Quote Originally Posted by Cilia View Post
A thousand-year war of attrition against the descendants of people long dead is just unnecessary, no matter how you slice it. Most of the Ishgardians don't even know why they're being attacked, or have the wool pulled over their eyes, and have no time to question it.
I used to think like this, but the quests in Dravania kind of changed my mind about it...

Old dragons actually seem quite rare. Obviously there is Midgardsormr and his brood, but the rest... Well, who got sent off to fight and die in our wars? The young. Young is of course subjective, since we have dragons nearing a century of life who are acting like a three year old, but the point still stands, the majority of dragons fighting aren't very old. That difference in time perception means they'll develop slowly, as shown in the quests. What dragons, then, survive to pass on their values and morals? Not the right ones, that's for sure. If you're a dragon, and you're surviving the Dragonsong War, you've done so in one of two ways; By staying the heck out of it, or by killing before you're killed. Both are in no position to pass on particularly good values. The later is certainly what Nidhoggs brood has essentially become, admittedly by some bias on Nidhoggs side. The former? Those are the ones we get quests with. A "young" wyvern is told not to travel to mortal lands. He is young though, so he gets curious. He gets shot out of the sky for it, while mortals cheer. Then he returns to lick his wounds, which seems to involve sleeping for years (by the time he'd wake up, would the mortals who shot him even be alive?). He then grows up not trusting mortals, and he passes that on to the next generation. That only changed when we stepped in and gave a new perception on mortals.

Dragons are really in the same situation as Ishgard, except they're perhaps not being lied to, but the truth doesn't really favor Ishgard... Ancient dragons, like Midgardsormr and Nidhogg, could arguably know better... But consider their perception; They've seen this happen before. Once bitten, twice shy, and they've been bitten twice... That's all we know of, too... We don't know how they interacted with mortals in other eras... Even if other eras were relatively peaceful for dragons though, we know they weren't for mortals. From their perception, we exist just to cause conflict, that just seems to be part of our nature... Arguably dragons are the same, we certainly see them disagree in the Churning Mists, but that's the only real disagreement we see between dragons, and it's a disagreement that started because of mortals. Not only do we sow conflict between each other, we sow it between others as well... That we're even given a chance by Midgardsormr speaks volumes of either his character, or his contract with Hydaelyn...

"Sons must answer for their fathers' misdeeds" does not mean "You are being punished for your fathers mistakes". I actually fully agree with him after realizing this, though it's an obscure way of making his point... His point is that we should learn from past mistakes, and if we're punished, it's because we haven't. Case and point, what did Ishgard learn from Thordans misdeeds? Nothing, they reject that the events even happened, and continued wronging (knowingly or not, for the common folk) dragons. What did the world learn from the Allag? Well, Garlemald certainly learned nothing. Ishgard ignores the misdeeds of its father. Garlemald doesn't even consider them misdeeds. Neither is answering for those mistakes, and instead repeating them. Well, Ishgard finally is, Heavensward is the story of Ishgard answering for its fathers' misdeeds, literally ending with a battle with its father...