#yes they could have focused more on his budding friendship with firestar and not skipped over the eclipse battle and things like that

[pigeonclaw]

Onestar's Confession was, hmmm, not as egregious as I'd feared but also not a book I have any desire to reread. Unsurprisingly it suffers from many of the same issues as Leopardstar's Honor, being poorly paced and offering very little new insight on the title character. But there's something in particular that bothers me about this book, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what that is. I think it's about how Onestar is framed, but it's a bit complicated.

Onestar is a flawed cat who I believe is served best as a side/background character, not a protagonist. I think up until now the series hasn't had to try too hard to justify his actions because we know what crises are influencing him and we get to witness his slow and tragic downfall in the main arcs. While the way he changed in TNP after becoming leader feels harsh, the books back then made it clear why he had to change. It's shown over and over that WindClan is respected by no one. They had a history in the old territories of being attacked in their own camp — it happened at least six times within Tallstar's life — and even driven from their home entirely. Other Clans view them as weak, and after the move to the lake, even their ThunderClan allies are disrespecting their border and their independence and talking openly about how WindClan is too wimpy to do anything about it and they would simply disintegrate without ThunderClan taking care of them. It's no surprise when WindClan tears itself apart over a succession crisis, half supporting Tallstar's wishes and half supporting Mudclaw who promised to make them strong and respected by their neighbors. In response, Onestar can't be like Tallstar if he wants to keep the peace within his own Clan. He needs to step up and be an independent leader who can defend his Clan's home and honor. All of this is apparent in TNP, and although it makes Firestar sad and confused, we can see why, in Onestar's mind, this had to happen.

AVoS gave us a new perspective on Onestar by showing how selfish and fearful he can be. We'd already seen in Po3, OotS, and Bramblestar's Storm (and again later in Crowfeather's Trial) that he can be completely unreasonable and stubborn when under duress, so I think these traits are a fair extension of that. (Also people change over time, so I can accept that even if he didn't start out this way, his experiences as a leader going through constant disasters could have warped his views a bit.) It's been years and I still don't know how I feel about the secret son twist, but if nothing else it gave us another Onestar dynamic to explore.

Whether you love or hate how he was written, he was given strong characterization through these stories. I see him as almost like a fallen hero type, someone who was thrown into a position of power and put under immense pressure to become the leader his Clan needed, and who pushed things too far and fell from grace as a result. We see this most effectively not through his own eyes, but instead through those who have to live with the consequences of his actions. Firestar was his friend who helped him again and again, so it hurts when Firestar loses that friendship entirely through no fault of his own. We can assume it was a hard choice for Onestar because we know how much he looked up to Firestar, relied on him, even gave him territory as a thank-you gift, before receiving his own nine lives. Onestar's intense desire to prove that WindClan walks alone now ended up dragging all four Clans into an intense battle — and destroying ThunderClan's herb stock in the process, leaving them vulnerable to greencough later. And in AVoS, cats were killed because of his desire to hide his secret and flee from his own fear. He selfishly withheld vital medicine from ShadowClan and left the other Clans to face the threat of Darktail alone. He's so caught up in his us-versus-them mindset that he spirals farther and farther out of control. It's a tragedy, and a lesson about his character that is so much more impactful without his constant "woe is me" inner dialogue.

To be clear, I don't think it's unrealistic for Onestar to bend over backwards trying to excuse everything he does and prove to himself that he's really a good guy deep down. In the beginning he was doing what he believed he had to, even when it was a hard and painful choice, and seems to have kept this belief even when his goals became less about what's good for everyone else and more about what works for him. So of course he would see his disastrous actions as the best option or even the only option. The issue for me comes when the emphasis of the narrative is put on the lies he tells himself, his regrets about not being honest with his family, and his fears about the past coming back to bite him, instead of focusing on what he actually does and how his choices shape who he is. We can say that his choice to abandon Smoke and Darkkit made him fearful of the consequences, but no, it was Stoneteller's (absurd and unnecessary) prophecy that gave him anxiety. Whereas Onestar used to be a driving force behind drama, in his own SE he feels much more passive because control over his decisions is so frequently taken out of his grasp and given instead to random chance and circumstances out of his control. And for me personally, this whole new perspective has made him a much less sympathetic character, which is ironic considering how much sympathy he feels for himself throughout the book. Because now he feels less like a guy whose life was pulled out of his control and who then had to consciously adapt into something arguably worse, and more like a whiny friend who makes life harder for himself and won't listen to advice no matter how hard you try to help.

There is one place where I do think this approach actually helped his story, however, so I should mention that. A criticism I have of Shattered Sky is that it left Onestar out of the narrative behind his closed borders far too much, which made his confession feel like it came out of nowhere. He went from spiteful and impossible to negotiate with straight to totally respectful and noble within the span of two minutes, which made for a very jarring conclusion to the book. His SE, at the very least, fills in that gap by showing how increasingly desperate he felt and how much harder it got to keep hiding his secret, finally causing him to break down and confess. This scene makes more sense here than it did before. I can appreciate that, but it does feel like too little too late. (To be fair, I don't know how Shattered Sky could have resolved the issue itself without the advantage of a WindClan POV, but regardless, the pacing was still so choppy in that book.)

In conclusion... I don't know what to say about Onestar's Confession except that there wasn't really anything they could have written into this book to justify its whole existence. Onestar already had so much going for him that I personally don't think giving him his own book from his own perspective could ever succeed. They could have written it better than they did, paced it better, sure, but they couldn't have added anything about him to these already established plotlines so many years after the fact without accidentally (or purposefully) changing who he is. His whole life and motivations are either laid out plainly or inferred in all of his appearances in the main series. All we lacked were his own secret inner thoughts and feelings: his intense fear and self-pity. And there just isn't enough substance there to make into an entire book without repeating huge sections of books we've already read — which is exactly what they decided to do.