As an average clan cat, you may have become an apprentice at six months of age, trained

under a mentor for…another inconsistent number of months, and then became a warrior

until you died or retired.

In this world, who do you think your biggest influence would be?

In the society of Warriors, there's far less to do in your life, and less choices

about directions you can take.

You live in the same group, large for groups of animals but very small relative to our

human societies, for the entirety of your existence, and this cast barely alters at

all as cats die or are born.

You'll have the very occasional cat leave to become a kittypet or loner or join another

group and another occasional cat or few cats join from one of those groups but, by the

time you are a few moons old, you will already be acquainted with the majority of the cats

you will ever come to know.

In our world, we spent roughly our first 16 to 20 years with our parents or guardians.

After that, though, many of our cultures encourage adults to move out or away from their families

when they are old enough, to take on independence and start new lives with new social groups

and, potentially, families of their own.

Meanwhile teachers are adults you see for four or five days a week for 9 or 10 months

of the year, but after that year is over, many of them will stop being significant portions

of your life.

Some teachers teach multiple grades so you might see them for a few years and others

are special enough for you to go back and visit when you can, for a few minutes each

day, week, month, or year, but all in all their presences will fade in time.

As a result of our cultural system, teachers do have a large impact on specific years of

your life but the family you live with tends to have the largest and most consistent impact

on who you will be as an adult, and adults most often keep contact with their families

long after they move out, sometimes even taking them in when their families get old enough

to need care as they once did.

Warriors is not that world.

Your family, unless you are a half-clan cat or a loner or kittypet who just joined the

clans, is probably going to live beside you for most of your life, until they pass on.

Additionally, rather than having a dozen or more teachers for snippets of your childhood,

you are given one personal trainer, a mentor, who guides you through your child and teenage

years, teaching you not just the skills you need to succeed but the values and routines

that help you become an adult.

You may have consistent friends…or you should, realistically…ahem, from the age group around

you but you don't always have someone like that to train with, and sometimes it is just

you and your mentor.

I ask then, taking all of this in, what influence would you expect the parents and mentors in

Warriors to have on cats' lives?

And, of course, the big question, who has more?

As I explained, the question of whether parents or mentors have more say in a cats' life

is a very different question from asking the equivalent in our world, so let me just add

a disclaimer here that I'm not making any judgments in that area, but beings of all

sorts can't help but be influenced by the adults who guided or misguided their lives,

and it an area with rich potential for both storytelling and character building that I

think the series could stand to utilize more often.

Also, because I am examining these relationships as they impact cats in their current society,

I will, regretfully, be discounting Dawn of the Clans, an arc from the time before these

cultural trends had formed.

From what we've been able to see in the series, parental involvement in their kits'

lives seems to be more of a voluntary experience, at least after their first six months.

Several Warriors fathers, for example, barely even look at or talk to their kits, and even

though mothers have mostly been granted the eternal role of forced-motherhood because

of the underlying bias of the creators, even they don't tend to stay consistent presences

in their kits' lives once they become apprentices or, especially, warriors, unless it's because

they're a poor mother.

We'll skip over Firestar, whose parents are never mentioned, but Brambleclaw's mother,

Goldenflower, gets only 10 lines across all of The New Prophecy, where her son is a main

protagonist.

Sandstorm, the mother of two protagonists, gets only 77 across all 6 books in the same

arc.

In Omen of the Stars, Whitewing, who also has 2 protagonist daughters, only gets 82

lines across the arc.

The Broken Code was especially bad, with all three protagonists' mothers having very

little to do.

Dovewing got off the best with 126 lines across the arc, but Violetshine got only 57 and Ivypool

got only 42, despite all three she-cats being previous protagonists and strong characters

in their own rights.

Even Squirrelflight, a prominent protagonist with three protagonist kits and, later, another

two protagonist kits, falls into this trap.

Across all twelve books of Power of Three and Omen of the Stars where her kits are the

protagonists and she has her own reveals with Ashfur's fire and Brambleclaw divorcing

her, she gets only 412 lines, an average of 34 lines per book, while Firestar, the leader

of Thunderclan who isn't especially involved in the plot until the last book, gets 1168

lines, almost triple her total with an average of 97 lines per book.

In A Vision of Shadows, she is the deputy as well as the mother of Alderheart and Sparkpelt

and yet she gets an even lower total, only 138 lines across all 6 books, in part because

she wasn't a quote-unquote “bad” mother to Alderheart in the way that her previous

kits perceived her to be.

Meanwhile Sparkpelt, Berryheart, and Curlfeather, our current protagonists' mothers, have

all been stars in the latest arc, but it's because they are all, in different ways, bad

mothers, and the protagonists' lives are heavily impacted by the poor relationships

they have with them.

And even in this case, you might note, two of the fathers are dead: Larksong and Jayclaw,

and the third, Sunbeam's father, Sparrowtail, has been entirely absent.

Parents realistically *should* have a sizable impact on their kits' lives and at least

be present through almost all of it, but the series has so far been demonstrating that,

unless the parental relationship is a poor one, most cats just treat their family like

acquaintances.

What of the mentors, then?

Surely spending anywhere from three to ten months being trained exclusively by one cat

would have a tremendous impact on a cat.

Surely it would not only shape who the apprentice turned out to be, but develop a relationship

that would continue on for months or years after the apprentice becomes a warrior, either

for better or worse.

Well, we do start off strong with Bluestar, who took on Firepaw as an apprentice late

and didn't get much book time to be his warrior mentor but still taught him life and

leadership skills for many more moons.

They had a very strong parental-like relationship that continued and was tested up through her

death.

Brambleclaw also…well, he *used* to have a close and unique bond with his mentor Fireheart,

when the warrior learned to see his apprentice as more akin to himself than Tigerstar.

Unfortunately during the time where he was a warrior, as a point of view character, the

two barely ever spoke with comradery and never as a former mentor and apprentice.

He is Thunderclan's leader and that is about it.

Squirrelflight in her first book plays off of Dustpelt plenty, mostly in trying to get

away with things under his nose, but after she goes on the journey and, almost immediately

after, becomes a warrior, they barely interact and any relationship between them is never

spoken of again.

Leafpool is an exception here because she and Cinderpelt did have a lasting and complex

relationship, but this is mostly because she is a medicine cat who essentially reports

to her forever until she dies.

The same can be said of most medicine cat points of view in the series.

Where warriors are concerned, Hollyleaf and Brackenfur never had a relationship and barely

ever spoke after she became a warrior, Lionblaze, who really should have had a complex and likely

destructive relationship with his mentor Ashfur considering their circumstances, barely speaks

to him more than Hollyleaf to Brackenfur, and whatever Ashfur's teachings, attitude,

or lack of care did for Lionblaze in the long-term is never addressed.

Dovewing's apprenticeship under Lionblaze meant she could never get away from the prophecy

but it didn't develop into either a friendship or a strained relationship for either of them.

They were tied together by duty and, eventually, when Dovewing left, Lionblaze wasn't even

brought up as someone who might care.

Ivypool meanwhile had Cinderheart and, like Hollyleaf, they never had a relationship that

amounted to much of anything and never really spoke after Ivypool became a warrior.

Alderheart's relationship with Molewhisker was implied to be strained because of Alderheart's

anxiety and Molewhisker's frustration with his failings but, much like the rest of Alderheart's

arc, it disappeared after the first book when he settled into being a medicine cat.

Twigbranch had several mentors, Ivypool, then Sandynose, and finally Sparkpelt, but none

of them got the time to develop specific relationships with her past their initial impressions and

none of them are cats Twigbranch still seems to have a relationship with.

We also didn't get to see what lasting impact having three different mentors with different

training styles and opinions of her would have, which would have been nice considering

what a unique case Twigbranch was.

Violetshine had Dawnpelt and, according to the allegiances of one super edition, Rabbitleap,

each for only a short time between the Kin and changing clans.

Rootspring and Dewspring had no relationship, Bristlefrost didn't even notice when her

mentor Rosepetal died in front of her, Sunbeam never speaks of or to her mentor, Snaketooth,

Nightheart has barely spoken to Lilyheart since becoming a warrior, and even the last

two medicine cat apprentices: Shadowsight with Puddleshine and Frostpaw with Mothwing,

have had shockingly slim levels of connection.

Even as they are constant presences in each others' lives, they barely have any specific

feelings about each other at all.

So here we come to the true point.

Many people throughout this fandom's history have had discussions arguing that the mentors

should be or are the most important figure in a clan cats' lives, and others have made

similar arguments for the families.

The reality though is that Warriors has a poor track record with including and showing

the impact of relationships in general, at least when they aren't romantic endeavors.

Both parents and mentors should be key figures in their kits' lives, but this is not something

we get to see often.

Knowing that, then, I'm going to turn our attention to what *should* happen.

Parents have a greater presence in clan cats' lives than in our world but they don't have

to act as primary caregivers once kits become apprentices, and even before then some clans

and periods have had cats who did more work taking care of kits in the nursery so that

mothers and fathers could continue some of their warrior duties.

Kithood is also when, we have to assume, cats learn about more knowledge-based things like

clan history, the warrior code, and clan values, since they all seem to have this knowledge

when they begin apprenticeships, but this knowledge could be passed on by parents, other

members of the nursery, other warriors, or, especially, elders.

It is, in some cases, an explicit part of the elders' role to tell stories to the

kits, so even this part of a kit's education might not be the parent's responsibility.

In the world of a clan, while your parents are likely going to be there for most of your

life, so is every cat in the clan, so you might be raised more communally or gravitate

to cats you choose to be close to rather than those related by blood.

It would be difficult to completely avoid a cat having a relationship with their parents

unless, like Firestar, they came from more abnormal circumstances than traditional clan

cats.

However, that relationship can vary in intensity and quality and cats might end up becoming

more connected to other queens or den-dads in the nursery or elders and warriors they

spoke with instead.

There's a variety of possibilities here, which means some cats may be very close to

their parents, some may have a poor relationship with them, and others may have a completely

neutral and bare-bones relationship with them.

Meanwhile, the mentor is not a chosen relationship.

The kits have no say in who their mentor will be unless they become a medicine cat and,

most often, the warrior doesn't have a say either.

Despite this, they will spend the majority of time over many of the most formative moons

of the apprentice's life exclusively in each others' company.

The impact of that relationship is not one I could possibly understate if we were speaking

about what should happen.

Whether a cat forms a lifelong bond with a mentor perfectly suited for them, grows unhealthy

coping mechanisms or a distaste for the clans due to a toxic relationship, or feels disconnected

from clan life due to a mentor not connecting with them, any relationship they have with

their mentor should have a long impact, not just on a cat's skills as a warrior, but

on their psyche and impression of the clans and their values.

That's why, in-universe, it is so important that cats be paired with the right mentor,

and so destructive when they aren't.

The first arc with its displays of Graypaw, Ravenpaw, and Firepaw's mentors and even