was talking with someone in the process of reading animorphs (@nexuschampion but finish it first!) and i realized it stung hearing ax call jake his prince after finishing the series. it really clicked how ax calling jake his prince shifts over time
at first its kind of a joke, weird alien being a weird alien, how funny. but every time he does that he's re-enforcing that jake is their leader. the animorphs wanted to hand leadership over to ax, since he was the most knowledgeable about aliens and combat strategies, but he refused. he argued that jake should stay their leader, since ax knew nothing about human society and they were already getting used to taking orders from him. he puts jake in the position of power, and enforces that decision every time he calls him "prince". even when it come into contention, ax never calls anyone else his prince, just jake. and as time goes on jake starts to realize what exactly that entails. he's ax's commander, ax will do pretty much anything he tells him to. but he doesn't let that go to his head. just because he knows ax will do it if he says to, he doesn't want to use that power, doesn't want ax to do things just because he tells him to. because they're not just brothers-in-arms, they're friends. and friends wouldn't force friends to do something they don't want to or disagree with. and he sticks with that for most of the series. he accepts that he is ax's prince, even if after all this time he still doesn't think he should be. it becomes a bit of a joke among the animorphs. jake isn't the elected leader of the animorphs, he's their (alien member's) prince
ax shakes things up by "going rouge" with the bomb. he didn't disobey am order from his prince, he just never allowed his prince to give him am order in the first place. like when marco said jake was too close to the problem of potentially losing his dad to make logical decisions about it, or when jake said marco was too close to the problem of visser one being his mom to make logical decisions about it, ax decided jake was too close to the problem of his city being in peril to think logically about it. and he hated it. he's just an aristh, he should not be making big decisions in place of his prince. in his defense, it was a decision that jake probably wouldn't have handled well at that point, he hadn't steeled himself quite enough for that yet, so ax took matters into his own hands, away from his prince who he is sworn to obey. he acted as if jake was not his prince, which seems to have led to him obeying jake even more afterwards, to make up for it just a little bit. for his own sake, mostly, but it was pretty clear that it hurt jake too. he couldn't trust ax's claims that he was his prince now. that he would obey him when things got tough. the title of prince became the thing in contention. jake is now the undisputed leader of the animorphs, they've all admitted it. he tried to quit, the others tried to replace him, but in the end jake was still their leader. and they're in too deep to even think about changing it now. but if ax disobeys him, is jake really ax's prince?
ax does his best to convince everyone, himself included, that yes, jake is his prince. and it works. he obeys, doesn't talk back, only giving advice as requested or needed. he obeys all the way onto the yeerk pool ship. jake is a better leader at that point, a proper general whose goal i to win using anything and everything at his disposal. and as ax's prince, ax's very life is at his disposal (all of the animorph's are). when jake says "I am your prince", he means it. he's not ax's friend in that moment. he's ax's prince, giving him an order. taking the power ax has aways given him, using it against ax to get him to do something he doesn't want to. and ax cant disobey, because he's the one whose been calling jake his prince all this time, and he's already disobeyed once. ax has always given jake this power over him, it's just that jake never saw it necessary to use it, and so ax never had to make the decision to obey or not. and in that moment, it doesn't feel like ax has much of a choice
and afterwards, they don't talk much. ax goes off to become the ambassador of their species and jake basically becomes a recluse. they don't talk much, if at all, and so never talk about what happened. if ax still considers jake his prince, or if he's moved on. if they still consider each other friends, even. or if they're just veterans of the same war, the same little resistance, and being around each other would just bring up sour memories. and if ax can't be freed of the one, they never get to have that reconciliation. and even if he can, they're already in a war again, and they presumably would fall back into the dynamic of jake being ax's prince, despite all the baggage that the title now holds
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