The Zelda timeline explained (possibly)

I've been sitting around, clearly with too much time on my hands and reading too much Legend of Zelda info, and it suddenly occurred to me how the Zelda timeline might possibly make sense in-universe. I sent a big long text-message essay to my sister about it, and she thought it made sense too, so I thought I might as well write it up.

Now, this isn't really anything mind-blowing. I'm not going to speculate on the meaning of some obscure half-hidden graphic asset, or invoke the hypothetical missing fourth piece of the Triforce, or put together a Tolkien-esque three-volume history of Hyrule that I'll insist is way better than anything Eiji Aonuma can come up with. I'm just going to apply some real-world historical analysis principles and invite the reader to reexamine the entire idea of the timeline from a different angle. If you disagree with my stance, that's totally okay. I'm just putting some thoughts out there.

Read on after the jump (spoilers ahead)!

I'm not sure when people started arguing theorizing about how each of the Legend of Zelda games relate to each other time-wise. It could have been as early as Ocarina of Time, which portrayed a Link who was clearly not the same individual as previous Links, and introduced elements of Hylian history which were not attested to in any prior game (such as a Hylian civil war and Ganondorf). But further games only served to make any attempt at chronological ordering even muddier, providing ample material for even more arguments theories.

Finally, in 2011, Nintendo released a canon timeline that... split history into three branches at the ending of Ocarina of Time. Which was weird, but I think most fans agreed that was really the only way to make all the events of all the games make sense.

And then Breath of the Wild came out and threw everyone back into a tizzy. Because Nintendo have stated that BotW takes place so far in the future of Hyrule that all the events of the previous games have faded into distant legend. And - despite fans tearing their hair out - Nintendo have been really silent on which of the three timelines BotW is at the end of, and any statements the Zelda developers make seem to imply that BotW could easily exist in any of the timelines.

However, this idea does not make much sense the more you look at some really intriguing evidence in BotW and Tears of the Kingdom. Because those games somehow contain elements from games in all three timelines--both lore and actual physical objects.

Significant artifacts like Majora's Mask, Midna's Helmet, and Ravio's Hood exist in the Era of the Wilds--each of which are from a different timeline. (I guess it's arguable that these objects may not be canon since they're part of DLC content, but as they can be obtained without DLC in TotK, it seems pretty evident that they are intended to be canonically present.) A tantalizing Voice Memory in Tears of the Kingom has Zelda discussing a legend that Hyrule was once at the bottom of the ocean, which immediately brings to mind the Great Sea from The Wind Waker. Divine Beast Vah Medoh appears to be named after Medli from Wind Waker (which would make sense as the other Divine Beasts are also named after Sages, albeit ones from OoT), but in the Era of the Wilds, the Zora and Rito exist at the same time.

Because of this, some fans have begun to theorize that at some point before the Era of the Wilds (and presumably also before the first Great Calamity), all three timelines somehow converged back into a single timeline. But I'm having a hard time seeing how that could work.

If Hyrule did split into three timelines at the end of OoT, those timelines would start traveling on their own trajectory through both time and space--basically their own diverging world lines. It would be really difficult to get them to naturally meet back up again. But, even if you invoked something like a deity, a force of nature, or non-Euclidean geometry and did get the world lines to converge again, the result would be absolute chaos.

You'd have separate instances of Zelda, Link, and Ganon(dorf) in the same space and time (do we really want multiple Ganons running around?). Each history shaped Hyrule's geography very differently, and the results of all three dissimilar Hyrules physically converging might be catastrophic. Certain characters don't exist at all in certain timelines, and we might get people just blipping in or out of existence. There are all sorts of absolutely bizarre theoretical consequences of merging separate timelines; I'm not sure it's something you can do flippantly just to give chronological place to a certain game.

However--what if the solution isn't crazy time gymnastics, but just looking at the entire history of Hyrule a little differently? As in, with the healthy dose of skepticism that is required in piecing together real-world histories?

Keep in mind that, as mentioned before, in the Era of the Wilds, the events of all prior Zelda games are ancient legends, and nobody even seems to be sure which of them might be true, if any.

So, what if the split timeline can be explained in-universe as historians disagreeing on what happened in Hyrule's history after the events of Ocarina of Time? What if by the Era of the Wilds, the records and evidence were so spotty that some scholars believed OoT Link was defeated by Ganon while others concluded he was victorious--but the ones who think Link won disagree among themselves on whether Link and Zelda succeeded in altering history in Link's childhood (the Child Timeline) or whether Hyrule as they know it is the result of Zelda sending Link back in time so that he wasn't around to get reincarnated in the Era without a Hero (the Adult Timeline)?

All of the events of the games that take place between OoT and the Era of the Wilds are then just attempts by three schools of thought to reconstruct what might have happened after their preferred OoT ending. Artifacts like the aforementioned relics and clothing belonging to previous Links are clearly still around by the Era of the Wilds, but judging from their rather vague descriptions in BotW and TotK with constant references to legends surrounding the items, it seems people in the that age have a faint idea of what these artifacts are, but don't know much of the story behind them, leaving plenty of room for historical interpretation.

What I'm saying is, games that take place between OoT and BotW (and including the end of OoT) may not actually be historically reliable. I know it's a strange way to approach events that the player experiences in "real time", guiding Link along as he runs around as a wolf or sails the Great Sea or whatnot. But keep in mind that the series is called Legend of Zelda, and legends, by their very nature, may have some historical basis but by and large are probably mostly fictitious. What you're playing through might not be what actually happened in Hyrule's history, but a romanticized depiction of events postulated based on what evidence historians could find in the Era of the Wilds.

I think this would also explain why the Zelda development team took so long to give fans a canon timeline. I suspect that, in their heads, all the games' events are to some degree mythical and not meant to be taken as historical fact, so there's not much point trying to neatly fit them into a history, especially because they contain so much conflicting information. Of course, they didn't take into account how geeks overthink everything and then demand clarification. 

But when the Zelda team caved and made a canon timeline, I think they realized they would have to split the post-OoT games between three possible outcomes, because so much of the history and lore in games set after OoT are simply incompatible with each other. One of the most blatant examples is the case of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, where both reference the events of OoT, but their descriptions of what happened after OoT are irreconcilable with each other (either Ganondorf was sealed away in the Sacred Realm and subsequently escaped, bringing about the Great Flood, or he was arrested in Link's childhood, banished to the Twilight Realm, and met up with Zant - allowing Zant to invade a decidedly non-flooded Hyrule - but not both).

So I guess what I'm arguing for here is not a way to make Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom work with the split timeline, but a way to make the whole concept of the split timeline make sense in light of how the Era of the Wilds treats events of past games. As my sister pointed out to me, history doesn't guarantee a totally accurate knowledge of the past--it's just the best accounts of it we can manage to put together with the evidence that's survived. Who's to say that hasn't happened in Hyrule as well?

Food for thought. I'm sure this won't stop people arguing.