The Prophecies Begin trivia!
BY THE EDITOR
Ever wondered about the process of creating Warriors? About all those little details that were included in early drafts of the books, but were set to the side and lost on the cutting floor? Wonder no longer! Here we will go over some of our favorite bits of trivia from the creation of the first series of Warriors, The Prophecies Begin!
- Bluestar, the noble ThunderClan leader who welcomes Rusty into ThunderClan was originally going to be called Moonstar! It was decided early on, however, that the Moon- prefix was too sacred to be used – though that didn’t stop the later release of Secrets of the Clans from revealing the name of Bluestar’s mother to be Moonflower! It seems that prefix was destined to make its way into Bluestar’s family, one way or another.
- Speaking of ThunderClan – when deciding on the names of the four Clans, they were originally going to be called ShadowClan, WindClan, RiverClan, and StarClan! However, when trying to decide on the name of the spiritual Clan of ancestors who dwelt among the starts, it was realized that StarClan suited them better than it did the flesh-and-blood warriors who hunted among the oaks of the forest. The name StarClan was thus transferred to the afterlife Clan, while ThunderClan was settled on for the forest-hunting Clan after the Thunderpath that ran through their territory. One has to wonder how things in Dawn of the Clans would have differed if ThunderClan had stuck with the name StarClan. Would the noble-hearted tom Thunder have been gifted the name Star instead? Or would the cunning Star Flower have somehow made herself the founder of the forest Clan? And would leader names still have -star at the end, or some other special leader-specific suffix?
- Another name that was disputed early on was the name for ThunderClan’s traitorous deputy. In early drafts, this formidable tom bore the name Hammerclaw. It was only late in the process that someone pointed out that these wild cats would have no way of knowing what a hammer was. Hammerclaw thus became Tigerclaw instead – far more intimidating in our opinion!
- Each Warriors arc having six books is considered standard now, but it wasn’t always this way. Not only was the first series originally only supposed to consist of one book (Into the Wild), but it wasn’t supposed to be a book in an overarching series at all! The original plan was to only have that one book, with no future arcs to follow them. Luckily, the plan then expanded to have six books, then a second arc was commissioned to follow it, and then the rest is history!
- Did you know that Rusty is the first character that was created for the series? It all began with wondering what a house cat got up to beyond his garden fence. He was also given green eyes because of editor Vicky Holmes’ own green eyes. In a similar vein Thistleclaw, the vicious warrior Bluestar worked to keep from becoming deputy, is the first name author Cherith Baldry came up with for the series
- ThunderClan has two cats in the first series named after real-life cats! Bramblepaw, son of Tigerstar, and Sorrelkit, the kit that Darkstripe nearly killed, are named after Bramble and Sorrel, the real-life pets of Cherith Baldry. Little Bramble looked just like the book’s descriptions of Tigerclaw, but Cherith couldn’t bear the idea of her kitten growing up evil, so she suggested the creation of a son for Tigerclaw that he could be instead. Little Sorrel suffered a lot as a kitten before coming into Cherith’s care, which translated into poor Sorrelkit’s near-death by poisoning and later delays to her warrior ceremony because of her injuries from a monster.
- Translating Warriors into foreign languages has always been tricky because of the two-part warrior names of the characters. In the case of Barkface of WindClan, the “bark” in his name refers to the bark of a tree, as he has a mottled brown face that resembles tree bark. But it was quite overlooked that “bark” could have a different meaning, which became evident when the Japanese translator had to ask whether his name was meant to refer to the bark of a dog.
