#anyway loz analysis idk i hope you enjoyed!

[affogato-analysis]

Hylia discourse

aka i don’t like botw Hylia and here’s why!

So i think everyone who likes botw Zelda dislikes her father which, fair! I however have seen very little Hylia discourse so here we are, getting into Hyrule’s Temple criticism!

Just to establish a couple things: we’ll call the “Temple” the institution and practices linked to the worship of the divine, so here Hylia (and maybe the other three goddesses but botw isn’t trying to be heavy on its religious worldbuilding so it won’t change much for us). I chose ‘temple’ simply because there are, well, temples in Hyrule (it's basically Hyrule's equivalent to the Christian Church).

Also, i’ll establish here that this take is based on the assumption that Zelda’s power is mainly linked to Hylia, because she prays to that goddess in particular and she’s the only one really mentioned throughout the game (by the monks, the statue, the Sheikah and really everyone who spoke about religion in this game)

I don’t know like any lore about tloz as a general rule because i played like half of Twilight Princess, all of botw, EOW and i have played totk a bunch although i’m not done with the main quest. As I said, the following analysis is purely based on botw, although if someone more knowledgeable than me wants to add something/explain how I'm wrong, I'd be really happy to read that!

I repeat, this analysis is purely about botw content, and does not include elements from totk (i have an actual explanation to that and it’s that i’m not done with totk lmao) (and also i have some thoughts about the continuity of the two games but i’ll write about that later)

Spoilers for botw, by the way.

(also this is like 2k words)

SO! Religious and political discourse, my beloved.

Zelda prayed relentlessly to Hylia for years, in different springs to the point that she once fainted in one, and it did not work out. Zelda’s power manifested when the guardian was about to kill her and Link, most definitely not when she had any hope for it. She was just standing in between Link and death and it worked!

I can think of two interpretations as to why her power was unlocked here and now:

Zelda’s power was inherently hers to unlock and Hylia herself had no say on the how and when it’d be released.

Hylia gave it to her then when she needed it to protect her friend, and not before when she was just praying and asking for it like a tantrum child unable to earn it.

We’re gonna tackle that first option because it brings us to the Temple as an institution and the way Zelda was made to pray for years even when it didn’t work.

We don’t know if there is a religious chief (pope equivalent) in botw. With Zelda being the literal descendent of Hylia, I’m going to assume she’d rank pretty high on the scale of ‘how much does one matter to the Temple’. Which does not, in fact, give her that much power. She is stuck in a role that is constantly reaffirmed with every ceremony, trapping her more and more under layers and layers of symbolism.

I’m not gonna delve into sociology right there but symbols matter so much. They shape our beliefs, our beliefs shape the way we perceive the world and our actions. Symbols also shape how others see us. Symbols define what is right and wrong for someone to do, and that moral judgment is internalized. 

To put it simply, the more you present Zelda as the goddess of the legend, the less she can be anything else. She stops acting according to that picture of herself we’ve been given to see when she gets agency beyond that role — alone with Link after they become friends, when she’s studying the ruins, when she’s with Urbosa.

We won’t delve here in the question of why is she pictured in this or that way, IRL we could retrace the patterns and historicity of these symbols but we are in a game and pre-calamity Hyrule isn’t nearly developed enough for us to try a socio-historical analysis. Even my entire rant about symbols up there is already expanding a lot on the very little we actually see.

SO THEN! Symbols don’t just happen, they’re made. So how did these symbols get here and why are they relevant? symbols can die, lose and regain their relevance. Let me introduce you to the religious institution of the Temple.

We’re gonna extrapolate a shit lot over there, all of these are assumptions mostly based on very little factual information and a lot of assuming botw religious structure isn’t some highly elaborated innovative organization and looks enough like irl religions (Catholicism, Islam, Judaism because these are the only ones I know decently enough) (albeit mostly Catholicism).

There has to be a religious corps of people who live for and by religion. Because you need to get that temple running, and even if we never meet a priest-equivalent or anything, when Hylia’s existence is such an admitted fact, barely a belief at this point, there ought to be people devoted to that task.

I’m going to assume these people are in charge of spreading these symbols, because religious education and maintaining the Temple is their job. (I specify that because I don't want to make them sound evil and all, they spread the legends and teachings of their goddess because they love her) (wrecking both Link and Zelda’s lives is an unforeseen, unwanted, unnoticed side effect.) Their job makes them the most competent people when it comes to religion, so their power is basically a monopoly over any knowledge about the literal one way of salvation for Hyrule.

All of this to say, Zelda prays because that’s all that she knows. Because worship is seen as the one way to connect to Hylia — because most people aren’t her descendent — and the only people here to teach Zelda, especially after her mother’s death, rely on what they know to help her. And so, they send her praying. (And I get why they do, because when Link prays to the statue, Hylia answers and helps him regain his strength in exchange for emblems.)

And the Temple’s power is so massive that, when it doesn’t work again and again, they blame it on Zelda. Their knowledge can’t be wrong, they can’t be overwhelmed (just like her!) by the enormity of the task of awakening the power to seal the literal embodiment of evil, so it has to be her. She mustn’t pray hard enough, long enough, maybe she’s praying at the wrong spring. It can not be that their teachings are wrong and actively wasting her time, she must pray to connect to Hylia and her power.

And it doesn’t work. And when the calamity strikes, Zelda is still just a girl who has to face Ganon without divinity by her side.

And, when she stops trying to pray, when she reaches out to anything really as long as she can stand in between the calamity and her friend, her fingers wrap around her power and finally, finally, she is able to fight back. When all ended, when the springs failed her, Zelda found within herself the power she’d been asking someone else for.

In this perspective, Zelda’s power was hers all along and could not be awakened by Hylia, in a spring. The same way the sword chose Link and no one else, Zelda’s power had always been within her and in no one else’s hands.

(Also, and just maybe, a power meant to manifest in the face of evil was gonna manifest in the face of evil and not when a kind and benevolent goddess was looking at her favorite daughter, sheltering her from said evil.)

The Temple has knowledge and symbols, and with their authority on the religious domain, they trap Zelda in her role as a praying, waiting girl who has to earn, through her devotion to a goddess, a strength that was hers from the start.

And it kills many.

The second option is that Hylia didn’t want to give her power to a spoiled brat of a princess who thinks she can just ask for it instead of working for it.

It doesn’t change the fact that Zelda should probably not have been sent to pray that much and it was still a waste of time. No, the main thing that changes here is that Hylia was watching and she was the key to unlocking Zelda’s power.

And she didn’t when Zelda was praying, because a princess isn’t a beggar and Hylia’s descendant would have to be worthy of her birthright. Zelda would have to prove herself able to stare down Ganon himself.

So, when Zelda was constantly ushered away from the battlefields and protected at the expense of her people, when she was made to beg uselessly in the springs instead of reaching for knowledge — her own part of the triforce! —, when she lashed out at Link instead of working on bettering herself, Hylia did not answer.

Only when she stood up to Evil itself in a last ditch effort to protect her people did Hylia see in her what a princess, what her own child should be and deemed her worthy.

Why would she answer a tantrum child after all?

…

…

WELL!

When your answer to “why did you let Hyrule burn when you could have stepped in so much earlier?” is “I don’t respond well to tantrums”, I ask “where do your priorities lie?”!

A Goddess who condemns her entire people because one child didn’t live up to her expectations for maturity at the ripe age of seventeen is a Goddess who is, herself, throwing a tantrum.

“Force that girl to meet my divine, inhumane expectations, or you will all burn” is not the Word of a kind and benevolent goddess about her favorite daughter. This is the mentality of a tyrant too self-absorbed to step down from her ego and save her people, because she does not like the crying girl at the altar (as if the girl hadn’t been a sacrifice herself). This is a tantrum, just as much as Zelda’s anger at Link for trying to protect her. Except this tantrum threw Hyrule in a hundred years long misery, killed all five Champions and forced the now worthy Zelda to face the calamity on her own for a century, with the cruel assent of her Goddess.

One of my friends pointed out it might have elements of both. The religious corps pushes Zelda in the role of a begging, waiting, passive girl and Hylia stays resolutely quiet until Zelda breaks out of this mold to prove herself.

Which means two terrible things!

This religious corps tried its best to help Zelda unlock her power and only condemned her to fail repeatedly. They stuck her in a dress and made her pray and Hylia looked down upon her and refused such an heir. In their best attempts to help Zelda unleash her powers, they lock it further away and condemn themselves to destruction.

Hylia watched Zelda try her best to reach her according to the best of their knowledge and could not be bothered to send a word to her daughter. Not giving her the answer or her power, but just telling her ‘I see you’ would’ve been enough for Zelda to know Hylia was there. A simple ‘this is not the way’ would’ve been enough.

The more I speak, the more I think that maybe the Yiga clan had a couple points.

I also wanna point out really quickly the whole classism aspect of that ‘a princess isn’t a beggar’ sentence because, it’s not said in game but I said it while trying to figure out Hylia’s potential train of thought. Classism is a form of discrimination that assumes that poor people are less intelligent, morally inferior and generally worth less than rich people and it’s quite a piece of shit thing to say. So ‘a princess isn’t a beggar’ is inherently looking down on beggars and assuming that a princess should be inherently morally better. Classism sucks and I want to reinstate that my interpretation of Hylia’s silence isn’t my own opinion. No one is ‘less’ than someone else and I stand by that.

So yeah, what do we think?