Most of us are lucky not to be Kings and Heroes, because we do not have to make the choices that Kings and Heroes have to make.

Oh, for Thor's sake..." said Hiccup. "I thought that was just a story..." "Stories come from somewhere," said the witch. "The past haunts the present in more ways than we realise.

But how can we know that dragons did not exist? We have never actually BEEN to the Dark Ages.

The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic.

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt.

Twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death

The dragons I would write about would not be the rather generalized, big, green things that I had read about in storybooks. What I wanted to create was a multiplicity of different dragon species, of all shapes and sizes, adapted to their environment and habitats in the same way as birds or other animals we see today.