#can you believe i wrote all this just to say that zelda is shredded & also had a pixie cut once

[hyliangrace-a]

ZELDA, HER APPEARANCE & HER FEELINGS REGARDING IT  /  

talking with amber about the differences between the appearances in our respective zeldas got me motivated to finish this headcanon, finally ! i love zelda’s ocarina of time design, because y’know, imprinting on your very first zelda game & all that, but there’s always room for improvement, right ? these are my ( questionable ) improvements ! this headcanon ... got away from me little bit when i started to talk out my reasoning for zelda’s choice in how she presented herself as queen. i intended on talking about how she looks in other verses, too, such as when she’s a spectre in the queen’s shade universe, but i feel that would suit better as an entirely separate post, so, that’ll come in time ! i hadn’t intended on putting this post under a read more, because i feel it’s a fairly important headcanon & i’d like people to read it, but - surprise ! - it’s really long, & it would feel really rude to just leave it uncut, so behind the black it goes - that, & it also deals with body issues & negative perceptions of one’s body, so please keep that in mind if you’re sensitive to that sort of content. that said, & i’m aware of the irony of this sentence after the last, but i hope you guys at least find it an enjoyable read !  ♡

the three basic tenets of her appearance which have appeared in most of her predecessors & descendants ( pale, blue-eyed, blonde-haired ) apply in most, if not all, of my verses for zelda  but there are only a few verses of mine where i would say zelda’s appearance is exactly as it is within the game & the official art provided by nintendo - primarily the earliest arc of my canon verses, when she’s still the little princess, & the au which follows the events of the child timeline, where she never goes on the run & so never becomes sheik. she’s still quite fit, thanks to horseback riding & regular exercise, overseen by impa, but it’s in this au she most embodies the slim, graceful princess look nintendo gave her. one constant in all her adult verses, however, is her height - by the time she’s fully grown, she’s 5′8″.

in my other main, canon-inspired verses, well - zelda goes on the run at age ten, & it’s from that age impa begins to teach her how to fight, as she knows that she cannot protect her forever, & she’s going to need to become self-sufficient if she wants to survive. it starts off with basic things, graduating into an intense regime, but the result is, by the time link awakens from his slumber, zelda, even whilst disguised as sheik, is broad-shouldered & visibly muscled. i choose to interpret the tanned skin, red eyes & shorter hair as part of a glamour zelda put up, out of fear that ganondorf was searching for girls matching her description á la wind waker, but the muscles get to stay because whilst her appearance might be fake when under this alias, her feats are not. she did, after all, manage to survive seven years in a monster-infested hyrule, stay in the heart of death mountain without a visible goron tunic, & for whatever reason, was at kakariko village before link when the seal holding bongo-bongo back began to break, & i choose to interpret that as her being prepared to fight it. she also managed to make it through the haunted wasteland to the desert colossus / the spirit temple, sans lens of truth, & as she presents as an androgynous, masculine-leaning figure, she might have also had to prove her worth to the gerudo in battle, just as link did - after all, even though the gerudo, such as nabooru, openly disavow ganondorf by that point in time, it would be madness to declare her true self in his hometown.

this piece of fanart by lord-lorens is, honestly, the closest thing to how i picture zelda’s body type whilst she masquerades as sheik, & afterwards, when she reassumes her identity as princess. ( is there a gossip stone out there saying princess zelda has an eight pack ? there’s nothing in canon to disprove this, so yes. ) the only thing which stops it being entirely perfect for me is my headcanons of where across her body zelda is scarred ( which could be another, much smaller headcanon, so i’ll leave it for that ) but considering everyone’s interpretation of how zelda lived as sheik is varied, it was bound to happen - but god, minus those, i just want to pin this somewhere on my blog with an enormous sign next to it which says  ❛ this is how my zelda looks, as both sheik & a princess. ❜ but, with that in mind, lets move on.

i think it’s interesting how similar zelda’s outfit is as an adult ( which she ISN’T, she’s SEVENTEEN, but i digress - ) to the one she wears as a child, & my interpretation of it is that it’s very deliberate - & another glamour. ( seriously, where the fuck would she get a dress like that ? ) zelda hasn’t been seen in public, as herself, in seven years. the last people saw of her, as mentioned by those in castle town prior to drawing the master sword, is her fleeing the castle on horseback with her attendant, & that might have been the first glimpse some people had of her at all. when ganondorf is sealed away, & she re-emerges, she’s dressed similarly in order to spark recognition in people’s minds, & also because she knows that it may be difficult to prove she is who she claims to be, considering the king is dead, & impa has ascended as a sage, & can’t vouch for her. surviving nobles who interrogate her on her memories are able to confirm her claim to the throne, but if she had just strolled into kakariko village in casual dress, it’s very likely she would have absolutely been dismissed.

because of this, zelda’s feelings towards her appearance end up... complicated. in the aforementioned child timeline au verse, where she has a privileged, but more normal, adolescent socialization, she’s quite accepting of her own appearance & how feminine it is, because in that timeline, she fits the mold of what people expect a princess to be - she’s tall, she’s graceful, she’s pretty, & she’s rewarded for fitting that ideal. in her canon universe, where a life on the run left her with an entirely different body type, an indifference to feminity, many insecurities about her suitability as queen of hyrule, especially in her first years of being on the throne, & a desire to conform to others expectations of her ... it’s a perfect storm, whose origins can be traced directly to her choice to homage her childhood dress during her reappearance in hylian society. 

insecurity & fear feeds a lot of her choices in how she presents herself at the beginning of her reign. her body type is what some would call androgynous, others vaguely masculine - broad shoulders & small breasts which combine to give the illusion of her hips being narrower than they are, & she though she herself is content with that, she fears scorn by others because of it, so she works to minimize these features, & she plays up to feminity. her wardrobe primarily consists of dresses, gowns & robes, all loose fitting, all sleeved to at least the elbow, preferably in a style which leaves her biceps covered, & indistinct beneath the fabric. the gold pauldrons she wears as an adult feature in most, if not all, of her garments until her official coronation, seven years after ganondorf was sealed away - they provide her a measure of security, give her a regal appearance, & do a lot of heavy lifting, in conjunction with the sleeves of her gowns, to hide her shoulders & biceps, to the point where people are surprised at just how muscled she is when they come off - she hides the results, but even as queen, she still trains as she did when she was in hiding. most people are accepting of how she looks, but as is always the way, the few harsh comments she hears deafen her to the compliments - the only thing zelda wants, in the end, is for hyrule to recover, & for her people to thrive, & for that, she needs to be a good queen to them. to be a good queen, she must live up to their expectations. her attempts to live up to that via her appearance lead to her first breakdown, three months after her coronation.

it’s not just her appearance, of course - there’s enough stress to go around trying to get hyrule back on its feet again in a fair way, whilst trying to make her own mark as queen & live up to her parents’ peacekeeping legacy - but the nitpicking from a few members of her court, & the constant moving of goalposts as she attempts to satisfy their criticisms of her appearance, is the catalyst for her eventual declaration that she is done trying to satisy other people’s unreasonable explanations. the queenly mask she wears for other people’s benefit is suffocating her, so she decides to break it, & forge a new one. if she is going to be feminine, it is because she chooses to be, not because people expect her to be. if she wishes to dress as a man does, who can stop her ? if androgyny is what she feels, she will not deny herself. so, after a good cry, zelda does what every twenty-four year old going through a tough time does - she cuts her hair. she no longer tries to hide her body or disguise her frame. she is the queen, & the people will accept her as she is.

& most do ! hyrule has some strange looking people in it. a queen with a pixie cut is not the end of the world. she keeps it short for a good while, as a symbol of both her & hyrule’s fresh start, but eventually she begins to let it grow out again, with its length varying at ... well, various important points in her life. a short bob when she begins the programme to build new villages & settlements in hyrule. shoulder length when she begins courting to secure the throne for the future. waist length when she marries. she cuts it to above her shoulders once more when her first child is born, & keeps it mostly at that length until the end of her life, mostly for practical reasons. she was never ashamed of her body, before or after she became queen, as it was proof of her survival, but she became a lot more confident in herself as queen after she stopped letting other people, & her own well-intentioned, if misguided, fantasies of what a queen should look like dictate her life. that doesn’t mean to say that was that, every dark thought about her appearance swept away - there were days afterwards where she still despaired of her appearance, of the image she was projecting to others, of the judgements being passed on her & her country that came from her looks alone - but they were infrequent compared to the constant anxiety she felt about her appearance prior to the night she took a knife to her hair. they also weren’t enough to stop her from maintaining her physique, either - the training regime she began as a child continued into her late sixties, when she finally felt confident enough in the kingdom’s safety to stop, but the results of it meant that zelda was powerfully built through her whole life. even the birth of her children, which softened her body, couldn’t diminish much of her muscled appearance. shedding the weight of others opinions ( of her appearance, at least ) allowed her to stand tall until the end of her days. her body told the story of her life, & eventually, she was proud to let people see it.