There's plenty of theories when it comes to anything related to Dragon, everything from his DF to who the mother of his kids was- but the most underdiscussed aspect to his character, and most underexplored time in his life so far in general, might actually have more to it than we've been led to think.
So I've put together some theoriies on everything on Dragon's life prior to the Revolutionary Army, answering for three different parts of Dragon's life: Dragon before he was a Marine & his origin story and Dragon's time in the Marines (why/when he joined), and also the part that wouldn't be in this thread due to the character limit (his time after the Marines, why he quit, and his time as a Freedom Fighter)
link to the thread for Part 2, which discusses Why/When Dragon left the Marines, here
These won't be exactly how I title my sections, but instead I'll be using this structure to naturally guide us through answering all the essential questions in chronological order, all the way from his humble beginnings, to his vow to change the world at the ruins of O'Hara.
Feel free to take what I say here as evidence for your own theories, even if you disagree with my conclusions. I'd like to think what I'm saying can be of use to other people's thoughts on the story, even if my outright predictions don't pan out.
-
Where was he born and raised? (hint: not Foosha Village)
What's his origin story?
This moment is the perfect place to start, but it has many interpretations. Since Dragon is saying this in the same flashback where we learn that nearly everything counts as Goa Kingdom, including Mt. Corvo & Foosha Village, people seem undecided as to whether or not Dragon actually means to say that he was actually born in Goa Kingdom proper, as in the capitol.
I'm here to say that this man is most definitely from Goa Kingdom itself, and has a 0% chance of being from Foosha or Mt. Corvo. These three pictures will help explain why:
A.
B.
C.
A. When Kuma is having his conversation with Dragon here, he mentions that Dragon is very familiar with this particular country (Goa Kingdom), and then mentions Foosha Village after that separately. This directly communicates that Dragon is very familiar with Goa Kingdom/the capitol itself, entirely separate from Foosha/Mt Corvo, which means that it would make perfect sense if he grew up in the capitol, seeing as that would logically explain why he's so familiar with it.
[ There's other noteworthy details in this moment too, like how that small town we see (bottom left panel, when Kuma says "pardon me, I'll forget everything I saw") genuinely seems to be a new location, and how this has to be a different moment than the fire at Grey Terminal, but I don't think these things are worth fixating on atm]
B. In the middle of a raging fire threatening the lives of the people he came to protect, instead of immediately being at the center of the action, we actually find Dragon.. sauntering in the middle of a random neighborhood? Even if he's supposed to be a logia DF and he can just materialize in front of Sabo whenever he'd like, it still means that he was in the area prior to materializing, since that's how any other logia would work in this situation.
What could he possibly be doing here? Is this not just him reminiscing? There's not many other answers that actually make sense here. He very clearly has some sort of attachment to this area, whether it's this neighborhood in specific (Edgetown), or just the capitol of Goa Kingdom itself. This is also the perfect setting for someone like Dragon to first learn about injustice in the world, and we could get it from the perspective of a regular citizen of Goa Kingdom too, and so I think Oda might make that a key component of Dragon's story.
C. When Garp is responding to Luffy's declaration to become a pirate, and reflecting on what influenced him start thinking like that, he reminds us of a crucial detail for all of One Piece's important Marines and their respective backstories- based on the childhood depictions Oda draws, they all seemingly had really difficult lives growing up.
Naturally, Garp being an extremely knowledgeable (albeit aloof) Marine vet, he considers it a mistake to have raised Luffy somewhere so peaceful if he expected him to be a soldier too- so that obviously begs the question, given everything we went over, would it make any sense for Dragon to come from a peace loving, easy going environment like Foosha Village himself, when we know he later became a Marine?
-
Now that we have more context, we can come back to the panels of him talking to Sabo, and pair them with the scene of him talking to Iva in order to come up with our final conclusions:
1. In the scene of him and Sabo, we can see how even the composition here strongly implies that his attachment to Goa Kingdom lies somewhere near the wall depicted here- so in other words, he likely grew up around the Edgetown neighborhood, and potentially even Grey Terminal itself.
2. Dragon also has some particular resentment towards Goa Kingdom and how it operates, in the only time in the series where we see his internal monologue, he's talking about how despicable it is that Goa made Sabo say what he said*.
When paired with the passion that Dragon is speaking in his scene with Iva, it's hard to imagine that this whole ordeal isn't personal for him. It's likely that Dragon has seen the cruel nature of this country first hand before, and it might even be why he left this country to become a Marine despite being so familiar with it. Maybe he wasn't aware at how widespread the issue was at first, and thought it was just his country that was this far gone. After all, Dragon also seems knowledgeable about what was gonna happen ahead of time, based on what Iva says about 'keeping watch' and even the fact that the Revs seemed to be working proactively here to begin with. Maybe after hearing about how the Celestial Dragons would visit Goa (which was reported in the news) he immediately knew what would happen, because this isn't the first time Goa's aristocracy has tried something like this to begin with
-
* = Especially important to note: The actual content of what Dragon is saying, in the raws/original Japanese (or any translation outside of Viz), imply that Dragon's surprise could be from hearing something he's already heard from someone else, since "とうとう子供 にこれ を 言わせるの か" can definitely be interpreted as "You've finally made a child say this?!! Goa Kingdom!!".
It seems like the official translation confused the use of 'これを', vaguelyyyy equal to the word "this" in english, as referring to Sabo as "this child [the child near the speaker]". I don't really think that makes sense, for two different reasons. Firstly, "[someone] に [thing] を 言わせる" would be "(to force/to make) [someone] say [thing]", so the "これを" in question is actually referring to what Sabo is saying, and not Sabo himself. Secondly, if he was referring to Sabo as 'this child', he would just refer to Sabo as 'この子供' ('this child'), mainly since he'd be referring to a subject and not an object here
The anime subs seem to have no problem with this though, so it's only Viz being Viz here.
When you put this together with his use of とうとう or "finally", and get "you've finally made a child say this", it strongly implies that Dragon was familiar with someone who was also forced to say something like "I'm ashamed have been born an aristocrat" by Goa Kingdom, but they were not a child when Dragon heard that from them. It just doesn't make much sense to specify "a child" and "finally" here. The story could go any number of ways with this, but I'll save that speculation for another theory
Why did Dragon personally join the Marines? & Who/What made Dragon the man he is today? (hint: it's not just Garp)
When exactly did Dragon join the Marines? Why did he join when he did?
What was Dragon's role within the Marines? Could he have actually been in SWORD?
While there's more to the idea that Dragon has history with SWORD, let's get the obvious one out the way: I'm not the first one to point this out, but at the bare minimum the juxtaposing of Dragon revealing his Marines service for the first time ever, and also the reveal of the Freedom Fighters' old flag as a "Sword" (stabbing through a crown), is clearly meant to tease something between Dragon and SWORD- either because there is something there, or because this is a red herring that's actually meant to communicate something else.
It's also very clear that many of SWORD's current members are descendants of other existing Marines in the story:
Now let's also consider Dragon's character traits in the context of SWORD's actual purpose- being a 'top secret special force' staffed with people who can be discarded at a moments notice without any need to take responsibility for them.
From everything we know about Dragon, he would fit perfectly into a unit like this. Not only because of his moral values or his status as a second-generation Marine, but due to his personality and lifestyle as a reserved, closed-off individual who avoids telling anyone about his connections unless it's actually necessary, due to his need to live as a clandestine rebel leader-
It would just make perfect sense if he adopted this behavior from working as a part of SWORD as a unit, especially since the title that he takes on as leader of the Freedom Fighters could even imply that he originally the Captain/Leader of SWORD. In a series that uses so many different titles for its captains and leader figures (especially in the original Japanese), it's interesting Dragon's title of 'Captain'/隊長 of the Freedom Fighters, also mirrors that of X. Drake's title as 'Captain'/隊長 of SWORD.
"SWORD隊長 " and "自勇軍 隊長"- with the only difference being the organization in the title: Freedom Fighters/自勇軍 as opposed to SWORD.
As I've talked about in other posts with other characters, this coincidence wasn't exactly likely to happen with how much One Piece is both varied and precise in its leadership titles across the cast. To me personally, this would only make sense if Dragon was in SWORD, all things considered. There's a small chance it's not supposed to be related, and that Oda just envisions their leadership responsibilities in these two positions as similar enough to warrant the identical title, but again, I consider that to be a weak explanation given everything else we've got to answer for.
There's also the possible excuse that Dragon was the 'Captain' of another special Marines unit, because this 'Captain' title is used for Sentomaru's title within the Science Division, but Dragon's personality and background fit perfectly with the position of being SWORD's former Captain. So while I consider this to be a good fallback answer because it would tick a lot of the other boxes, I'm a believer in the SWORD explanation more than anything else.
So I've put together some theoriies on everything on Dragon's life prior to the Revolutionary Army, answering for three different parts of Dragon's life: Dragon before he was a Marine & his origin story and Dragon's time in the Marines (why/when he joined), and also the part that wouldn't be in this thread due to the character limit (his time after the Marines, why he quit, and his time as a Freedom Fighter)
link to the thread for Part 2, which discusses Why/When Dragon left the Marines, here
These won't be exactly how I title my sections, but instead I'll be using this structure to naturally guide us through answering all the essential questions in chronological order, all the way from his humble beginnings, to his vow to change the world at the ruins of O'Hara.
Feel free to take what I say here as evidence for your own theories, even if you disagree with my conclusions. I'd like to think what I'm saying can be of use to other people's thoughts on the story, even if my outright predictions don't pan out.
-
Where was he born and raised? (hint: not Foosha Village)
What's his origin story?
This moment is the perfect place to start, but it has many interpretations. Since Dragon is saying this in the same flashback where we learn that nearly everything counts as Goa Kingdom, including Mt. Corvo & Foosha Village, people seem undecided as to whether or not Dragon actually means to say that he was actually born in Goa Kingdom proper, as in the capitol.
I'm here to say that this man is most definitely from Goa Kingdom itself, and has a 0% chance of being from Foosha or Mt. Corvo. These three pictures will help explain why:
A.
B.
C.
A. When Kuma is having his conversation with Dragon here, he mentions that Dragon is very familiar with this particular country (Goa Kingdom), and then mentions Foosha Village after that separately. This directly communicates that Dragon is very familiar with Goa Kingdom/the capitol itself, entirely separate from Foosha/Mt Corvo, which means that it would make perfect sense if he grew up in the capitol, seeing as that would logically explain why he's so familiar with it.
[ There's other noteworthy details in this moment too, like how that small town we see (bottom left panel, when Kuma says "pardon me, I'll forget everything I saw") genuinely seems to be a new location, and how this has to be a different moment than the fire at Grey Terminal, but I don't think these things are worth fixating on atm]
B. In the middle of a raging fire threatening the lives of the people he came to protect, instead of immediately being at the center of the action, we actually find Dragon.. sauntering in the middle of a random neighborhood? Even if he's supposed to be a logia DF and he can just materialize in front of Sabo whenever he'd like, it still means that he was in the area prior to materializing, since that's how any other logia would work in this situation.
What could he possibly be doing here? Is this not just him reminiscing? There's not many other answers that actually make sense here. He very clearly has some sort of attachment to this area, whether it's this neighborhood in specific (Edgetown), or just the capitol of Goa Kingdom itself. This is also the perfect setting for someone like Dragon to first learn about injustice in the world, and we could get it from the perspective of a regular citizen of Goa Kingdom too, and so I think Oda might make that a key component of Dragon's story.
C. When Garp is responding to Luffy's declaration to become a pirate, and reflecting on what influenced him start thinking like that, he reminds us of a crucial detail for all of One Piece's important Marines and their respective backstories- based on the childhood depictions Oda draws, they all seemingly had really difficult lives growing up.
Naturally, Garp being an extremely knowledgeable (albeit aloof) Marine vet, he considers it a mistake to have raised Luffy somewhere so peaceful if he expected him to be a soldier too- so that obviously begs the question, given everything we went over, would it make any sense for Dragon to come from a peace loving, easy going environment like Foosha Village himself, when we know he later became a Marine?
-
Now that we have more context, we can come back to the panels of him talking to Sabo, and pair them with the scene of him talking to Iva in order to come up with our final conclusions:
1. In the scene of him and Sabo, we can see how even the composition here strongly implies that his attachment to Goa Kingdom lies somewhere near the wall depicted here- so in other words, he likely grew up around the Edgetown neighborhood, and potentially even Grey Terminal itself.
2. Dragon also has some particular resentment towards Goa Kingdom and how it operates, in the only time in the series where we see his internal monologue, he's talking about how despicable it is that Goa made Sabo say what he said*.
When paired with the passion that Dragon is speaking in his scene with Iva, it's hard to imagine that this whole ordeal isn't personal for him. It's likely that Dragon has seen the cruel nature of this country first hand before, and it might even be why he left this country to become a Marine despite being so familiar with it. Maybe he wasn't aware at how widespread the issue was at first, and thought it was just his country that was this far gone. After all, Dragon also seems knowledgeable about what was gonna happen ahead of time, based on what Iva says about 'keeping watch' and even the fact that the Revs seemed to be working proactively here to begin with. Maybe after hearing about how the Celestial Dragons would visit Goa (which was reported in the news) he immediately knew what would happen, because this isn't the first time Goa's aristocracy has tried something like this to begin with
-
* = Especially important to note: The actual content of what Dragon is saying, in the raws/original Japanese (or any translation outside of Viz), imply that Dragon's surprise could be from hearing something he's already heard from someone else, since "とうとう子供 にこれ を 言わせるの か" can definitely be interpreted as "You've finally made a child say this?!! Goa Kingdom!!".
It seems like the official translation confused the use of 'これを', vaguelyyyy equal to the word "this" in english, as referring to Sabo as "this child [the child near the speaker]". I don't really think that makes sense, for two different reasons. Firstly, "[someone] に [thing] を 言わせる" would be "(to force/to make) [someone] say [thing]", so the "これを" in question is actually referring to what Sabo is saying, and not Sabo himself. Secondly, if he was referring to Sabo as 'this child', he would just refer to Sabo as 'この子供' ('this child'), mainly since he'd be referring to a subject and not an object here
The anime subs seem to have no problem with this though, so it's only Viz being Viz here.
When you put this together with his use of とうとう or "finally", and get "you've finally made a child say this", it strongly implies that Dragon was familiar with someone who was also forced to say something like "I'm ashamed have been born an aristocrat" by Goa Kingdom, but they were not a child when Dragon heard that from them. It just doesn't make much sense to specify "a child" and "finally" here. The story could go any number of ways with this, but I'll save that speculation for another theory
Why did Dragon personally join the Marines? & Who/What made Dragon the man he is today? (hint: it's not just Garp)
As I discussed in the section above, it's all but confirmed that Dragon grew up in Goa Kingdom (or rather its capitol) rather than Foosha Kingdom or Mt Corvo, and likely grew up spending time in the Edgetown neighborhood of the capitol that borders Grey Terminal.
As much this detail also clearly fits into the pattern of notable Marines in One Piece having rough childhoods, going off of both Oda's SBS sketches and Garp's comments, there's clearly other factors we need to address when answering for Dragon's life-changing decision to follow in his father's footsteps, since both Ace and Luffy very clearly had a childhood rough enough to qualify for this as well.
We should start with people's natural assumption that Garp is the main reason that Dragon joined the Marines, which in reality, should be the first thing that gets thrown out the window when taking a deeper look at this scenario. Ace and Luffy's childhoods show us that simply put, Garp is terrible at actually convincing one of his grandkids to become Marines. He's 0 for 2 and it's not just due to bad luck, he genuinely doesn't sell the idea very well, and is the exact type of parent that forces the issue way too much to get their kids to accept their perspective (when it comes to becoming a Marine at least)
There's also the fact that Garp was already barely around when it came to his grandkids (who he acted as the father-figure for), in a post-Roger era where he's basically half-retired already, and has no major rivals to chase/surpass anymore
-when you take this into account, the idea that he would somehow have the time to actually be there for his son, in the most active point in his career where he's globe-trotting to chase Roger, his #1 rival and goal, it just makes zero sense. There's no reason for us to believe either that Garp would be able to push Dragon to become a Marine directly, or even that he would've had the time to do so in the first place.
-
It still, of course, makes sense that Dragon might be influenced by his Dad's reputation as the Hero of the Marines in some way. We just need to acknowledge that Dragon's direct influence on a day to day, just as a person, likely came from someone other than Garp. There is simply no way for Oda to tell Dragon's story as someone who became a Marine without having to resolve this in some way- otherwise, why would he have written Dragon to be a former Marine, while also emphasizing Garp's inability to be a full-fledged parent, or even just an effective recruiter, if he didn't intend on giving us more about Dragon's story in order to explain this?
So how can we answer for this? Who could have possibly been a bigger direct influence in Dragon's life than Garp? And how did that lead to Dragon joining the Marines?
As it turns out, there's an interesting quirk in Garp's timeline, where he actually ends up joining the Marines a year before Dragon is born, and we can be sure that these 2 events are reliable coming from his vivre card, given that they're central to other characters' vivre card timelines as well (Sengoku/Tsuru's join date, and also Dragon's birth date)-
yet everything we know about Dragon explicitly tells us that he was born and raised in Goa Kingdom (see section 1), leading me to believe that there's 1 of 3 possibilities
1. Garp met Dragon's mom and conceived his son with her prior to him enlisting (decent chance, most inoffensive prediction, doesn't assume anything about Dragon's mom)
2. Garp actually met Dragon's mother in the Marines, and she had to quit in order to be able to have their son. I consider this to be the least likely, but it's also the most interesting to me, since it gives a reason for Dragon's mom to promote the idea of being a Marine to him
3. Garp met Dragon's mom while he was in the Marines, but she wasn't a fellow soldier- it's possible she was a noble of some kind and needed his protection for whatever reason, or that she was an ordinary citizen who needed his protection. This is the most generic and boring answer to me personally- we've already seen this type of story across OP like with Kyros/Scarlet- this also makes it the most likely outcome, just given Oda's track record.
Regardless of which one of these 3 possibilities is closest to the truth, the timeline we received still makes it clear that Dragon's mom had a kid with Garp knowing the person he is, and was likely aware of his enlistment and ambition to be a Marine. There's 2 routes that I believe Oda could take with this, let's explore them:
Route #1
Regardless of whether or not Garp's rivalry with Roger (or his job in general) kept him too busy to be around, the mother of his kids was likely a knowing supporter of Garp's ambition and involvement in the Marines, given the fact that Dragon is born after Garp enlists and not after. This makes it easy believe that Dragon's mom would defend Garp's absence to Dragon and maintain the idea that he should follow in his father's footsteps, since we see a similar pride from other moms that Oda has written, like Toki and Bachina. It's very easy to imagine Dragon as essentially being an 'Usopp type character' strangely enough, just in terms of being raised to be the man to follow in his father's footsteps, and finding himself to reject that fate completely- this would also give us important tie-ins to other characters, since we know that Shanks was seen by others to be the heir to Roger's throne, and yet rejected that fate for himself as well, and as Roger/Garp were historic rivals, it would be fitting for their eldest sons.
Though, it isn't necessary that Dragon joins due to his father's reputation in this case, it's possible he does so because of the influence of his mother as a whole, especially considering the timeline does allow for her to also be ex-Marine as well, but in the end the result is the same.
Route #2
There's also an alternate route here- that Dragon's Mom influenced him to go in a less militant direction (likely pushing him into formal education), and so he actually viewed joining the Marines as a "rebellious" act, which would be extremely ironic, and also very fitting for a life story about the world's biggest rebel, who's also the son of Garp and father of Luffy, two people that are clearly more likely to do what you tell them not to do.
Not only does the story imply that Dragon has an ideology that's central to his army's success political success, implying some degree of formal education,
but also, Goa Kingdom definitely has a culture that promotes being well educated (especially as an indicator of social status, seen in the story of Sabo & Stelly in the ASL Flashback),
-this could all mean Dragon has plenty of formal education, both due to Goa's culture/society, and due to the type of person he was unknowingly going to become- plus, this would help to explain other important parts of his character, not just his ideology. Mainly in how he comes across as quite formally educated when he's talking about anything political, and also every other major character he knows is either an outright academic (Vegapunk, Clover, Sabo also was being pushed into this as well), or even have bookshelves full of important knowledge (Kuma and his family's church & Ivankov in Kamabaka). He even values having a constant stream of information so much that our clearest look at the Revs' headquarters in Baltigo showed us a whole intelligence department keeping HQ up to date with everything, so it's possible that this is meant to be a major part of his personality, and that it's a direct result of his backstory/origins.
And following this logic, it's possible that Dragon's mom, or other influences in his life, pushed him to be an academic, but him wanting to go against that, as the rebellious individual that he is, instead wanted to be like his father, an almost-mythical war hero that's the face of 'justice' in the world, and that this compelled him to enlist in the Marines in opposition to a dry, boring, academic life in Goa Kingdom.
This would also allow Oda to pull from multiple major inspirations for Dragon and One Piece as a whole. The real life Revolutionaries that inspired Dragon's character also had a clear background in formal education as well, which would likely be the case even if Oda pulls from a different/larger set of inspirations from Dragon going forward, since almost every notable, historic revolutionary leader (even ones known for their military achievements) had a degree of formal, higher education that shaped their lives and perspectives. This goes for almost any revolution you can think of, and is not really a phenomenon bound to any sect or belief, but rather comes from the circumstances precipitating revolution demanding an ideological answer for the outgoing society, that a revolutionary leader would strive to replace with a newer one. This route for Dragon's backstory would also fit with Oda's biggest inspiration as a manga author, Dragon Ball, since the larger-than-life heroic personality who just wants to go around fighting strong guys (Garp/Goku), would have a relatively collected booksmart son who you otherwise wouldn't guess is even related to him (Dragon/Gohan).
Regardless, the end result is the same, Dragon ends up in the Marines both as a result of the harsh conditions he witnesses around Goa's Edgetown and its border, showing him what injustice looks like in reality, and also because of the positive influence of his father's reputation being paired with the (more active) parenting of his mother. I believe the injustice he's confronted with, just with how Goa Kingdom operates, will eventually sow the seeds for his discontent with the Marines as well, discussed below.
As much this detail also clearly fits into the pattern of notable Marines in One Piece having rough childhoods, going off of both Oda's SBS sketches and Garp's comments, there's clearly other factors we need to address when answering for Dragon's life-changing decision to follow in his father's footsteps, since both Ace and Luffy very clearly had a childhood rough enough to qualify for this as well.
We should start with people's natural assumption that Garp is the main reason that Dragon joined the Marines, which in reality, should be the first thing that gets thrown out the window when taking a deeper look at this scenario. Ace and Luffy's childhoods show us that simply put, Garp is terrible at actually convincing one of his grandkids to become Marines. He's 0 for 2 and it's not just due to bad luck, he genuinely doesn't sell the idea very well, and is the exact type of parent that forces the issue way too much to get their kids to accept their perspective (when it comes to becoming a Marine at least)
There's also the fact that Garp was already barely around when it came to his grandkids (who he acted as the father-figure for), in a post-Roger era where he's basically half-retired already, and has no major rivals to chase/surpass anymore
-when you take this into account, the idea that he would somehow have the time to actually be there for his son, in the most active point in his career where he's globe-trotting to chase Roger, his #1 rival and goal, it just makes zero sense. There's no reason for us to believe either that Garp would be able to push Dragon to become a Marine directly, or even that he would've had the time to do so in the first place.
-
It still, of course, makes sense that Dragon might be influenced by his Dad's reputation as the Hero of the Marines in some way. We just need to acknowledge that Dragon's direct influence on a day to day, just as a person, likely came from someone other than Garp. There is simply no way for Oda to tell Dragon's story as someone who became a Marine without having to resolve this in some way- otherwise, why would he have written Dragon to be a former Marine, while also emphasizing Garp's inability to be a full-fledged parent, or even just an effective recruiter, if he didn't intend on giving us more about Dragon's story in order to explain this?
So how can we answer for this? Who could have possibly been a bigger direct influence in Dragon's life than Garp? And how did that lead to Dragon joining the Marines?
As it turns out, there's an interesting quirk in Garp's timeline, where he actually ends up joining the Marines a year before Dragon is born, and we can be sure that these 2 events are reliable coming from his vivre card, given that they're central to other characters' vivre card timelines as well (Sengoku/Tsuru's join date, and also Dragon's birth date)-
yet everything we know about Dragon explicitly tells us that he was born and raised in Goa Kingdom (see section 1), leading me to believe that there's 1 of 3 possibilities
1. Garp met Dragon's mom and conceived his son with her prior to him enlisting (decent chance, most inoffensive prediction, doesn't assume anything about Dragon's mom)
2. Garp actually met Dragon's mother in the Marines, and she had to quit in order to be able to have their son. I consider this to be the least likely, but it's also the most interesting to me, since it gives a reason for Dragon's mom to promote the idea of being a Marine to him
3. Garp met Dragon's mom while he was in the Marines, but she wasn't a fellow soldier- it's possible she was a noble of some kind and needed his protection for whatever reason, or that she was an ordinary citizen who needed his protection. This is the most generic and boring answer to me personally- we've already seen this type of story across OP like with Kyros/Scarlet- this also makes it the most likely outcome, just given Oda's track record.
Regardless of which one of these 3 possibilities is closest to the truth, the timeline we received still makes it clear that Dragon's mom had a kid with Garp knowing the person he is, and was likely aware of his enlistment and ambition to be a Marine. There's 2 routes that I believe Oda could take with this, let's explore them:
Route #1
Regardless of whether or not Garp's rivalry with Roger (or his job in general) kept him too busy to be around, the mother of his kids was likely a knowing supporter of Garp's ambition and involvement in the Marines, given the fact that Dragon is born after Garp enlists and not after. This makes it easy believe that Dragon's mom would defend Garp's absence to Dragon and maintain the idea that he should follow in his father's footsteps, since we see a similar pride from other moms that Oda has written, like Toki and Bachina. It's very easy to imagine Dragon as essentially being an 'Usopp type character' strangely enough, just in terms of being raised to be the man to follow in his father's footsteps, and finding himself to reject that fate completely- this would also give us important tie-ins to other characters, since we know that Shanks was seen by others to be the heir to Roger's throne, and yet rejected that fate for himself as well, and as Roger/Garp were historic rivals, it would be fitting for their eldest sons.
Though, it isn't necessary that Dragon joins due to his father's reputation in this case, it's possible he does so because of the influence of his mother as a whole, especially considering the timeline does allow for her to also be ex-Marine as well, but in the end the result is the same.
Route #2
There's also an alternate route here- that Dragon's Mom influenced him to go in a less militant direction (likely pushing him into formal education), and so he actually viewed joining the Marines as a "rebellious" act, which would be extremely ironic, and also very fitting for a life story about the world's biggest rebel, who's also the son of Garp and father of Luffy, two people that are clearly more likely to do what you tell them not to do.
Not only does the story imply that Dragon has an ideology that's central to his army's success political success, implying some degree of formal education,
but also, Goa Kingdom definitely has a culture that promotes being well educated (especially as an indicator of social status, seen in the story of Sabo & Stelly in the ASL Flashback),
-this could all mean Dragon has plenty of formal education, both due to Goa's culture/society, and due to the type of person he was unknowingly going to become- plus, this would help to explain other important parts of his character, not just his ideology. Mainly in how he comes across as quite formally educated when he's talking about anything political, and also every other major character he knows is either an outright academic (Vegapunk, Clover, Sabo also was being pushed into this as well), or even have bookshelves full of important knowledge (Kuma and his family's church & Ivankov in Kamabaka). He even values having a constant stream of information so much that our clearest look at the Revs' headquarters in Baltigo showed us a whole intelligence department keeping HQ up to date with everything, so it's possible that this is meant to be a major part of his personality, and that it's a direct result of his backstory/origins.
And following this logic, it's possible that Dragon's mom, or other influences in his life, pushed him to be an academic, but him wanting to go against that, as the rebellious individual that he is, instead wanted to be like his father, an almost-mythical war hero that's the face of 'justice' in the world, and that this compelled him to enlist in the Marines in opposition to a dry, boring, academic life in Goa Kingdom.
This would also allow Oda to pull from multiple major inspirations for Dragon and One Piece as a whole. The real life Revolutionaries that inspired Dragon's character also had a clear background in formal education as well, which would likely be the case even if Oda pulls from a different/larger set of inspirations from Dragon going forward, since almost every notable, historic revolutionary leader (even ones known for their military achievements) had a degree of formal, higher education that shaped their lives and perspectives. This goes for almost any revolution you can think of, and is not really a phenomenon bound to any sect or belief, but rather comes from the circumstances precipitating revolution demanding an ideological answer for the outgoing society, that a revolutionary leader would strive to replace with a newer one. This route for Dragon's backstory would also fit with Oda's biggest inspiration as a manga author, Dragon Ball, since the larger-than-life heroic personality who just wants to go around fighting strong guys (Garp/Goku), would have a relatively collected booksmart son who you otherwise wouldn't guess is even related to him (Dragon/Gohan).
Regardless, the end result is the same, Dragon ends up in the Marines both as a result of the harsh conditions he witnesses around Goa's Edgetown and its border, showing him what injustice looks like in reality, and also because of the positive influence of his father's reputation being paired with the (more active) parenting of his mother. I believe the injustice he's confronted with, just with how Goa Kingdom operates, will eventually sow the seeds for his discontent with the Marines as well, discussed below.
When exactly did Dragon join the Marines? Why did he join when he did?
Before I go any further, here's my prediction for exactly what Dragon's timeline with the Marines is like:
Bold is for crucial details, Italics + Underscore is for unconfirmed speculation by me, and everything else is just normal canon material
So the first thing we have to address is the two speculative points on the timeline, as I've already explained my belief as to why Dragon personally chose to join the Marines in the section above, I won't repeat myself here, but I should briefly go over why he likely joined when he did.
Others have speculated that Dragon would've have been a Marine in time for God Valley, and that God Valley is what radicalized him. While nothing outright de-confirms it so far, there's 3 major points going against this idea.
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On the other hand, we know that Borsalino and Sakazuki joined the Marines 32 years ago (present on both of their Vivre Cards), and this is clearly meant to pair alongside the beginning of former Rocks/future Yonko crews recruiting 33 years ago (info narrated in Oden's Flashback), and it's even possible that there was a smaller-scale recruitment push that led to them joining, similar to the larger one Akainu puts into action after becoming Fleet Admiral which net the Marines Green Bull & Fujitora.
This gives the story a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Dragon, who could have realistically joined the Marines at any point in his life given his familial connection to the organization, chose to do so when he did. It provides the larger-scale, impersonal reason for why he joined- a reason that moved the history around him forward, and simply swept him up in it.
This is a perfect fit for Dragon's story, even beyond it just being cohesive story-telling that makes good use of what's already been established, and it'll help us better understand why and when Dragon likely quit the Marines later down the line as well.
There's clear reason to believe that Akainu's story within the Marines will be a major part of Dragon's story within the Marines, and vice versa. We've seen Akainu's almost-pathological fixation on Luffy being “Dragon’s son” constantly during Marineford, the two of them have also only grown more similar since Akainu got his promotion. As Oda has now put them in the same position relative to their organizations, being the desk-bound overseer of large military operations spanning the entire globe, and also has used this time to show us some of the nuance and pragmatism to their leadership.
We see the latter through Akainu surprisingly being on the side of keeping the Warlord system, showing us that his personal hatred for pirates might not actually be his #1 motivator, and also through Dragon's comments about there being some genuinely good monarchs in the world, in spite of the Revolutionary Army's reputation as just regime-toppling rebels. All while keeping them diametrically opposed and on a collision course with each other.
Dragon's recent flashbacks in Egghead, which reveal that his personal reason from moving from Freedom Fighter to Revolutionary was the O'Hara incident, also establish another connection with Akainu- someone who received some of his most revealing characterization through his first scene ever, killing a ship of civilians at O'Hara. These two also, as many people know, share a birth-year. This is a recurring idea that's been used to tease an in-story relation via the Vivre Cards in other cases. While this is clearly meaningless by itself, when put together with everything else, it seems clear that there's going to be some history between these two, and it likely involves Dragon's time in the Marines. This all would more than justify using the same inciting incident (future Yonko crews rising to prominence), and having Akainu/Dragon join the Marines.
So our best bet for now is that Dragon actually joined around 32 years ago like Borsalino and Sakazuki, since it would fit with his personal history with existing Marines, while also fitting in with the greater timeline of the One Piece world in a logical way.
Bold is for crucial details, Italics + Underscore is for unconfirmed speculation by me, and everything else is just normal canon material
- 38 Years Ago - Garp becomes "Hero of the Marines" at God Valley
- 33 Years Ago - The eventual Yonko, specifically the ones from Rocks' old crew, are starting to recruit new members (info via the Oden Flashback)
- 32 Years Ago - One of two points where Dragon (Age 23) could've joined the Marines +(speculative)
- 32 Years Ago - Sakazuki (Age 23, North Blue) joins the Marines, Borsalino (Age 26, North Blue) too, Vivre Card info
- 30 Years Ago - Kuzan (South Blue) joins the Marines, Vivre Card Info
- 28 Years Ago - Dragon quit the Marines here (speculative)
- 28 Years Ago - 33 O'Hara's scholars go on a journey that would eventually result in Olvia's capture and O'Hara's Buster Call
- 27 Years Ago - Battle at Edd War (Strong World Oneshot written by Oda), Akainu, Saul, and Aokiji are seemingly Vice Admirals by this point. Design changes for Akainu/Aokiji/Garp as well
- 26 Years Ago - MADS disbands, Vegapunk joins the WG, and Clover speaks to Vegapunk at Punk Hazard*. The importance of this will be explained in full later in the next section
- 25 Years Ago - Dragon is in the news receives his first wanted poster as a member of the Freedom Fighters.
- 24 Years Ago - Dragon is in attendance for Roger's execution
- 22 Years Ago - Dragon visits O'Hara ruins with Vegapunk, and founds the Revolutionary Army later the same year, also the latest point we see him without his tattoo so far
So the first thing we have to address is the two speculative points on the timeline, as I've already explained my belief as to why Dragon personally chose to join the Marines in the section above, I won't repeat myself here, but I should briefly go over why he likely joined when he did.
Others have speculated that Dragon would've have been a Marine in time for God Valley, and that God Valley is what radicalized him. While nothing outright de-confirms it so far, there's 3 major points going against this idea.
- Dragon's presence at God Valley was left unteased and ignored during our introduction to a young Iva and Ginny during Kuma's perspective of the incident, despite this being the incident that eventually sets them down the path to join up with Dragon's Revolutionary Army, giving them the conviction and freedom required to fight the WG head-on eventually
- Garp initially didn't even think he'd be at God Valley, and while he clearly has some level of respect for his kids' decisions in spite of his own words, I sincerely doubt that Garp would want his 17 year old son to die over something he thought was dumb to get involved with in the first place, especially when his son would be a Marine that's really just following in his footsteps more than anything. Could Dragon have accompanied Garp there later on? sure, but we don't see Dragon there when Garp shows up, and I just don't think Garp would allow that either for the same reason.
- This timeline either involves him never meeting Akainu as a fellow Marine, with him leaving before Akainu even joins, or him staying as a Marine after he witnessed God Valley. The latter would go against the proposed point of him even being there to begin with, as a sort of inciting incident, so it's not really worth discussing in detail. The former also wouldn't meaningfully resolve Akainu having some sort of implied personal vendetta against Dragon. Could his comments at Marineford be explained by how it fits into the themes of the arc? Sure. Could it even just be a way of further characterizing Akainu as dogmatic and overly committed to the backwards ideals of the Marines as an organization? Sure again. But it would be a fairly weak explanation by itself either way, given the amount of emphasis placed on the fact that Luffy is "Dragon's son", and the fact that it wouldn't do anything new for Akainu's characterization that would merit that much attention. It also wouldn't explain the other tie-ins between their characters, which I'll explain below.
-
On the other hand, we know that Borsalino and Sakazuki joined the Marines 32 years ago (present on both of their Vivre Cards), and this is clearly meant to pair alongside the beginning of former Rocks/future Yonko crews recruiting 33 years ago (info narrated in Oden's Flashback), and it's even possible that there was a smaller-scale recruitment push that led to them joining, similar to the larger one Akainu puts into action after becoming Fleet Admiral which net the Marines Green Bull & Fujitora.
This gives the story a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Dragon, who could have realistically joined the Marines at any point in his life given his familial connection to the organization, chose to do so when he did. It provides the larger-scale, impersonal reason for why he joined- a reason that moved the history around him forward, and simply swept him up in it.
This is a perfect fit for Dragon's story, even beyond it just being cohesive story-telling that makes good use of what's already been established, and it'll help us better understand why and when Dragon likely quit the Marines later down the line as well.
There's clear reason to believe that Akainu's story within the Marines will be a major part of Dragon's story within the Marines, and vice versa. We've seen Akainu's almost-pathological fixation on Luffy being “Dragon’s son” constantly during Marineford, the two of them have also only grown more similar since Akainu got his promotion. As Oda has now put them in the same position relative to their organizations, being the desk-bound overseer of large military operations spanning the entire globe, and also has used this time to show us some of the nuance and pragmatism to their leadership.
We see the latter through Akainu surprisingly being on the side of keeping the Warlord system, showing us that his personal hatred for pirates might not actually be his #1 motivator, and also through Dragon's comments about there being some genuinely good monarchs in the world, in spite of the Revolutionary Army's reputation as just regime-toppling rebels. All while keeping them diametrically opposed and on a collision course with each other.
Dragon's recent flashbacks in Egghead, which reveal that his personal reason from moving from Freedom Fighter to Revolutionary was the O'Hara incident, also establish another connection with Akainu- someone who received some of his most revealing characterization through his first scene ever, killing a ship of civilians at O'Hara. These two also, as many people know, share a birth-year. This is a recurring idea that's been used to tease an in-story relation via the Vivre Cards in other cases. While this is clearly meaningless by itself, when put together with everything else, it seems clear that there's going to be some history between these two, and it likely involves Dragon's time in the Marines. This all would more than justify using the same inciting incident (future Yonko crews rising to prominence), and having Akainu/Dragon join the Marines.
So our best bet for now is that Dragon actually joined around 32 years ago like Borsalino and Sakazuki, since it would fit with his personal history with existing Marines, while also fitting in with the greater timeline of the One Piece world in a logical way.
What was Dragon's role within the Marines? Could he have actually been in SWORD?
While there's more to the idea that Dragon has history with SWORD, let's get the obvious one out the way: I'm not the first one to point this out, but at the bare minimum the juxtaposing of Dragon revealing his Marines service for the first time ever, and also the reveal of the Freedom Fighters' old flag as a "Sword" (stabbing through a crown), is clearly meant to tease something between Dragon and SWORD- either because there is something there, or because this is a red herring that's actually meant to communicate something else.
It's also very clear that many of SWORD's current members are descendants of other existing Marines in the story:
- X. Drake - Son of Diez Barrels, raised by Sengoku
- Helmeppo - Son of Axe Hand Morgan
- Kujaku - Granddaughter of Great Staff Officer Tsuru
- Hibari - Strongly hinted to be Akainu's daughter, but I can understand if people wouldn't count this due to it being unconfirmed lol
- Koby - Directly mentored by Garp as his successor (weakest argument, I know lol)
Now let's also consider Dragon's character traits in the context of SWORD's actual purpose- being a 'top secret special force' staffed with people who can be discarded at a moments notice without any need to take responsibility for them.
From everything we know about Dragon, he would fit perfectly into a unit like this. Not only because of his moral values or his status as a second-generation Marine, but due to his personality and lifestyle as a reserved, closed-off individual who avoids telling anyone about his connections unless it's actually necessary, due to his need to live as a clandestine rebel leader-
It would just make perfect sense if he adopted this behavior from working as a part of SWORD as a unit, especially since the title that he takes on as leader of the Freedom Fighters could even imply that he originally the Captain/Leader of SWORD. In a series that uses so many different titles for its captains and leader figures (especially in the original Japanese), it's interesting Dragon's title of 'Captain'/隊長 of the Freedom Fighters, also mirrors that of X. Drake's title as 'Captain'/隊長 of SWORD.
"SWORD隊長 " and "自勇軍 隊長"- with the only difference being the organization in the title: Freedom Fighters/自勇軍 as opposed to SWORD.
As I've talked about in other posts with other characters, this coincidence wasn't exactly likely to happen with how much One Piece is both varied and precise in its leadership titles across the cast. To me personally, this would only make sense if Dragon was in SWORD, all things considered. There's a small chance it's not supposed to be related, and that Oda just envisions their leadership responsibilities in these two positions as similar enough to warrant the identical title, but again, I consider that to be a weak explanation given everything else we've got to answer for.
There's also the possible excuse that Dragon was the 'Captain' of another special Marines unit, because this 'Captain' title is used for Sentomaru's title within the Science Division, but Dragon's personality and background fit perfectly with the position of being SWORD's former Captain. So while I consider this to be a good fallback answer because it would tick a lot of the other boxes, I'm a believer in the SWORD explanation more than anything else.
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