Dragons and Prophecy and Stoicism 

Thank you everyone who's been reading the comic! Hopefully, you're enjoying it!

I thought I'd take this moment to delve into the lore a little bit. 

Prophecy is one of the most frustrating tropes in fiction

It seems like either they're unreliable (Twilight is the biggest thing that comes to mind, where one of the characters could see the future, but it could be easily prevented or she sees someone "dead" when it turns out they just end up getting passed out), or it's like "come on! They're going to happen anyway, why do the bad guys always try to stop them and make things worse?"

So Why is it in Dragonrider's Dance?

Because the most annoying thing about the trope is that there's so much wasted potential!

For those of you who've been here, you might remember that exchange between Minerva and Matthias about how dragons can see you not as you are, but who you will become. 

So, somebody, either the dragon or one of her "sisters" saw what he'll become, and Minerva does not like it. 

In this universe, dragons, and some of those who've live around them for long enough, have the gift of prophecy. How this works is that once a dragon has a vision of the future, nothing can prevent that future from occurring. It's like remembering something from the past, you can't change it, but you can change how you decide to process your experience about it.

It's interesting to think what kind of person you'd become if you had this power. Would you become Nihlistic, morose, and bitter about the future situations to come? Or would you take a Stoic approach? You know these things are going to happen, and you can't do anything about them, but you recognize that nothing good will come out of being bitter and resentful, so you instead continue to try being the best person you can be, and make everyone else's lives around you just a little bit better.

In Emery's case (the previous dragon before Ari), she had a vision of Minerva bedding her Rider- which would have been the ultimate betrayal- but she instead fought against her jealous instincts and chose to be Minerva's friend. In the end, Emery died shortly after Ari was born, and Minerva did end up with Patricius so that Ari didn't have to grow up without a mother. Now, I think it's up to you whether Minerva as a mother is good or bad, but many of you told me that you liked Ari's personality, so Minerva couldn't have done the worst job raising her.

Right? 

Now, there are some people, like Minerva, who are arrogant, stubborn, or desperate enough to do anything to try to change the future, but historically, once a dragon has a vision, trying to prevent it only makes things worse or makes the event come sooner. I like to think that had Minerva just left well enough alone, Ari and Matthias' relationship might have developed slower and more naturally, but no, she had to unleash a chain reaction that ended up having Matthias try to protect Ari and she in return painfully saves his life.

It's also kind of a meta thing about how I constructed this story: there are a few key important events that will happen, but I don't know how the characters come to those key areas until I draw it out.