#Zelda becomes one of the most revered queens in history so she at least was well loved

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Imo I’d suggest writing it bc some people haven’t read everything (me tbh) and so idk who ur guys r or what their personalities r etc, but most importantly for u, if u wanna write it then u totally should, no matter what u think other people will think❤️

Anon, thank you LOL, I was going into quite the silly spiral. Anyway, I have A LOT of things to say about blorbos, so I’ll just talk about two who probably won’t get much fleshing out because I write piecemeal for them and their story isn’t really something that’s gonna be on AO3 or anything because they’re backstory characters.

Rambles under the cut :D

Orik/Link, Hero of Power – Born of a Hylian mother and a Sheikah father, Link lost his mother to childbirth and his father to illness shortly after. He was raised in his father’s culture, collectively raised by multiple families that pitched in to look after orphans after the illness that killed many in their tribe. Link went by the name Orik during his childhood, as Sheikah viewed the name Link as sacred, and not to be given to Sheikah children. He liked the name Link, though, and wanted to have something of his mother’s. He kept a shawl she wore and used it as a blanket when he was little, and later as a scarf when he was older. The cloth and the name were all he had of her.

Throughout his childhood, Link could tell that while he was considered part of the tribe, there were some who viewed him as being beneath the others. He once heard his father’s best friend say that Orik was his father’s greatest mistake, and it stuck with him. Link naturally seeks the approval of others (he is a MAJOR people pleaser), and he wants to prove himself to his people, so he strives to be the best warrior in the entire tribe. He makes a name for himself by becoming the youngest to pass the trials into adulthood, doing so at the age of 12. Once he does, this, he basically has to fend for himself now.

When Link turns twelve, his entire life changes. He has earned some respect from his elders, and he’s eager to continue doing so. He was always a quieter boy, and when he becomes a guard, he’s dutiful, obedient, and generally a little shy and not talkative. It makes him come across as either incredibly stoic or unnervingly/annoyingly lifeless. Despite his quiet, demure nature, though, Link is very keen and observant. He’s vigilant of his environment, and is pretty good at getting a vibe for people. However, he’s now forced into a position of responsibility given to adults, and he kind of just… skips over the development he should get in adolescence. Link has spent a good portion of his childhood trying to prepare himself for adulthood before he even became a teenager, so he’s internalized a lot at this point. He keeps his emotions to himself. He bows and obeys. He doesn’t argue, even if he doesn’t like something. It isn’t until Hemisi drags him out of himself, and until the war forces him to step up, that he really starts to come into his own.

As such, Link’s entire life centers around and stops at the war. He was so stifled as a kid, self-imposed but very much affected by his environment, and so the war is both horrible and freeing. He finally stepped forward to make his own decisions when he saw the casualties at the Battle of Hyrule Field, despite King Ozen’s orders for all the Sheikah—his best warriors—to remain at the castle. Link chose to join the war, and when he was going to sneak off to do so, acquiesced to Princess Zelda’s wish to sneak out with him so they could investigate something. What she sought was the Master Sword, as she suspected Link was the Hero, and he only drew the sword because ordered to. Being the Hero to him is a privilege, and granting him the approval and attention he sought as a child, but he really doesn’t know what to do with it once he has it. It does give him something he isn’t used to having: agency. While he obeys his queen, his status as Hero gives him the ability to befriend her as well, not just follow her orders. While he has a heavy destiny on his shoulders, he chooses to fight against Ganondorf, despite his feelings for him, because he wants to do what’s right. His agency slips through his fingers as the war progresses, as he loses himself to the constant fighting, and it isn’t until the war’s end that he feels like he finally has a chance to make his own life in marrying Hemisi, someone he is madly in love with, and rebuilding together.

And it’s all taken away when he has to marry Zelda instead.

Link’s marriage to Zelda… basically destroys him for a long time. He lost Hemisi, someone who treated him like a person and didn’t bother with the formalities and protocols that plagued his life, someone who made him feel like he could break the rules and have fun and be himself, someone he had just gotten back in the war after losing her initially to it, someone who shared his pain in losing a father figure, in having to kill said father figure. He feels like he shackled himself to the throne, having to obey every whim of the queen to make Hyrule look strong. More than anything, though, he feels like he finally did what he’d been trying to do his entire life: the Sheikah were more proud of him than ever, Hyrule adored him and recognized him and his abilities, Zelda needed him… and he felt completely powerless. He finally got the approval he sought and then realized it was pointless.

This, in turn, leads him to completely spiral. What’s the point of his life, if everything he sought was for nothing? He’d never had a father figure in his life until Ganondorf, only to lose him and have to kill him. Hemisi was his entire world, helping him discover himself and he adored her, only to have to abandon her. He’d tried again and again to make the Sheikah proud, and when he finally did he felt like he’d enslaved himself more than ever. And more than anything, it was his choice – Zelda didn’t force the matter. But he’s always done his duty, and really, why wouldn’t he try to help? He wasn’t going to abandon his entire country for his own needs and wants. That’s selfish. He can’t possibly put himself first like that. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.

So why the hell does everything feel so wrong now?

Link spends years trying to figure out his life after this, to figure out who he is and whether he even has freedom or not. He feels like he doesn’t, and given that he never really had a full childhood, he does not know how to cope with it. Despair, confusion, loss, hopelessness and frustration brew into bitterness and anger, and he does not know how to stop it. He’s prone to melancholy, usually being depressed and sluggish, until he’s pushed to a point of rage, because he doesn’t know how else to express his emotions anymore. He was trained to fight and kill. It’s all he knows. And now he’s stuck in a position where that isn’t entirely needed, and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do aside from bow his head and do everything Zelda says.

He tries to pick himself up. If nothing else, for the sake of the children he made with the queen. They deserve better than what he’s doing. But it takes him years, and a lot of his anger and hurt is focused on the queen since she, buckling under her own pressure, orders him around expecting him to be okay with just obeying blindly since he agreed to the marriage.

Someday, Link learns to live with everything. Sort of. For the most part. At the very least, he learns to live. He focuses on helping the Sheikah, on developing their technology. He gets Terrako as a gift from the scientists for all the effort he puts into it. He tries to rekindle a healthy relationship with Zelda, though that takes much longer as they’re both hot messes with too much baggage to know what to do with. He tries to be a good father for his children. But he struggles hard, and sometimes he gets angry at himself for doing so - he’s not a child anymore, why can’t he just deal with this? (Because you never learned how, Link. You moron.)

Link loses himself when the war ends, what little he’d managed to find. It takes him over a decade to get that back. He doesn’t entirely succeed… not in time for his early death. But he does try. And he looks out for his family and his kingdom as best he can.

Queen Zelda, the Sacred Diplomat – Zelda spent her childhood mostly in solitude. Her father, King Ozen, was the second son of the previous monarchs, and watched his older brother get assassinated because his claim to the throne was viewed as weak both due to his weak magic and the fact that he was a man. As such, when Ozen had Zelda, he flaunted her existence like a badge of honor and a certification of authenticity. Zelda, however, wasn’t really given any leeway to do anything as princess. She was kept in the castle, like a bird in a cage, to be admired and viewed but not touched or spoken to. Her mother died when she was little, leaving her entirely under her father’s rule. While her father was weak and paranoid, though, Zelda has an inner strength that is not to be trifled with, and she dreamed of gaining her birthright and becoming queen.

During her childhood, Zelda really wanted to make sure she was ready to rule, thinking that her father would of course give her the throne when she came of age. She tried to seek his approval as best she could, and while she seemed to get it in some ways because she’s the princess, it never felt completely genuine. So she stepped up her game to be the best princess ever, learning everything of the politics of Hyrule, learning especially how to wield her magic as best as possible. She dreamed of becoming queen, of being the best queen there was, and of protecting and taking care of her people. Her family history and responsibilities were seen as stories of heroes to her, and she wanted to add to that story, proud of being able to take care of so many.

As the years went by, Zelda saw her father systematically tear Hyrule apart by allowing anyone who sweet talked him to gain power. She tried arguing to no avail, and by the time she was in mid adolescence she started to realize that maybe her father did not have the kingdom’s best interests at heart. She tried to hold on to hope, though, until she saw him fumbling the war and not taking Ganondorf’s threat seriously.

She took matters into her own hands. On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, fueled by confidence over the fact that she bore the Triforce of Wisdom, she overthrew her father with the help of Impa and half the Sheikah. Zelda regrets to the end of her days how her relationship with her father unraveled, as he wasn’t always particularly bad to her (they had plenty of good moments, but his paranoia outweighed everything), but she still thought the duty of her family was more important than her father’s approval.

Because of her mostly isolated upbringing, Zelda is very naïve to the emotions of others. She learns how to manipulate people quickly, but can sometimes lack empathy – she will 100% trample someone’s feelings if she thinks she needs to in order to accomplish a goal. She has a compassionate heart, but it hardens if the objective and the emotions clash. Most of the time, it isn’t even on purpose – she’ll order Link to bring their daughter and accompany her on a tour of Hyrule because she knows the people of Hyrule will want to see the royal family, because marrying Link and creating a family was for the benefit of creating stability and bringing hope to her people. She doesn’t bear in mind that Link’s suffering—she doesn’t even realize it for a long time, too caught up in her own stress and duties—or that showing their daughter off to the world to make people happy is exactly what her father did to her. She doesn’t understand why Link is so melancholy initially, and as for her his relationship with Hemisi, Zelda knew they were close, but clearly they couldn’t have been that close if Link chose to marry her anyway, right? Duty comes first anyway.

Zelda struggles in being a mother. She wants to be there for her children but she doesn’t know how – her parents were never there for her, after all. She spends time with them, nourishes them, loves them, but sometimes the best way she shows she cares is to drag her daughter into politics to teach her so that the nobles can’t take advantage of her, and Link hates that.

As for her personal feelings for Link, he’s one of the first people around her age to ever act normal around her. She loved his friendship during the war, and she doesn’t understand why it’s changed – she knows she isn’t necessarily in love with him, and that he isn’t in love with her, but he agreed to the marriage, so why is he acting like he doesn’t like it? It was his choice, after all. This frustrates her, and sometimes she can’t help snapping at him when he seems to be slacking off. After all, she’s got nobles nipping at her heels trying to take back the power she’s slowly siphoning away from them, given to them foolishly by her father. Sometimes Link helps her out, but most of the time he’s still struggling with his own issues and trying to raise their children while she’s consumed by her desire to take care of everyone. Zelda finds her happiness through protecting others, and she really enjoys the satisfaction of seeing her plans work, and it can make her enjoy manipulating people a little too much sometimes. Despite this, she genuinely wants what’s best for Hyrule, and she wants to make her husband happy too, even if she’s not sure why he isn’t already. (Talk to him, Zelda. Talk to him. Oh, wait, they both suck at expressing their emotions.)

Zelda is not a trusting person. She has too many enemies for that. So she keeps her thoughts and feelings close to her chest, which can cause hiccups with Link. However, she trusts Impa implicitly, considering the Sheikah chief literally had to overthrow the king and her own people in aiding Zelda’s coup. Impa fills the void of a mentor and mother figure for Zelda, and she is eternally grateful for her counsel, but sometimes, having been told her entire childhood that she knows nothing and should keep her head down whenever she tried to advise/talk to her father about matters, she gets fairly defensive. She does not appreciate being corrected by anyone aside from Impa, and she can get a bit dicey about it even with the Sheikah chief sometimes. But she tries to recognize that wisdom means knowing when one doesn’t know something – it’s just a sore spot for her.

Despite her not trusting easily—at all—and despite her having a difficult time figuring out what’s wrong with Link, she does try to reach out to him multiple times to extend an olive branch. Sometimes she rescinds it with her own mistakes, and sometimes he smacks it out of her hand with his own flaws. But eventually, they rebuild a friendship, partly with the help of Impa being injured in an attack organized by Ozen’s loyalists (nobles who know he’ll give them power if he’s back on the throne) – Link and Zelda both love Impa dearly, and they’ll put aside any differences to protect her (Link will burn the world to the ground if he has to, Zelda will temper that but inadvertently cause emotional damage, Link will temper her lack of empathy in turn).

In the end, Link and Zelda have similar backgrounds with very different results. Both wanted to prove themselves, one to his culture by becoming the best warrior and a dutiful servant, the other to her father and herself. They both have a lot of grit. Link’s far more sensitive, basing his identity on the approval of others, while Zelda bases her identity on her ability to take care of her people. This means Link was drowning when he got married and realized that the approval of others only left him feeling more enslaved than ever and unable to make decisions for himself, while Zelda was thriving when she got married because she was doing everything to save everyone. The roles reversed as time passed, when Zelda started to wonder if her efforts truly were worth it when problems continued to arise and she saw Link suffering, while Link started to step up and try to take advantage of the situation he was in and help Zelda.

[gerudosage-a]

@dragmiire asked  /  in the time after ganondorf's rule, and in the discovery of her sagehood, what kind of responsibilities did nabooru find herself saddled up with ? did becoming a sage feel like a moment of enlightenment, like she had discovered a purpose to her life that she had always needed, or was there doubt lingering in the back of her mind, dogging every decision ?

there are very few topics nabooru will not speak about, in regards to her own life. for the most part, she sees her own history as an open book, & she’s happy to speak about it with those who ask, & to share her own form of wisdom, be it with the younger gerudo girls, or when she’s called to hyrule castle as a ( somewhat seasonal ) member of queen zelda’s court. truth be told, there are only two things, really, she either point blank refuses to speak about, or is incredibly cagey if she does. the first is, of course, who fathered her daughters. the second is anything at all regarding her sagehood.

part of the reason is that nabooru woke as a sage during an extremely traumatic part of her life. i’m going to touch on this in another headcanon pretty soon, so i’ll gloss over it here, but nabooru heard the call from the sacred realm for a lot of her life without realizing exactly what it was, & it terrified her. it was part of what motivated her to make her pilgrimage at eighteen, to see if it would help block it out, but of course, it didn’t. the call was a persistent, terrifying thing & she told absolutely no-one about it. she only really stopped hearing it when she was subjugated by twinrova - whatever magic they used to manipulate her, & lock her away in the back of her own mind, was strong enough to silence it, but considering everything which came with that, nabooru would have preferred to just let it haunt her.

considering she was the last sage to be awakened before link fought with ganondorf, everything which followed happened extraordinarily fast for her. one minute mind-controlled, the next not; temporarily imprisoned, again, in the void between worlds until link could vanquish the witches who kidnapped her, & then in a heartbeat, in the real world once more, with the call from the sacred realm deafening in her ears. she didn’t have a choice in ascending, essentially being pulled into the sacred realm against her will. she, more than anyone, knew ganondorf had to be stopped, so she made no complaint when asked to lend her powers ( powers that, up until that day, had lain dormant within her ! powers that, post-sealing, she had intense trouble trying to access outside of the sacred realm ! ) hell, even the act of seeing ganondorf - her king - sealed away barely seemed to affect her ( on the surface ) whilst she was riding the adrenaline high of her life taking an unexpected turn, with her barely able to comprehend how much had rapidly changed for her. she worked with the other sages, she sealed ganondorf away, she returned to hyrule with her faculties intact for the first time in seven years, with the call of the sacred realm a dull whisper in the back of her mind. she returned as an agent of the golden goddesses, as chief of the gerudo, as a mother to lost children, as a stranger even to herself.

she didn’t even worship the goddesses of the triforce, or hylia, or anything to do with them. she had always been an acolyte of the goddess of the sands & it was to her altar she took her prayers. to find out that she was a puppet of fate & the goddesses which controlled it when before she had barely acknowledged their existence ? a terrifying thing. gods were real, but they weren’t hers. the crisis of faith nabooru experienced - in part because she had been held a prisoner in her own goddesses’ temple, & she had never once intervened to save her - was intense.

& then, finally, she got to go home, only to be the one charged with telling the other gerudo what had happened to their king, why he had neglected them so long, that he had been the one to make the world monstrous, that he was dead & gone & they were leaderless & lost once again. hyrule was in shambles, monsters still roaming, kept alive by lingering remnants of ganondorf’s power, in desperate need of rebuilding from the ground up. she returned to a home where few recognized her at first, where she was a stranger to her own daughters, a home filled with women who had been utterly betrayed by the man they had sworn their lives to. was she supposed to tell them, then, that if their goddess existed, then all their prayers & pleas must have fallen on deaf ears ? that the goddesses who did exist had chosen her to lock their lord away, & ignored the rest of them as they suffered under the rule of her chosen one’s family ?

becoming a sage completely destroyed nabooru’s view of the world. it took her a long time to be able to look to the future & see something bright, instead of the long strings future generations would dance on at the whims of the goddesses. looking at her own daughters put unspeakable fear in her heart, because what if they were to be the next tools, used & discarded by those who created the world ? would they even know ? would they, like her, hear the siren song of another world, & never speak of it from fear ? would she lose them, as she had been lost, & never know the reason why ?

to become chief of the gerudo was something familiar to her, at least. those were responsibilities she was used to, having dealt with them as second-in-command to ganondorf, & stepping up to fill his shoes was hardly much different from that. it was almost a comfort to assume the role, to know that finally, someone was leading them who would actually champion their people’s cause, rather than disappear in the pursuit of greater power, & leave them to rot. she accepted zelda’s invitation to sit on her court, when necessary, though she was more reluctant to agree to meet with her & the other sages in the sacred realm as necessary. the seal on ganondorf would have to be monitored, that she accepted, but as said above, nabooru’s concept of her powers was vague at best, nevermind her ability to control them - she supposed, being the sage of spirit, it was these dormant powers which gave her the drive to excel as well as she had in her life before ascending, but other than that, she found them hard to define in any meaningful way. gifts from the goddesses, some called them, but to her, they were an inconvenient curse, & a reminder of all the hardship she had endured, all for the purpose of her eventual awakening.

thankfully, for her, the responsibilities of a sage were few, & she wasn’t often called to act upon them. much of her responsibilities following ganondorf’s rule & her awakening were much more … mundane, in nature. her one regret is that her role as a sage eventually became publicly known, as the full story of ganondorf’s defeat was eventually told to the public. more than anything, she despised people who attempted to revere her as a sage, the way they would any other hylian figure of worship - eventually, they came to learn that speaking of her sagehood was a good way to earn her eternal ire. it wasn’t their fault, of course, that it had happened, but the last thing nabooru ever wanted was to be reminded of her so-called divine blessing. she was chief of the gerudo before she was ever anything else - that, she maintained until her dying day.

she still visited the spirit temple, to ensure it was never defiled again. she still spoke to the goddess of the sand, as she always had, but no longer wished for a reply. she knew, by then, that the divine were strange, indifferent beasts to those who worshipped them. old habits were just hard to break.