I’ve loved Leopardstar since I began writing Warriors. I loved her confidence and her strength. She was brave and smart, and a match for any warrior in any Clan. Leopardstar never questioned for a moment her own skill or judgment. As far as I was concerned, by establishing a female character who was unencumbered by romance or self-doubt or sentimentality, we were laying down a statement of intent: throughout the series there would be no distinction between warriors based on traditional ideas of gender; to be a female warrior was to be as free and fierce as a male warrior, and Leopardstar was our archetype.

And yet, it became harder and harder to love Leopardstar as the series developed; her actions became darker and her honour became increasingly questionable. Her ambition began to look ruthless, her leadership autocratic, and her morality appeared to crumble altogether when she oversaw the murder of Stonefur by Tigerstar and his cronies.

How then were we to interpret the life of this complex, contradictory character? This was the first question we asked ourselves when we began working on Leopardstar’s Honour. Did Leopardstar, by the end of her life, have any honour?

We needed to show how an idealistic kit could become the warrior who led her Clan down a path that almost ended in its destruction. And I could not allow a character I helped bring into the world leave it without giving her the chance to tell her own story.

From the start, Leopardstar was unusual. She was raised by Mudfur, her father, after her mother’s death, and she was proud to follow in his pawsteps as a brave and noble warrior. But Mudfur turned his back on the warrior way of life; he became a medicine cat when Leopardstar was still finding her paws in the Clan. Did this rejection of all she believed, by the cat she loved and respected more than any other undermine her idea of what it was to be a true warrior? Is this what triggered Leopardstar’s descent into dishonor and disgrace?

Leopardstar’s longing to become deputy started even before she was an apprentice. As a writer, I needed to understand what fuelled her ambition. Did she think she was the best cat to protect her Clan? Or was it more complicated than that? Did the need of a motherless kit to prove her own worth warp into a longing to show Mudfur what a true warrior was?

There were so many questions. But, to me, the answer seemed clear. In her desperation to protect all she loved and, shaken by her father’s loss of faith in the warrior way of life, Leopardstar lost sight of what a true warrior was.