrior. Tigerheart, being young and brash, was a strange pick for what would be considered a mission of life-and-death importance. So why was he there? Well, let’s review who chose the cats who went on the mission: the leader, deputy, and medicine cat(s) of the Clan. Could it be relevant that the medicine cat apprentice, Flametail, was Tigerheart’s brother? Could it be even more relevant that the deputy of the Clan, Rowanclaw, was their father? In my opinion, absolutely. There were so many experienced individuals who were passed over for Tigerheart, an unqualified and frankly unimpressive character who just happened to be related to half the nominating committee.

On the quest, Tigerheart shows his personality by treating the journey like his own personal amusement park and attempting to romance Dovepaw, an apprentice from a different Clan. While his behavior was eventually integral to the resolution of the dam problem, he spent most of his time being frivolous.

Moving onto his main relevance in Omen of the Stars, which was of course his romance with Dovewing. He spent a significant amount of time neglecting his duties as a warrior by sneaking around with a cat from a different Clan for his own amusement. He had responsibilities to fulfill that he simply didn’t because he wanted to do whatever he wanted. While that could be brushed off as him simply being a hopeless romantic, he crossed the line on several occasions when it came to matters of morality. He notably trained in the Dark Forest with dead murderers, including his grandfather, and practiced killing moves alongside the rest of the trainees. He couldn’t even follow the rules of cat hell properly because he was constantly splitting his time between that and his romance. He also once took Ivypool hostage for the sake of blackmailing ThunderClan into providing scarce medicine that both Clans strongly needed at the time. Dovewing forgave him for literally holding her sister hostage and destroying Jayfeather’s catmint collection. In fact, he faced essentially no repercussions for this action as well as for training in cat hell.

The amount of work on his plate intensified when Dovewing became pregnant with his kits, as did his narcissistic tendencies. His belief was that Dovewing should join ShadowClan and be with him there, even when her entire family was in ThunderClan. She was even part of an important prophecy that solidified her position as being extremely important to ThunderClan, yet he seemed to believe that it was a decision that shouldn’t require more than a few minutes of thought. He didn’t want to join her Clan either, but still couldn’t see why she would feel that way. Why? Because again, Tigerheart hasn’t had to deal with real problems or the consequences of his actions. The entire universe seems to bend to his will all the time, so why shouldn’t he get what he wants here too? After going back and forth about whether he wants to take responsibility for his actions and be with Dovewing or if he finally wants to commit to being responsible about his Clan duties, he finally runs away with Dovewing. Because Tigerheart can’t go five minutes without causing an issue for someone, he manages to corrupt an entire society. The guardian cats were peaceful and compassionate. Were. Tigerheart felt that their traditions were useless compared to his own, so he taught them to divide themselves with borders and set up potential conflicts that could lead to future wars between them, all because he couldn’t believe that any society could have a decent life without abiding by Clan guidelines.

In the end, Dovewing suddenly had a change of heart and decided to join ShadowClan to be with him. This is not due to any of Tigerheart’s actions, nor did he even try to work on a compromise for how they could work this out. What he wanted simply fell into his lap. Upon returning to the Clan, it becomes obvious that he shouldn’t have neglected his Clan duties to go play house with his girlfriend. ShadowClan was overrun by the Kin (essentially a cult), and their leader (his father Rowanstar) ended up stepping down entirely because he couldn’t fight against the Kin. While Tigerheart was busy corrupting a society, his family was suffering under the regime of Darktail the manipulative murderer. One of Darktail’s key moves in overtaking ShadowClan was to encourage the rebellion of the ShadowClan apprentices. One of his biggest supporters, in fact, was Sleekwhisker. When she was an apprentice, Sleekpaw was especially susceptible to his charm. Why? It might be because her mentor, the cat in charge of teaching her everything about Clan life and how to behave as a warrior, abandoned his Clan after breaking one of the cardinal rules of the Warrior Code. Tigerheart left behind one of his most important responsibilities: a living, breathing apprentice who was left to her own devices. I consider this a significant failure on his part.

The deputy at the time, Tigerheart’s mother Tawnypelt, yielded the position to him for no apparent reason. It could be guessed that she perhaps had lost her old ambitions after the death of Flametail, and wanted just one of her children to succeed. In any case, she exercised nepotism to the nth degree by promoting him like that. His reputation was in shambles and he was in a very precarious position in the Clan after showing up with his pregnant girlfriend that nobody knew about. In a time when the Clan needed unity, Tigerheart was not the cat to ensure that. He showed his lack of credentials as leader by engaging in constant conflict with SkyClan over anything at all. He even took a medicine cat hostage at one point. Maybe he wouldn’t have done that if he’d received any consequences for the last time he held somebody hostage, but I digress. His selection for deputy was his nephew Juniperclaw, who showed his dedication by actually attempting to poison SkyClan’s prey. He could’ve killed somebody. That was Tigerstar II’s first choice for second-in-command.

Tigerstar II’s sense of nepotism only intensified as his children grew up. His daughter Lightleap is currently an adrenaline-seeking liar who’s causing immense problems for Sunbeam, but she knows that she can get away with it because of her family. He was overly excited to promote his son Shadowsight to be a medicine cat, even when his visions became concerning and it was revealed that he’d been communicating with a dead criminal. While it could be interpreted as supportiveness, this is disproven by his behavior in some of Shadowsight’s lowest moments. Tigerstar II was willing to strip Shadowsight of his full rank as an unnecessary punishment when Shadowsight had tried his absolute best to make up for the events that had transpired.

In the latest book, Tigerstar II’s behaviors have culminated into his hostile takeover of RiverClan. To be clear, he took control of an entire Clan by force, all while saying that it was for their own good and that he was helping them. How? How would he ever think it was a good idea to attempt to “help” a group by taking his entire Clan to their camp and threatening them? He then allowed his Clanmates to fight RiverClan to the point of injury. It’s either a power-grab or a frankly astronomical display of a savior complex. How special does he think he is to believe that he’s the only cat who can fix the entirety of RiverClan’s issues, and that his actions will erase the harm he’s caused by setting up a puppet regime in their camp? It’s inexcusable. I’ve heard the theory that Tigerstar II is just acting irrationally after the death of his young son Rowankit, but I find that explanation to be inadequate. So many kits have died in this series without their parents deciding to subjugate an entire Clan under their will. It’s also not the only time he’s taken action to benefit himself without consideration for those around him.

Overall, I find him to be an unqualified and ineffective leader. He hasn’t done anything helpful for society in general with the power he’s been handed all his life. He’s attempted to have his cake and eat it too so many times over. He’s broken every rule he didn’t want to follow and not even for a good cause. He wasn’t even around to help his Clanmates when they needed him most and neglected his Clan responsibilities all the time. As a leader, he’s shown himself to be corrupt and irrational. While there’s always hope for his character to improve over time, I strongly doubt it will. In the meantime, his every appearance on the page fills me with a strong desire to throw the book at a wall.

Thanks for reading! :]