An Analysis of my Favorite Character: Curlfeather by Sandytuft

Sandytuft takes a closer look at Curlfeather’s mind.

Curlfeather is quite the character, and is quite possibly my favorite villain. Remaining in the background for the majority of her life until A Starless Clan, she was mostly just fodder to fill out the RiverClan roster, and to add to it later on when she had kits with an equally uninteresting warrior named Jayclaw. But Curlfeather wasn’t willing to stay like that forever. (Spoilers for A Starless Clan books 1-5, and also some A Vision of Shadows and Broken Code.)
Curlfeather was a young adult during the events of AVoS, and was traumatized by Darktail walking into her territory, killing four of her Clanmates, and driving her Clanmates out while she, her mother, deputy and three other cats were kept prisoner. She escaped to WindClan with her mom after a prisoner rebellion. After Darktail was killed, Mistystar closed RiverClan borders while her Clan recovered from Darktail’s attack, which is reasonable, until Mistystar’s actions start hurting her Clan. She orders her patrols to be more hostile, and even with warnings from StarClan to stop Mistystar doesn’t listen, resulting in a massive fire across RiverClan territory that the other Clans need to help RiverClan in.
Then in the Broken Code, Mistystar is the first to trust the Imposter and is ready to exile Mothwing, her longtime medicine cats, former apprentice and friend at a whim as well as two other cats, Harelight and Icewing, all because they did the right thing. Though Mistystar is heralded as a Light in the Mist at the end of TBC, that doesn’t erase her mistakes.
At this point, Curlfeather only knows the spiteful leader of her Clan who doesn’t care about her own Clanmates, and sees StarClan as a distant entity that couldn’t do anything, but she was content, as she recently had a litter of kits with her mate, Jayclaw, and is super happy with him… until he died. Curlfeather’s at her breaking point, traumatized, callous and heartbroken. StarClan, Mistystar and Reedwhisker had slighted her one too many times: by taking away Clanmates, taking away her mate, she was ready to tear it all down in revenge. She recruited a young Splashtail, filling his head with delusions of grandeur and ordering him to kill Reedwhisker. She manipulated Frostpaw, her own daughter, making her believe she had special powers and using her to fulfill her ambitions. And in the end, when she finally convinced RiverClan she was their rightful leader, she was killed by dogs the now ambitious and ruthless Splashtail had sent, and died saving her daughter.
In the end, despite all the bad things Curlfeather has done, she died saving her daughter and cementing herself as my new favorite character. So yeah, thanks for reading.