#thank u monmouth tho u were literally my gateway drug to writing the stuarts so Dramatically

[defensivelee]

i don't know how much of a stretch it is to say this, but since the erins (the authors of warrior cats) are british, i feel now and then like some of the plot points in the two earliest series are HEAVILY inspired by the misadventures of our stuarts. there might be some other stuff from history they've taken inspiration from, but obv i've only ever caught this stuff bc i unfortunately do like the stuarts best. tragic i know

even if they're not directly inspired by it, some events feel uncannily similar to history, as well as some character arcs! there's no super obvious direct parallels, but i will say that, just maybe:

-Tallstar, the leader of WindClan, has a whole situation in The Prophecies Begin series that kind of echoes the English Civil Wars and the subsequent Restoration with how he and his loyal Clan are driven out of the forest, but then return, and Tallstar has to fight to keep his territory and prove himself to the other Clans.

-surprisingly, Tallstar has TWO Charles II moments! as he lies dying, he names someone else deputy, meaning he chooses someone else to replace him after he dies... which obviously makes the former deputy, Mudclaw, furious. he'd been preparing to replace Tallstar, he had served him well as deputy, and now some other cat gets the honor? now this would be kind of a tenuous link to how Charles refused to make Monmouth his heir, but he didn't decide that on his deathbed... however he DID decide to become a Catholic, in a sense taking his brother's side, as always, in the end. it's just... the parallels of some odd decisions made right before you die.

-now Mudclaw gets his own Monmouth arc! like Monmouth, he ends up forming his own little army and rebels against the new leader of the Clan, Onestar-- only to fail and then get killed in the process. tho Onestar did not personally have Mudclaw executed. if i'm remembering correctly, a bolt of lightning hit a tree and fell on Mudclaw, which everyone interpreted as Onestar having the approval of StarClan (the kitty deities) to rule. essentially, divine right!

-now we veer off here to speak about some earlier plots... personally I think Brokenstar's, and then Tigerstar's, quests to rule the whole forest are kind of Louis coded

-even the personal feud between Tigerstar and Firestar, the main character who is an ORANGE CAT, kind of feels like the whole 'mortal enemies' thing with Louis and William respectively.

-however! Tigerstar himself has a few James II moments/arcs. I think the most notable one is when he is exiled from his birth Clan by being defeated by Fireheart, said orange cat (a warrior at the time), and is forced to join a Clan across the Thunderpath (a road). from there he works to get revenge on Firestar and waging war using his new Clan. obviously this feels a lot like the Glorious Revolution, where James is exiled and flees across the water to France, where he consistently tries and fails to get his throne back. the only difference is Tigerstar became leader of his new Clan.

-Tigerstar actually had an alliance with the old leader of his new Clan, Brokenstar, to get back at the Clan that exiled him, which reminds me of the James-Louis alliance. things do obviously work out a little different here... which is good, bc i do not want to think about Louis being blinded and murdered and James taking over France, as metal as that is.

-Tigerstar's arc in the afterlife in which he tries to influence his children in his birth Clan by walking in their dreams reads a bit like James' relationship with his daughters, particularly Mary.

-now... I hesitate to compare Mary to Brambleclaw, the son that Tigerstar manipulated, bc I FUCKEN HATE THAT GUY, but they check off everything! Brambleclaw struggles with his admiration for Firestar while also wanting to learn from his father. this is all while Firestar doesn't know if he can trust Brambleclaw bc he is his enemy's son. their relationship is more like father-son here, but it does feel a bit like William and Mary. Mary does genuinely fall in love with William, but she still feels guilty after driving off her father... and ofc we can't forget that at first, William was more distant towards her (understatement of the century but the point still stands). eventually Brambleclaw decides to turn away from the influence of his father and remains loyal to Firestar and his Clan, much like how Mary loved William enough to feel like she could ultimately handle anything with him at her side.

-so Tigerstar actually had two mates... much like James had two wives. with his first mate, Goldenflower, he had Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt, like James had his first two daughters with Anne Hyde. with his second mate, Sasha (a former kittypet), Tigerstar had two more kids! well actually he had three but one died in a flood. the two kids that survived are Hawkfrost and Mothwing. a bit like how James had James Francis Edward Stuart and Louisa Maria with Mary of Modena! a key difference here is that Goldenflower did not die, she was alive and well, raising her children when Tigerstar (then Tigerclaw) was exiled. he literally just left her! and then he was rather abusive towards Sasha... who was rlly unhappy to find out about all the atrocities her mate has been committing. quite unlike Maria, who stuck around anyway (tho it wasn't like she would have had a choice).

-Hawkfrost himself, Tigerstar's son with his second mate, doesn't actually feel so much like our alleged warming pan baby. like yes, his character follows the path of someone trying to reclaim the lost glory of his father, and rule the forest simply because he believes he has a right to after all the ways Tigerstar was wronged... but also, goddamn he's just too cartoonishly evil!! and he dies in a horrible way, killed by our Mary-equivalent Brambleclaw, which actually would have been kind of metal historically, two half-siblings duking it out.... ANYWAY. surface level, at least, it is very similar. that is, if BOTH William and Mary had lived to see James II die and then to fight his son off.

-i will say this about Firestar, our supposed William parallel: Firestar is IMPOSSIBLY kind and everyone likes him, also he's allegedly very handsome. he may be an orange foreigner who follows a closely similar arc but oh god he acts NOTHING like William. to find someone like William i say we look at someone else in a completely different Clan, going through his own completely separate troubles, away from the main story-- that would be Crookedstar. his whole arc is quite different from William's real story, but i think the basic pieces are there: disabled, generally unlikable cat grows up believing it's his destiny to rule his Clan, and, as a result of that destiny, he ends up losing everything he ever loved. they both still manage to find a few joys in between all of the despair, but their whole life is kind of tragic tho at times you kind of want to throw them in a river (Crookedstar at least would be able to swim out, as the leader of RiverClan, not so sure about William).

that's all i can think of rn, if you read wc and also like the stuarts and find something i didn't catch, lemme know i wanna hear!!