When I was young I never asked questions, I just did what I was told, I followed the traditions, I stuck to the Barbaric Code. I walked in the path of my own father, and my father’s father, and my father’s father’s father. I tried to bring up my son by the same Code, even though he was so different, and he always asked so many questions. But it is not always easy being a parent. You do your best, of course… So when my son asked the question, “Father, if you were King, would you free the dragons?” I told him the right answer. The only answer. The answer a King should give. Free the dragons? Nonsense! It strikes at our very livelihood, the world that we grew up in! But what does my son Hiccup do? He rejects my answer, beats his father in a swordfight! And goes over his father’s head and asks for freedom for the dragons on his own! And see what happens! The Archipelago is in flames around us! My honour, my reputation is gone, the ships I sailed in turned to ashes, my Chiefdom lost. All our villages burnt, the Dragon Furious rampant, the old order broken, the world at war. And all, all, all… because of my son Hiccup and his questions. Can you blame me for being angry with my son? And yet… If you were to ask me now, the question, if I were King, would I free the dragons, I might answer you quite differently. The experience of being a slave myself has strangely changed my mind. And now I ask myself… Was my son Hiccup actually brave to ask this question? Was he right to ask this question? Was it, even, a question worth losing a world for? So the answer to your question, McJelly, is yes, I am the father of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. I am hoping against hope that somewhere out there he is safe and well. And I am proud to be his father, even though I do not always agree with his questions, and I do not yet know whether they were worth the loss of the world I loved.
The longest speech Stoick had ever made to Hiccup without even knowing he was speaking to his son