Chapter 85: Inheritors Of Strife

With each day, the world we live in is made anew.

''I say this not as a religious mystery or philosophical quandary, but as a statement of fact, because each day, we rebuild the world that defines us and that we ourselves define, based on the world that defined us yesterday. All of us, man and dragon alike, are defined by our histories and choices. Consider this conundrum. Suppose that tomorrow, upon rising, I were to state that the ancient laws and duties incumbent upon my station and status did not apply, and that I owed no man my efforts or time.''

Well, I would be seen as mad by all of those who had risen that day and expected that those laws and duties would ''apply to me. How they would react would depend on many things, but what manner of things tells them that such laws and duties should apply? Nothing, except for their own histories and choices, the teachings and expectations passed down by our predecessors. And so, for all that the world is made anew, it resembles the old one quite well in its fidelity.''

''But now consider: suppose that I taught my own children that the expectations upon them are different than my own? Or suppose I taught such a thing to all of the children? Would I be freeing them from my own history, or freeing myself? Or both? Is such a thing possible? Would the definitions shift? What if I had a particular vision of how the world should be? Or if I saw the world I live in now as an ideal to be cherished and preserved?''

As the world is invented anew with each day, we each have a choice whether to accept the world of yesterday or create the world of tomorrow through our choices of what we accept from our predecessors and and what we teach to our inheritors.

I myself choose to try to make a better world, one where I feel that I am fulfilling my responsibilities to my ancestors and to my descendants, and hope that they, in turn, will work to preserve or improve upon what I have given them.

—Fyrir Hiccup House Haddock VI, Collected Public Sermons & Private Contemplations

Foreshadowing
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Epigraph Tie-In

 * The epigraph mentions remaking a better world every day. The chapter shows Hiccup helping Toothless fly on his own for the first time since his maiming.
 * The epigraph mentions raising children with expectations different from what their parents had. The chapter shows the following:
 * Heidrun and Gabriel were expected to be a housewife and warrior respectively by their father. Instead, Heidrun became a warrior while Gabriel became a smith.
 * Jarl Ivor thinking of sending his grandson Jacob to learn on Berk to become more than just the next Jarl.

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