Do you think, given the chance to go back in time and prevent the dragon-human war, would Book!Hiccup have any qualms about freeing/not freeing Furious in the forests of Beserk?
Ooo this is good food for thought.
My thought is that Hiccup would free Furious regardless.
Hiccup is the young man who believes in forgiving someone a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time, and a sixth time… even if there’s a high likelihood that he’ll get hurt again. Hiccup isn’t a fool and knows that Snotlout might harm him again and never change, but Hiccup isn’t going to change his own thoughtfulness either. Hiccup still believes his own actions are the right way to go. Any time that someone is in trouble, even an enemy who could betray him, Hiccup still believes it’s his duty to help them.
It’s part of what makes Hiccup such a memorable hero in the book series. Whatever your own ethical framework, whatever you think would be the ethical thing to do yourself, how Hiccup is written is memorable. He’s not going to stoop down to something that might make him momentarily dirty for some end good. It’s an idealistic framework with very little sense of realism in a world where realistic horrors abound. And yet in the end, that unending idealism provides changes to the Barbaric Archipelago.
Even in the case that Hiccup could go back in time and knows what the future will bring with Furious, Hiccup’s morality isn’t based upon a utilitarian / consequentialist framework. It’s based upon the idea that we should always act with thoughtfulness, respect, and kindness to everyone we come across. For Hiccup not to free Furious in his miserable state (when Hiccup and Furious first meet) would be a failing on Hiccup’s end, according to Hiccup’s feelings.
The fact that Furious would later go off to kill people and wreak a war would grate upon Hiccup’s thoughts, of course. It would legitimately disturb Hiccup because he doesn’t want other people to suffer. He knows that freeing Furious will bring about that suffering. He may ask himself if this would make him fully culpable for their misfortune. He may ask himself if that means it would be “okay” to leave Furious in the forest of Berserk.
But Hiccup is someone who believes that our kind actions have meaning. That someone else may harm you later doesn’t give you an excuse not to give them this kindness now. Leaving a dragon like this would be unaccepted to Hiccup.
I think Hiccup would, if anything, try to talk with Furious more before freeing him. But he’d still release Furious.
