So, Zippy and I have been tearing through the first arc of the Warrior Cats book series at a rate of about one a day for the past week. The sins of ShadowClan in the first arc include:

• Being ruled by an obviously evil patricide
• Doing an imperialism (driving out WindClan and demanding tribute from RiverClan)
• Exiling the only likeable ShadowClan character
• Kidnapping
• Child murder
• Using child soldiers
• Doing another imperialism (allying with RiverClan to try and drive out WindClan, again)
• Dying of the plague (not really a sin, but I’m choosing to interpret it as divine retribution from StarClan)
• Choosing the main villain of the arc as their new leader despite said villain being 1. obviously evil, and 2. not even originally from ShadowClan (I guess the internal candidates just weren’t shady enough)
• Doing yet another imperialism (forcing RiverClan into a personal union, demanding the same from the other two clans, and bringing in an obviously evil group of outsiders as muscle to make it happen)

The only arguably good-aligned things ShadowClan did in the entire arc were drive out their first obviously evil leader and joining the alliance against the obviously evil group of outsiders in the final battle, but they screwed the first one up by choosing an even more obviously evil character as their subsequent leader (after a barely relevant interregnum) and the second one was their fault since they brought in the outsiders in the first place. I also think it’s telling that the only likeable ShadowClan character is an exile and all the bad guys in ThunderClan (aka GoodGuysClan aka the Gryffindor of Warrior Cats clans) eventually end up dead or in ShadowClan or both. Maybe this is another Slytherin situation where the perception of ShadowClan having any discernable traits other than “the bad guys” is something imposed on them by fans rather than something that’s present in the text. My boxed set for the second arc came in the mail today and I will be slightly disappointed if it’s just six more books of ShadowClan being moustache-twirling (whisker-twirling?) cartoon villains. Anyway, that’s my middle school book report.

Originally posted 4/23/2025