User blog comment:The Purple Orange XD/Mala's character/@comment-352641-20160701214045/@comment-24126950-20160702195103

Wow. You just perfectly summed that up. I thought exactly the same.

However, I think there seems to be a personal reason on why there is a dragon riding ban, since (IMO) Mala seemd to show a negative emotional response when Hiccup asked her if she wanted to ride on Toothless, as if she had a bad experience with dragon riding, let it be either a punishment from her parents for having trained/ridden a dragon when she was small, or she made the ban herself because she tried riding a dragon and got a severe injury by falling off or something similar.