The very beginnings of the Zelda timeline are fairly straightforward for what we have to deal with shortly. Before anything in the universe began, as told by Echoes of Wisdom, there was Null. It lived to consume anything that threatened the vast nothingness that it inhabited. The Golden Goddesses devise a plan to trap Null within a world of their own creation. Din, the goddess of Power, created the land that surrounded Null. Farore, the goddess of Courage, created all life to inhabit this land. And Nayru, the goddess of Wisdom, created law and order for the life on earth to follow. Ready to leave their earth, the goddesses depart the land with three things; The Tris, which would repair any rifts that Null created in an attempt to escape from beneath the earth. The Goddess Hylia to watch over the land, and a mark of the earth’s divine making – the Triforce, which would give its bearer an almighty wish, but only if they held a balance of the goddesses’ three virtues in their spirit. And thus, the earth was left to its own devices, to develop and evolve, until the golden age of the Zonai. These were a people with such a deep understanding of the divine that the Goddess Hylia bestowed the people with seven secret stones, which would amplify the elemental power of its bearer. There’s very little information to be gathered from the golden age of this godly society, but we can still glean some information from a very recent source.
For now, I need to abandon the notion that this is going to be a simple, linear Zelda timeline, because understanding the history of Hyrule really is an exercise in futility. But, at least the addition of tens of voice memories for Tears of the Kingdom via the Zelda Notes app can give us a lot more information to work with. Some very good information, actually. For one, even King Rauru doesn’t know exactly what prehistoric Zonai society used to be like, “Maybe [the Zonai device dispenser] was used for entertainment, or maybe it was not even originally made by the Zonai... The ways of our ancestors are sometimes unclear, but they are also interesting puzzles to unravel.” And, “The Temple of Time… was constructed in a traditional Zonai architectural style that extends both up into the sky and down into the ground. It was believed in ancient times that such a design could pierce through evil.” Second is that Rauru and Mineru – while the disappearance of all Zonai aside from these siblings is still a mystery – had to engage in experimentation and anthropological research to understand their people, “Even my sister, who gifted [the Cooking Constructs] with the ability to learn in the first place, was surprised by what they glean through simple observation.” And, “When I was young, I was intensely interested in finding and studying treasure maps. Before I knew it, I had become quite familiar with the topography of the sky islands…” So, the Zonai are clearly an even older race than King Rauru knows, but that puts into question all the things the Zonai knew about the other races of Hyrule. Breath of the Wild tells us that the modern Zora’s Domain was created 10,000 years ago, but we know that ancient Zora architecture shows up in TotK, and King Rauru seems to have at least secondary knowledge of some collaboration between the two races, “The water that flows from here eventually becomes clouds and rain, bringing water down to the land. The Zora people in ancient times had dealings with the Zonai, and I can imagine they used the immense waterfall to travel from the surface to the sky. Hmm. It is appropriate some refer to this waterfall as a bridge.” King Rauru referring to ancient times in the Zonai’s history is one thing, but what’s more is that in TotK itself, we aren’t seeing any sort of substantial prehistoric Zora architecture; as Rauru notes, this is some type of bridge for the Zora to use to reach the Zonai during a time when they remained in the sky islands. But, there is one explanation as to how the majority of the Zora’s ancient architecture is only found through their source of water and cargo transit; by the time of Skyward Sword, the Lanayru region was a desert. There are some very Zora-like people in SS, but what’s very important to consider is that they’re never actually called Zora. Maybe precursors to modern Zora, sure, but between the period before SS to 10,000 years before BotW, the Zora’s Domain we know did not exist. I also want to note the way that Link discovers all of these elemental temples in TotK. The Stormwind Ark in the Hebra region descends from the skies. Wellspring Island in Lanayru does the same. The Lightning Temple rises from beneath the sand in the Gerudo Desert. And the city of Gorondia sits in the depths, completely abandoned with the modern Goron City lying just atop its ruins on Death Mountain. It’s almost as if all these races had to hide themselves for some reason in specific. Except for Hylians, who never had a prehistoric civilization, and whose earliest records of which are by the very founding of Hyrule we witness in TotK. We can guess that Gorondia was either an isolated city or already abandoned by the events of Skyward Sword, where only three Gorons are found wandering the surface with no mention of any wider society. We do know that Gorondia did have relations with the Zonai, too, “These rails are intended to transport materials, but they also supply energy through pipes. The Goron people make extensive use of this kind of mechanism, and I believe it is possible they modeled their designs on our own technology…” But they seemed preoccupied with their mining colonies to have any kind of lasting legend with the Zonai like the Zora or Rito. And despite the artistic discrepancy, I do believe that the Zonai’s constructs are the same ancient robots we see in SS, labeled by their connection to Lanayru Desert, a region we already know has lots of Zora, who had a direct bridge to the Zonai with extensive transportation of cargo between the skies and the surface. Overall, the information here is incredibly sparse and nearly contradictory; how could the Zora take ages of development for Zora’s Domain to be founded 10,000 years before BotW, while still having relations with the Zonai before the events of SS – where the Zora once again did not even exist? And this isn’t the worst of it; Of course, the Zonai architecture, like the Temple of Time, rests on the surface of the Great Plateau in the past, so how can we even tell what land the Zonai sent up above the clouds so long ago that even King Rauru has lost this knowledge? Well, there’s one small thing that I think can explain this all, and it, too, comes from the ancient past. In this memory of Tears of the Kingdom, we get a sweeping view of ancient Hyrule. The memory itself just gives exposition behind the time travel that the game presents, but I’m more interested in what’s in the background. That’s Eldin Volcano, and it's active. In Tears of the Kingdom, the only way we’re able to access the lost city of Gorondia is once the Eldin Volcano has cooled down and the lava has stopped flooding the area. The Gorons are obviously resistant to lava, but Death Mountain suddenly becoming active – especially since the main entrance to Gorondia was through the inside of the volcano – it makes sense that the city would be abandoned. And the Rito luckily give credence to this idea that the Zonai and the tribes of the surface that had deep relations with them before the backstory to SS resulted in the Zonai fleeing to the skies. Quoting Rauru’s voice memory of the Stormwind Ark, “When a Zonai tumbled, Rito wings gave chase. In thanks for their salvation, The Stormwind Ark was made. A gift given from the Zonai, And the Rito filled with joy.” And similarly the Song of the Stormwind Ark tells of the Zonai’s – whom the Rito refer to with divine vernacular, like the Hylians – escape, “With the world in upheaval, we pledged to help the lord. A line of ships soaring, built as a passage skyward. The god ascended to heaven, leaving behind an ark.” So, in prehistoric times, the Rito had built fleets of airships to escort the Stormwind Ark into the skies once the “god” they celebrated ascended.
This part of the timeline might be convoluted, but just to recap: There was a time before even the ancient founding of Hyrule Kingdom. The prehistoric Zonai civilization was entrusted with the secret stones by the Goddess Hylia. The Rito, Zora, Goron, Gerudo and Hylian races all develop over time, but are much more archaic than the Zonai people. These ancient civilizations all mingle; the Zonai share their technology with the Goron and the Zora in a Godly period for the world. But this era ends with the first recorded war in all history, when the Bringer of Demise attacks. Despite the Zonai having been chosen by the Goddess Hylia herself, they flee from the surface with the secret stones. Hylia remains on the surface with an army of all the remaining surface-dwelling races to fight the war that the Demon King raged onto the earth. With these peoples, Hylia fought a war of unmatched scale, the likes of which would never be seen again. The lands were burned and the springs soiled as the Demon King’s forces murdered without hesitation. Hylia sends the final remaining human population into the skies on a series of sky islands. During this war, the Zora’s source of water, Wellspring Island, was lost. This transformed the region into a desert for a time. The Zonai constructs that the Zora had been given are left behind and even more are forgotten in the depths of the earth. The Gorons hid within the static volcano of the Eldin region’s mountain range and found Gorondia. The Gerudo’s temple is made to sink beneath the sand. The Rito reside in the Stormwind Ark and surrounding architecture in the sky just like the Zonai and the Hylians.
This war finally concludes with the Goddess Hylia sealing the Bringer of Demise back beneath the earth. She leaves the humans with the Goddess Sword and abandons her godhood to be reincarnated as Zelda in a plan to obtain the power of the Triforce and wish away the threat of the Demon King. After generations have passed, Zelda is finally coming of age when she falls down to the surface. The Demon Lord to the Bringer of Demise, Ghirahim, attacks Zelda, but is struck back by Impa – the sheikah guardian of the Goddess Hylia. In the skies, Zelda’s father takes Link to a secret chamber within Skyloft, where Link pulls the Goddess Sword from its pedestal. Here, he’s noted as the goddess’s chosen hero, and falls to the surface in search of Zelda. Link confronts Ghirahim, but he flees. On their second encounter, Ghirahim opens the Gate of Time and escapes into the past. Link must travel to the Sealed Temple to close the Gate of Time that had opened there, but the Imprisoned, a monstrous creation of the Bringer of Demise, has erupted from its seal beneath the earth. This monster is of course defeated and sealed once again by Link. Now, in order to build enough power to properly defeat Ghirahim, he travels back and forth through time in an effort to bless the Goddess Sword with the three virtues of the Golden Goddesses. He meets various ancient robots which I believe to be the Zonai’s constructs, interpreted through the art style of Skyward Sword, and the Goddess Sword is awakened into the Master Sword and finally reaches Zelda again. Zelda blesses the blade and then returns to a time shortly after the Bringer of Demise was defeated in order to strengthen his seal, crystallizing herself for centuries to keep the Demon King’s power withheld long enough for Link to obtain the power of the Triforce and wish for the destruction of the Bringer of Demise. From here, there are more than a few videos that already explain how Skyward Sword ends in a timeline split, but essentially, Ghirahim manages to take Zelda to the past, and by reviving the Bringer of Demise in the past, creates a paradox that should cause a timeline split by The Legend of Zelda’s logic. So, we’re going to dive first into the timeline in which Link succeeds in vanquishing the Bringer of Demise with his wish to the Triforce.
In a time where the Bringer of Demise was not able to cast his eternal curse upon the bloodline of the Goddess Hylia and the spirit of the Hero, the Hylian framework of legends and lore become very strange, unlike what we’ve come to expect, with tales of different Ganondorfs and Links over time. Skyloft would still descend back down onto the surface of course, and Hyrule Kingdom would be founded. Ages will pass, and now I have to go over one of my favorite conspiracy theories in Zelda: In this alternate timeline, the Zonai are still living in the sky, but they have to come down eventually. For some reason or another, the Zonai had decided that they would shrink themselves before they descend onto the surface again. We know how many islands had been lifted into the sky by the Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom, and life above the clouds with a steady society would almost surely lead to overpopulation without enough land to house everyone. Perhaps the mass of all Zonai society died out in TotK because the infrastructure in place simply collapsed, and Rauru and Mineru were the only ones who hadn’t starved to death. But in this alternate reality they very well may have been able to develop some kind of technology to shrink themselves down (I mean, we know that the Zonai were able to at least shrink objects down with their device capsules) to massively increase the amount of people that they could carry in their limited space, and over time would eventually call themselves the Minish. And, in The Minish Cap, Ezlo even refers to the method of shrinking to the size of the Minish as, “At first glance, it appears to be a mere stump, yes? No! That stump is a portal used by people long ago to adjust their sizes. With my help, you can use it to shrink down to Minish size.” Link jumps onto the tree stump and Ezlo starts squawking. Magical blue runes circle Link and Ezlo before they shrink down and fall inside the stump. But, even if the Minish population was intact in this timeline, I still think that they had decided to reach the surface much sooner than the Zonai. In the beginning of the game, a narrator tells a legend of the “Hero of Men.” This hero very well could be a Hylian fighting off the swathes of monsters still living on the surface after Demise’s war and the events of Skyward Sword, and what’s more is that the Hylians in these stained glass windows have haircuts extremely similar to that of Zelda’s in SS, with these hard-cut bangs and blonde hair. Perhaps with the destruction of the Bringer of Demise, Skyloft was able to transition into the Kingdom of Hyrule on the surface far faster than they would in the Cursed Timeline. But if you’ve played The Minish Cap, you’re probably already suspicious about this series of events. It’s time that I get to addressing the Picori Blade.
The story as told by TMC is that the Minish descended onto the surface bearing the Picori Blade and the Light Force which allowed the Hero of Men to drive away the remaining monsters that threatened Hyrule. And to cut to the chase, I’m saying that this isn’t a blade crafted by the Minish at all. This is in fact the Master Sword, but the issue is, the Master Sword would have come down alongside Skyloft in this timeline, so how could the Minish have gotten a hold of it? Let’s get a closer look at this legend. “A long, long time ago… when the world was on the verge of being swallowed by shadow…” This first window shows Hylian knights being accosted by Keese, Octoroks, and what I worried was some version of Ganon at first, but turned out to be the game’s design for the Spear Moblins instead. “The tiny Picori appeared from the sky, bringing the hero of men a sword and a golden light.” Looking at the imagery here, we’ve hit a discrepancy. This stained glass features no Minish whatsoever, only a hero being bestowed the Picori Blade. And what’s right above him is straight up the gleaming signature of some power akin to the Triforce in the sky. “With wisdom and courage, the hero drove out the darkness.” Again, the Picori Blade is depicted as shining against the sun on a clear blue day with the hero standing over the fallen monsters. “When peace had been restored, the people enshrined that blade with care.” And still there are no Minish and for some reason the Hylians decided to take the Picori Blade for themselves and enshrine it in a fashion very reminiscent of how the Goddess Sword lay in its pedestal before Link in Skyward Sword (and admittedly like pretty much every other depiction of the Master Sword). “And the force of the golden light, embodied in Hyrule’s princess, shone forth upon the lands.” This is a strange facet of TMC. The golden “Light Force” that the Minish brought down from the skies is now within Princess Zelda and its power is passed down to all descending princesses of Hyrule. While I do think it’s a weird detail, I actually believe that this Light Force is actually some version of TotK’s secret stones. The Zonai were confirmed to have been bestowed these stones straight from the Goddess Hylia herself, but when the Bringer of Demise brought war to the surface, the Zonai took their sacred lands above the clouds and hid with their secret stones. And if you know what these secret stones do, then you know where I’m going with this: even though Mineru does harbor the power of Spirit with her secret stone, King Rauru had the power of Light. He was so well-endowed in this power, in fact, that together with the shrinemaiden (and future Queen) Sonia, they erected Shrines of Light to vanquish the remaining threat from Hyrule Kingdom. At first, I wondered how this power of Light could’ve transferred from Rauru in the Cursed Timeline to Zelda’s ancestors in the Wish Timeline, but then again Zelda is straight up the mortal incarnation of the Goddess of Light, so perhaps even in both timelines, Zelda doesn’t actually have to be the child to both Rauru and Sonia (although the connection to Sonia is confirmed by Zelda’s connection to Time as well). So by some means whatever power that the secret stones represent are brought to the surface with the Minish and maybe by their nature of wanting to remain a hidden and isolated people, the Light Force stayed with the Hylian people. But let’s redirect back to the issue with the Picori Blade, which is… well, why is it called that? Ezlo even calls out that over time, all but the Minish Woods had been renamed Picori. I believe that these stained glass portrayals of the Hero of Men were made before the story we hear about beside their images. I might go so far as to say that this story could even be an interpretation of the glass panes, a legend created after the fact with no context behind the true story behind the Hero of Men and the Minish, when their namesakes were already forgotten and called Picori by Hylians. Shortly into TMC, the evil mage Vaati manages to break the Picori Blade, and Link takes it to the Minish smith Melari (who might I add just so happens to have seven apprentices) to get it repaired. “I hear you want me to reforge the sacred sword and help break a curse. I’ll be needin’ the old sword, which holds the power of the elements, first. Show me that broken Picori Blade!” “Here, take a look! I call this new blade the White Sword!” So, when Melari is handed what’s supposedly a sacred blade bestowed unto the Hylians by the Minish so many ages ago, he does not see the history behind the Picori Blade, and reverts it right back into the White Sword, a title famous across the Zelda series when a blade is so strong that it has divine potential to be transformed into the Master Sword itself by being imbued with the virtues of the Golden Goddesses, or in this case will become the Four Sword by being imbued with four elements (similar to the ancient Zonai’s attitudes towards the elements). We’ve already spent absurdly long explaining this single game, but luckily the rest of TMC is fairly straight forward. Link gathers the four elements of Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind to awaken the power of the Four Sword. He uses the sword to stop Vaati from sucking out the Light Force out of Zelda or whatever and seals him away inside the Four Sword, and Hyrule is saved for another generation.
With the coming of Four Swords, we’ll have seen three heroes of Hyrule come to power and fulfill the legend of the hero that will vanquish the evil that threatens the land. But if you remember from way fucking earlier in this timeline, this is the timeline in which the Skyward Hero manages to wield the full power of the Triforce and wish for the death of the Bringer of Demise. This means that the bloodline of Princess Zelda I and the spirit of the Skyward Hero are not locked in an eternal war for good and evil with the Bringer of Demise. But still, Zelda and Link continue to be born again through time. This seems to be a pretty major discrepancy for the logic I’ve been building thus far. However, the Zelda series has had a very strange relationship to ongoing characters. I’m fairly certain that the Bringer of Demise never declared at the bowl-headed merchant would be reincarnated alongside the Goddess and her chosen Hero, yet there he is, across several ages and timelines. Nor is it ever clear how the Sheikah Impa is constantly by the princess’s side, through histories where the Sheikah are disowned by the Royal Family or nearly wiped out altogether, one Sheikah continuously shows up, either as a protector of the princess, or as an elderly handmaiden. The role she plays for the kingdom may change, but still Impa returns time and again. And yet again with the lone, bizarre gravekeeper Dampe who remains shockingly as one of the most consistent character designs in the entire Zelda series – the only real change being how gross his eyes can get. So it almost seems as if the Bringer of Demise hadn’t actually cursed the Goddess and the Hero themselves to be spiritually succeeded for all time, like the curse suggests. Instead, the Zelda series seems to have certain names, archetypal characters, and aspects of spirit that are recycled time after time, and so the Bringer of Demise has cursed Zelda and Link as their recurring characters over all time. It’s a small change in the end, but I did think that I should explain why Zelda and Link still show up in TMC and FS in this timeline. But with that out of the way, the plot for Four Swords is luckily much simpler than TMC. Since the creation of the Four Sword, it’s been kept safe in a shrine. Princess Zelda is now a protector of the sacred blade, and one day requests that Link accompany her to investigate the sense of danger she now feels regarding the shrine. This is the first game in our timeline that introduces the idea of the sacred blade weakening over time. This will be very important in the future, but we already saw a glimpse of it in TMC, where SS’s Master Sword – again, having been renamed the Picori Blade through Hyrulean legend – had been shattered, and upon reforging the blade it was reverted back to its unawakened White Sword state. But in FS, this is only important to explain how Vaati has managed to escape his seal within the Four Sword. In an act of beautiful coincidence for this theory, Vaati actually doesn’t recognize Princess Zelda, almost as if these characters have some kind of disconnection from each other that the rest of the series doesn’t… Well anyways, Vaati very weirdly decides that she’ll be his bride and abducts her. Link pulls the Four Sword from its pedestal and is instructed by the Great Fairies to storm three separate dungeons to prove that he had what it takes to defeat Vaati. Link does so, and is taken to Vaati’s Palace of Winds. The hero and the evil mage battle, and obviously Link wins, sealing Vaati away in the Four Sword once again. It seems the people of Hyrule don’t live long enough to know that this isn’t very effective, but for the time being, the kingdom is safe.
We’ve spent a ton of time now discussing how the events of the Wish Timeline transpire, but so far I’ve only used Tears of the Kingdom’s Zonai as supporting evidence for the events of TMC and FS. So, let’s rewind back to that fateful moment and learn just what happened to the Zonai and the Cursed Timeline. The wish has been fulfilled. Demise is soon to be vanquished from the earth via the power of the Triforce, when Ghirahim interrupts. He abducts Princess Zelda and takes her with him through the Gates of Time, to mere moments after Demise’s initial defeat. The timeline splits at this very moment when he conducts a ritual to revive the Bringer of Demise. Despite the Skyward Hero’s battle to stop Ghirahim, the ritual is completed, and the Imprisoned breaks through to the surface, swallowing the soul of Princess Zelda and returning itself to its true form, the Bringer of Demise, the Demon King. As you’d expect, Link is there to fight back. He manages to best the Bringer of Demise, but not before he is able to curse the spirit of the Hero and the bloodline of the Goddess into an eternal war for the fate of the world.
Skyloft falls back down to the surface and the descendants of Skyloft develop into their own societies. Functionality returns to Wellspring Island, bringing floods of rain to Lanayru every ten years. The Zora return to their land. Zonai ancestors to Rauru and Mineru face a crisis in the skies they inhabit, forcing them to descend back to the surface. By the time Rauru and Mineru come of age, nearly all Zonai culture is lost. Rauru meets a Hylian maiden named Sonia, and the two embark on a pilgrimage across the land to cleanse Hyrule with shrines of light. When the couple finally settle on the Great Plateau, Hyrule Kingdom is officially founded. The most difficult of TotK’s lore has already been dealt with, so the only thing now is to recount Zelda’s memories. In TotK’s opening scene, Zelda retrieves King Rauru’s secret stone. Her power of time is amplified and the mummified corpse of Ganondorf shakes the tomb they’re inside. The stone sends Zelda back to the time of the very first king and queen of Hyrule. There she warns Rauru and Mineru of Ganondorf’s power. Rauru, Sonia and Zelda fight back an avalanche of Moldugas sent by the Gerudo, and a war erupts between the two kingdoms. Ganondorf assassinates Queen Sonia and steals her secret stone, amplifying his dark power and transforming into the Demon King. This turns the tide on the war between Hyrule and the Gerudo, with the entire might of Rauru and his sages unable to defeat Ganondorf. As a final resort, the sages lure Ganondorf below ground and King Rauru sacrifices his life to seal away the Demon King. Princess Zelda, too, abandons her physical self by consuming a secret stone to begin the process of draconification. A tomb is built around the Demon King’s resting place and when the time comes, Mineru, the last Zonai alive, abandons her physical self, too, and leaves her soul to rest within the Purah Pad.