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brightknightie) wrote2025-02-04 08:18 am
brightknightie) wrote2025-02-04 08:18 am
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The arrival of monarchy in The Legend of Zelda (My first TLOZ lore theory!)
Surely others out there have also had this interpretation, made it their headcanon, and written stories with it. Yet I haven't seen it. I came up with it independently, referenced it in passing in a comment I recently left on a fanfic told from the collective point of view of the people of Kakariko Village, and the author replied that she hadn't thought of that before.
Monarchy is neither inevitable nor required in Hyrule in any age! Let me explain in an essay? :-D
In The Legend of Zelda, the three avatars of the Triforce, the characters who embody wisdom, courage, and power, are customarily shorthanded as the princess, the hero, and the demon king. Now, the representative of courage is always a fighter hero, and the representative of power always commands monsters, but there are 4 games of 20+ in which the representative of wisdom is not a princess: Skyward Sword, The Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass, and Echoes of Wisdom.
Yes, Zelda is very much a princess in EOW! But she's not only a princess. That's the key to this lock. (We'll get to Tetra, too.)
Echoes of Wisdom
Echoes of Wisdom, the most recent game to release, does something new. It separates the heroine's mundane, incidental position as princess from her legendary, vital position as the wielder of wisdom; this game's story calls the avatar of wisdom "the priestess," not "the princess." I presume that this word translates the Japanese Shinto miko (Wikipedia), a role most familiar to many of us via Rei (Sailor Mars) in Sailor Moon. This introduction of a new term not only brilliantly contextualizes this specific game's conjuring mechanic, it releases all Zeldas, throughout time and reality, from the necessity of a monarchy.
Hylia's line must continue. Hylia's line need not be royal.
Skyward Sword
While Echoes of Wisdom gives us the invaluable pivot of the word, Skyward Sword -- both in release order and in the story cosmology -- did this first. Skyloft Zelda, the first Zelda, is the daughter of a teacher, not a king. And Skyloft doesn't seem to be a monarchy; what it seems to me to most resemble is an independent Alpine town or canton governed by community meetings, possibly with a hyper-local judge, elder, or cleric identified by the people to settle disputes when required.
The goddess Hylia crafted the first Zelda and the first Link primarily to defeat Demise -- yes, I am asserting that Skyward Sword Link is the first Link via his time-travel, and there isn't an earlier; manga isn't game canon -- while the long-term plan for opposing Demise's curse, well, Hylia is the sole known child of the golden goddesses, but she's not one of the Creation Trio herself, so one can obviously argue that she did not know what would happen before it did, but she clearly did not impose a monarchy on Skyloft or its first emigrants. She did not reincarnate as a royal. Looking down all the generations of struggle, Hylia had locked in courage and wisdom to combat power, and bound them through all ages, but her chosen people, whom she rescued from Demise and sustained in safety in Skyloft for generations, seem pretty egalitarian, the first Link and Zelda seem to be social equals, and there's no real indication -- is there? I don't know Skyward Sword as well as the other 3D games -- that Hylia sought to rule rather than serve her people, though naturally both would have been her right.
Monarchy was therefore not essential to her plans for her people or herself. So where did it come from?
After Skyloft, before Hyrule
That first Zelda and Link -- and their descendants and reincarnations and those unrelated who choose or are chosen to take up their burdens -- like all sentient, sapient beings, despite being caught up in this cycle of cosmic responsibility, have the free will bestowed by the Creation Trio. So do all the people of Skyloft, and eventual Hyrule, and all the lands around. And free-willed beings do both foolish things and smart things that later turn out poorly...
You may have caught the word "judge" above, in my speculation about what kind of governance Skyloft had in that era, after the people had successfully fled to their new land in the skies under their goddess's protection. You may see where this is going.
The Legend of Zelda borrows freely -- sometimes brilliantly; sometimes so offensively that they have to retcon it (/cough/ early Gerudo /cough/) -- from real literature and traditions and cultures worldwide and throughout history, from Tolkien and The Journey to the West and Shintoism and Christianity and many more. In that context, I propose that this might be an area of the fantasy story where adapting the scenario of 1 Samuel 8:1-22 fits amazingly into the psychology of the characters in the imaginary history of this realm.
(You know this Bible story: the transition from leadership by local authorities known as judges to leadership by a centralized monarchy in ancient Israel. To vastly over-abbreviate, there came a generation in which the judges were corrupt; reacting to that corruption, the people said that they wanted a king like all other peoples had; God warned that kings are oppressors and they would regret it; the people said, no, really, we want a king; and God gave them what they said they wanted. The subsequent monarchy had very high points and very low points.)
For the sake of story-theory-spinning, presume a Skyloft that was governed -- when community meetings of all adults weren't sufficient -- by small-scale local authorities, a la judges or elders, accountable to the people and to Hylia, and no one had even remotely imagined a monarchy. Hylia acts for a future in which her reincarnation's line continues, but she explicitly does not set that line to ascend to rulership. Then, as all mortals have the free will that the golden goddesses created them with, the descendants of Skyloft eventually, for whatever reason of strife or emergency or corruption, impress a descendant of that first Zelda into service as their monarch -- like all the other peoples around them have, especially the Gerudo, who are humans like the Skyloftians, but were not part of Hylia's own people in that time (perhaps they served Demise?). Maybe the first monarch isn't a reincarnation of Hylia at all. At least one Zelda canonically had a brother on the throne! And some folks think "Princess" Agitha in Twilight Princess is a royal by-blow!
Back to Echoes of Wisdom and also Twilight Princess and Wind Waker (or Across All Timelines)
Maybe this choice of a powerful centralized monarchy to replace dispersed guides closer to the people then leads directly to the documented drifting of the people from their predecessors' fuller knowledge of Hylia and their world's cosmology, as alluded in Twilight Princess, where some of this knowledge seems to be a royal secret -- perhaps from the guilt of what was done against the Gerudo and the Interlopers, who became the Twili -- but more clearly as seen in Echoes of Wisdom, where no one even knows the proper name of the Triforce anymore, and this knowledge is explicitly a royal charge, largely unknown by common folks though not actually kept secret.
I choose to take this to support my head-canon construction by both EOW's firm designation of Zelda's essential role as being priestess (rather than princess) and its general societal forgetting of the Triforce and what always, inevitably comes with it.
To buttress that even further, let's consider The Wind Waker! In this timeline, Hyrule is flooded and destroyed, and the monarchy and much cultural memory with it. There is no centralized government in The Wind Waker. Each island community runs itself. Tetra is descended from Hylia's line, yes, and is made to dress up as ancient royalty for the climax, but that is wholly from the memory of the King of Red Lions and Ganondorf, who were there in those days; it is not Tetra as a person or Tetra's and Link's world. "Pirate queen" is not the kind of monarchy we've been talking about; Tetra is an ordinary person (as ordinary as a girl captain of a pirate crew can be) until she and Link eventually found New Hyrule together post-game, and she or her descendants re-enact the same cycle, of humans choosing a monarchy for some reason, on their own. Hylia lets them choose, and cares for them regardless. She never forces their hand. Tetra bears the Triforce of Wisdom because of who she is, not what she is, and do does every Zelda. Royalty not required.
Thank you for letting me theorize at you! :-D What do you think?
Monarchy is neither inevitable nor required in Hyrule in any age! Let me explain in an essay? :-D
In The Legend of Zelda, the three avatars of the Triforce, the characters who embody wisdom, courage, and power, are customarily shorthanded as the princess, the hero, and the demon king. Now, the representative of courage is always a fighter hero, and the representative of power always commands monsters, but there are 4 games of 20+ in which the representative of wisdom is not a princess: Skyward Sword, The Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass, and Echoes of Wisdom.
Yes, Zelda is very much a princess in EOW! But she's not only a princess. That's the key to this lock. (We'll get to Tetra, too.)
Echoes of Wisdom
Echoes of Wisdom, the most recent game to release, does something new. It separates the heroine's mundane, incidental position as princess from her legendary, vital position as the wielder of wisdom; this game's story calls the avatar of wisdom "the priestess," not "the princess." I presume that this word translates the Japanese Shinto miko (Wikipedia), a role most familiar to many of us via Rei (Sailor Mars) in Sailor Moon. This introduction of a new term not only brilliantly contextualizes this specific game's conjuring mechanic, it releases all Zeldas, throughout time and reality, from the necessity of a monarchy.
Hylia's line must continue. Hylia's line need not be royal.
Skyward Sword
While Echoes of Wisdom gives us the invaluable pivot of the word, Skyward Sword -- both in release order and in the story cosmology -- did this first. Skyloft Zelda, the first Zelda, is the daughter of a teacher, not a king. And Skyloft doesn't seem to be a monarchy; what it seems to me to most resemble is an independent Alpine town or canton governed by community meetings, possibly with a hyper-local judge, elder, or cleric identified by the people to settle disputes when required.
The goddess Hylia crafted the first Zelda and the first Link primarily to defeat Demise -- yes, I am asserting that Skyward Sword Link is the first Link via his time-travel, and there isn't an earlier; manga isn't game canon -- while the long-term plan for opposing Demise's curse, well, Hylia is the sole known child of the golden goddesses, but she's not one of the Creation Trio herself, so one can obviously argue that she did not know what would happen before it did, but she clearly did not impose a monarchy on Skyloft or its first emigrants. She did not reincarnate as a royal. Looking down all the generations of struggle, Hylia had locked in courage and wisdom to combat power, and bound them through all ages, but her chosen people, whom she rescued from Demise and sustained in safety in Skyloft for generations, seem pretty egalitarian, the first Link and Zelda seem to be social equals, and there's no real indication -- is there? I don't know Skyward Sword as well as the other 3D games -- that Hylia sought to rule rather than serve her people, though naturally both would have been her right.
Monarchy was therefore not essential to her plans for her people or herself. So where did it come from?
After Skyloft, before Hyrule
That first Zelda and Link -- and their descendants and reincarnations and those unrelated who choose or are chosen to take up their burdens -- like all sentient, sapient beings, despite being caught up in this cycle of cosmic responsibility, have the free will bestowed by the Creation Trio. So do all the people of Skyloft, and eventual Hyrule, and all the lands around. And free-willed beings do both foolish things and smart things that later turn out poorly...
You may have caught the word "judge" above, in my speculation about what kind of governance Skyloft had in that era, after the people had successfully fled to their new land in the skies under their goddess's protection. You may see where this is going.
The Legend of Zelda borrows freely -- sometimes brilliantly; sometimes so offensively that they have to retcon it (/cough/ early Gerudo /cough/) -- from real literature and traditions and cultures worldwide and throughout history, from Tolkien and The Journey to the West and Shintoism and Christianity and many more. In that context, I propose that this might be an area of the fantasy story where adapting the scenario of 1 Samuel 8:1-22 fits amazingly into the psychology of the characters in the imaginary history of this realm.
(You know this Bible story: the transition from leadership by local authorities known as judges to leadership by a centralized monarchy in ancient Israel. To vastly over-abbreviate, there came a generation in which the judges were corrupt; reacting to that corruption, the people said that they wanted a king like all other peoples had; God warned that kings are oppressors and they would regret it; the people said, no, really, we want a king; and God gave them what they said they wanted. The subsequent monarchy had very high points and very low points.)
For the sake of story-theory-spinning, presume a Skyloft that was governed -- when community meetings of all adults weren't sufficient -- by small-scale local authorities, a la judges or elders, accountable to the people and to Hylia, and no one had even remotely imagined a monarchy. Hylia acts for a future in which her reincarnation's line continues, but she explicitly does not set that line to ascend to rulership. Then, as all mortals have the free will that the golden goddesses created them with, the descendants of Skyloft eventually, for whatever reason of strife or emergency or corruption, impress a descendant of that first Zelda into service as their monarch -- like all the other peoples around them have, especially the Gerudo, who are humans like the Skyloftians, but were not part of Hylia's own people in that time (perhaps they served Demise?). Maybe the first monarch isn't a reincarnation of Hylia at all. At least one Zelda canonically had a brother on the throne! And some folks think "Princess" Agitha in Twilight Princess is a royal by-blow!
Back to Echoes of Wisdom and also Twilight Princess and Wind Waker (or Across All Timelines)
Maybe this choice of a powerful centralized monarchy to replace dispersed guides closer to the people then leads directly to the documented drifting of the people from their predecessors' fuller knowledge of Hylia and their world's cosmology, as alluded in Twilight Princess, where some of this knowledge seems to be a royal secret -- perhaps from the guilt of what was done against the Gerudo and the Interlopers, who became the Twili -- but more clearly as seen in Echoes of Wisdom, where no one even knows the proper name of the Triforce anymore, and this knowledge is explicitly a royal charge, largely unknown by common folks though not actually kept secret.
I choose to take this to support my head-canon construction by both EOW's firm designation of Zelda's essential role as being priestess (rather than princess) and its general societal forgetting of the Triforce and what always, inevitably comes with it.
To buttress that even further, let's consider The Wind Waker! In this timeline, Hyrule is flooded and destroyed, and the monarchy and much cultural memory with it. There is no centralized government in The Wind Waker. Each island community runs itself. Tetra is descended from Hylia's line, yes, and is made to dress up as ancient royalty for the climax, but that is wholly from the memory of the King of Red Lions and Ganondorf, who were there in those days; it is not Tetra as a person or Tetra's and Link's world. "Pirate queen" is not the kind of monarchy we've been talking about; Tetra is an ordinary person (as ordinary as a girl captain of a pirate crew can be) until she and Link eventually found New Hyrule together post-game, and she or her descendants re-enact the same cycle, of humans choosing a monarchy for some reason, on their own. Hylia lets them choose, and cares for them regardless. She never forces their hand. Tetra bears the Triforce of Wisdom because of who she is, not what she is, and do does every Zelda. Royalty not required.
Thank you for letting me theorize at you! :-D What do you think?