A running joke surroundingThe Legend of Zeldais that it doesn’t actually star Princess Zelda as the player character. Even so, Zelda is an undeniably crucial part of most games inThe Legend of Zelda,appearing in very nearly every game. Zelda has had a broad range of relationships with Link. Whether she’s an aloof ruler of Hyrule inTwilight Princess,a classmate and dear friend inSkyward Sword,or anything in between in otherZeldagames, she always crops up in Link’s adventure. That’s largely because of their shared destiny as chosen champions of the goddess Hylia, a mysterious deity that pervades theZeldafranchise.
Link’s relationship with Hylia has always been pretty clear: he’s the chosen hero ofThe Legend of Zelda’s goddesses, serving as a warrior for good throughout the ages. Zelda, meanwhile, has a slightly more complicated relationship with Hylia. For instance, some games inThe Legend of Zeldarefer to her as having ‘the blood of the goddess’, suggesting that she’s descended from Hylia. While that is true, the exact truth is a little more complicated than that. Zelda is a different person from the goddess Hylia, but they remain closely connected throughout the series, and for good reason.
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The History of the Goddess Hylia
The goddess Hylia’s story technically starts beforeThe Legend of Zelda’s story begins.Skyward Sword’s prologue explains that Hylia was left in charge of the mortal world and the Triforce after Farore, Din, and Nayru created it. The peace was disturbed when the demon king Demise and his fiendish army emerged, forcing Hylia to wage war with them. Although she won, she was greatly wounded, and she knew her seal wouldn’t keep Demise locked up forever. Hylia, therefore, chose to abandon her divinity, planning to reincarnate herself as a mortal to thwart Demise with the help of her first chosen hero’s successor—the Link ofSkyward Sword.
This plan means that the Zelda ofSkyward Swordis technically the goddess Hylia, reborn in mortal form. Zelda’s true identity is a central element ofSkyward Sword’s plot. Impa protects Zelda as she recovers her memory of divinity, while the demon lordGhirahim hunts Zelda down to free Demise. After the events ofSkyward Sword,Zelda becomes the ancestor of the kingdom of Hylians, who take their name from the goddess that founded the kingdom and brought humans back to the surface world.
For the most part, Hylia disappears fromThe Legend of Zeldabeyond that; Farore, Din, and Nayru play distant parts in theZeldagames, but they’re much more common than Hylia. Even so, her name crops up now and again, especially inZelda: Breath of the Wild,where she’s seemingly restored to divinity.Breath of the Wildfans are well aware of the Goddess Statues where Link can pray to Hylia to expand his Life Gauge and Stamina Wheel. Hylia remains aloof for the most part inBreath of the Wild,but her statues establish something important: by this point inZeldalore,Princess Zelda and the goddess Hyliaare different people.
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Princess Zelda as the Goddess' Heir
AlthoughThe Legend of Zelda’s supplemental lorebooks say that the goddess Hylia gets reincarnated eternally throughout Hyrule’s history, the various Zeldas scattered across the game’s timeline don’t appear to all be those reincarnations anymore. Again, Hylia is a very important divine figure inSkyward Sword,but she mostly exists in the background in the rest of the franchise. The first Zelda’s descendants, all named for her, are often described as having divine blood but they’re almost never referred to as reincarnations of Hylia.
Zelda’s wide range of magical powers might suggest otherwise, but that’s not quite the case. Each Zelda that carriesthe Triforce of Wisdomoften draws a great number of magical powers from her piece of the Triforce, as well as the connection to the goddess Nayru that the piece conveys. Even beyond her piece of the Triforce, Zelda often wields a wide range of unique magical powers. This means that much of Zelda’s powers are derived fromThe Legend of Zelda’s mysterious gods, but they’re not necessarily connected to the goddess Hylia specifically.
Zelda: Breath of the Wildseems to best define how the goddess Hylia and Princess Zelda are different people. Aside from the Goddess Statues where Link communes with Hylia,Breath of the Wild’s various Shrinescontain monks devoted to Hylia who frequently mention the goddess by name when Link completes their trials. These tributes to the goddess are never directed at Princess Zelda; in fact,Breath of the Wild’s Zelda seems much less magically powerful than several previous Zeldas, albeit no less driven and intelligent. It seems that Hylia has broken her reincarnation cycle byBreath of the Wild,returning to divinity andestablishing Zelda as her descendant, but not her mortal form.
The Legend of Zelda’s Ever-Expanding Lore
Nintendo deserves a lot of credit for makingThe Legend of Zelda’s lore as rich as it is. Every game adds a new perspective on the land of Hyrule, its mystical forces, and how their influence on Hyrule changes across generations of heroes. Those heroes frequently change, too.Princess Zelda has seen many alternate formsin games likeOcarina of TimeandThe Wind Waker,wearing unique new hats in addition to her identity as Hyrule’s greatest channel of divine influence.
Zelda may not literally be the goddess Hylia anymore, but that doesn’t mean Hylia’s influence isn’t felt anymore. Thanks to the machinations that Hylia put in place beforeSkyward Swordbegan, the first Princess Zelda and all of her descendants played important roles in protecting the kingdom with the help of the Triforce of Wisdom. Every Zelda still bears important powers and responsibilities placed upon her as the heir to Hylia’s powers and plans. In that sense, she’s the constant metaphorical reincarnation of Hylia’s struggles against evil, even if she’s not literally Hylia herself. There’s clearlyno end to theZeldalorethat Nintendo can expand and flesh out over the course of the franchise, especially through these important characters. Hopefully, Hylia and Zelda both play influential roles inBreath of the Wild 2.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HDis available now for Switch.
