The Concept of Age in Warriors by Amberpaw

Amberpaw takes a look at how the clans interpret age.

Today I will introduce the concept of age in Warriors. As readers, we are not involved in any Warrior relationships, so age is seen as unimportant throughout most books. For one thing, Clan cats tend to call their ancestors their true names. For example, Squirrelflight would call her father “Firestar” instead of “dad,” even when she was young. This might be due to the complexity of Warrior relations, which might confuse the reader. If a random cat in the Warriors universe suddenly calls “mother” or “father,” there is a chance we don’t know who this cat is referring to.

Moreover, the length of each cat’s age appears to vary by many moons. For example, the “Firestar” generation lived longer than any other. This is because they are the protagonists, so they can’t be elders just yet. This pretty much delayed the eldership of many other senior warriors as well, to make their relative life lengths make more sense. However, we can still see the issue in cats like Spiderleg, who became elders very quickly. This is most likely because he was not one of the senior warriors, and overall he was a useless character in my opinion.

And now we get to the mates. Most warrior mates don’t vary a lot in age, but because cats are too easily related, this might not always be the case. I’m not saying age gaps are good or bad, but there is one example that really bothers me: Clear Sky and his son. So Thunder and Star Flower were originally in love, but due to Star Flower’s kinship with One Eye, their relationship fell apart. Thunder avowed never to trust her again, but then there was his father Clear Sky, who fell in love with her. One cat and his father falling in love with the same person? I understand how Clear Sky felt when he asked Thunder to forgive him, but I simply could not forgive him for making his son feel so bad. Even though Thunder had given up Star Flower already, seeing her with his own father would be very weird. Also, Thunder was the son of Clear Sky and Storm, and now Clear Sky is taking a new mate just because Storm is dead, and asking Thunder to forgive him? I understand that Clear Sky has done nothing wrong, but he should still take responsibility for his feelings toward other cats.

Well, I don’t think that example really had a strong connection with the concept of age, but I really wanted to put it in an article. I wasn’t really blaming Clear Sky, I just thought this part of the story was a bit weird, and Thunder deserved more credit for experiencing his father taking another mate. And then Clear Sky and Star Flower had KITS, and that must have been horrible for Thunder. Clear Sky did nothing wrong, and he probably considered Thunder’s feelings too, and I admire his strength in asking Thunder to forgive him, but Thunder should really get more credit.

Okay, that is enough of me talking about random things, what are your opinions? I would be glad to know.