#idk when I became the HTTYD lore guy but I'm not complaining

[httyd-art-requests]

Hi! I was wondering if there's any piece of HTTYD media where dragons are actually loyal to someone who is a bad person? In all of the three movies it seems they forced to do evil, but is there a villain who actually cares about their dragon?

This is such an interesting question!

The only one I can think of right now is Viggo and the Skrill from RTTE, but his relationship with that dragon was definitely at the peak of his redemption. Viggo had to shed a lot of his previous notions about dragons to be able to form his bond with the Skrill, so I wouldn't necessarily count him a "bad person" at that point. He's still not good, but he's not as bad as when we first meet him.

The same goes for Dagur and his dragons: Dagur bonding with Shattermaster is a significant step in his shift from an antagonist to an ally to Hiccup and co. Any villain who ends up befriending a dragon ceases to be a villain and becomes an ally in one way or another.

You could argue that Drago's Bewilderbeast was loyal to him, but Drago definitely didn't care for it. I've seen some theories that the metal staff he had was used to "discipline" the Bewilderbeast when it was still young enough for it to be effective, and it only listens to Drago because it fears him as a consequence. I would count that as "a dragon loyal to their villain", but it's definitely dark.

A running theme in HTTYD is that the villains are villains because they very explicitly do not care for dragons. Which is an interesting theme in itself, but I do like the idea of a HTTYD villain subverting expectations by having a good bond with their dragon(s), but still choosing to do bad things for whatever reason. The two things are entirely unrelated, they're just someone who has a deep and profound respect for dragons but also likes to do evil messed up things. As like, a hobby.