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Dragon is not the son of Garp
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- The first clue is that while Garp and Luffy look a lot alike, Dragon doesn’t look too much like either of them. In Oda’s drawings of what the Mugiwara would be like in a few years, Luffy tends to resemble his grandpa, not his father. Likewise, Garp as a young man looks like Luffy.
- I do not want to say that Dragon is not the father of Luffy, I think he is, but I firmly believe that he is not “an intermediate stage” between him and Garp. We can talk about genetics and how this is possible in real life, but it makes no sense in a manga.
- Furthermore, Garp never refers to Dragon as his son. When talking to Luffy, he always uses expressions like “your father”. In fact, at one point he refers to him as “the son of my child”, using a neutral gender, not specifying if he is talking about his son or his daughter.
- It is not uncommon in Japan for a man to adopt his wife’s surname in an event called mukoyōshi. This is common when the woman’s family is more noble than the man’s family, or when the man has a shameful past or one that he wants to hide.
- Conclusion: Dragon is not the son of Garp, but his son-in-law, who adopted the surname of Monkey D from Luffy’s mother, who is the actual daughter of Garp.
Dragon’s actual father is Rocks D Xebec
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- If we focus on actual lore, the only thing that we can conclude is that Dragon bears no physical resemblance to Garp, but he does look like Xebec. They have a similar facial structure, the receding hairline with a triangular shape, the looks…. It could make sense, it could not, but I admit there is not enough.
- However, I always like to go deep into Oda’s inspirations to try to discover what he thought to create and define a character. And, bingo! Rocks’ character appears to be based on a real life pirate named Roche Braziliano, whose name can be translated into English as “Rock the Brazilian”. This pirate was known for his cruelty and for his long exile in Brazil.
- It has been mentioned on multiple occasions that the Kingdom of Goa, which Luffy, Dragon and Garp are from, symbolizes Brazil in the real world. Goa was, in fact, a Portuguese colony for more than 400 years.
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- In real life Roche Braziliano disappeared without a trace. The most plausible theories are that he either died at sea or retired to live out the rest of his life anonymously. This could mean that Rocks retired to the Kingdom of Goa, where he witnessed the birth of his son Dragon.
- The God Valley incident happened 38 years ago. At this time, Dragon would already be 17 years old. It is possible that, after this battle, Dragon decided to join Garp and change his surname to his own, with the intention of distancing himself from his father’s crimes.
- It would also make sense that Roger, prior to his execution, entrusted his child to Garp, since it would not be the first time Garp had accepted a similar request.
- This is mostly trivia, but Roche Braziliano had a close relationship with François l’Olonnais (the pirate who inspired Zoro) and Henry Morgan (who inspired Morgan, the father of Helmeppo). It is possible that he was also an inspiration for Luffy, as all three characters appear in Romance Dawn.
- Both Luffy and Xebec’s names originate from sailing ships.
- Finally, back to mythology, it is so clear and it has been stated thousands of times that Luffy represents the Monkey King, the Sūn Wùkōng. If he read his story, Journey to the West, we can see that he was born from a stone. It would make sense to me for that stone to be the Rocks family.
*Theory by kazeoukami
