(Spoilers for GotG 2, some daring headcanon of mine, could be completely wrong.)
Talked a bit with @forgedobsidian (thanks for helping me out once again) and came up with the thought –
Yondu had been exiled from the other clans for quite some time, before the two movies. He’s a loner when it comes to being a Ravager, not really a member of them anymore, since he broke the code.
But… his men were still with him. Yondu was exiled after he picked up Peter and started raising him, and at least a few of the Ravagers must have already been part of the crew before that, since they remember Peter when he was still simply viewed as “cargo”.
That means that some men, like Horuz, probably Tullk, Oblo, and the others who stayed loyal to Yondu until the very end, stayed with Yondu although he had been exiled.
Sure, there is the fact that Stakar probably could have exiled them, too. But he didn’t say so. He explicitly stated that it had been Yondu who had dealt in children and been exiled. He didn’t say anything about the crew. So if Yondu’s men hadn’t been exiled, they could have tried and changed clans – claimed that it had all been Yondu’s idea, the whole children-trafficking, and just turn around and walk away from Yondu, to join another Ravager-Captain.
They could have left Yondu and look for another job altogether.
Or they could have blamed Yondu for being exiled and started a mutiny long ago.
But they didn’t. At least a few men in Yondu’s crew stayed with him for no obvious reason.
So, Ravagers or not, greedy jerks or not – they stayed with Yondu because of loyalty.
There were some in that rough bunch who actually stayed on Yondu’s side not because of his arrow, his power, his strength (because even in the end, when he had been beaten, they didn’t waver) – but because of Yondu, because they were loyal to him. Loyal enough to rather die for him, in the end, other then turn coats and abandon him.
Scratch following the code, scratch following the flames – there were some who only followed the arrow. Who followed Yondu.
Does anyone else really hope Peter and Kraglin went back and gave those guys proper funerals? ;-;