Introduction and Timeline Placement

Part 2

Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) has thrown a spanner into the Zelda theory community. The Zonai, introduced in that game, are an entirely new element of the Zelda timeline, which complicates many old theories and established narrative details. The term Zonai was first used during Breath of the Wild (BotW) in an area called the Zonai Ruins. They were then widely theorised to be a group of pre-Skyward Sword/early Hylians, due to the Barbarian Armour Set that was obtainable within the ruins. But Totk has revealed that the Zonai are actually a group of god-like anthropomorphic goats (or dragons) who live in the sky and founded the Kingdom of Hyrule… I have so many questions.

Why haven’t the Zonai been seen before?

What were they doing during Skyward Sword and the other games?

Why are there only two?

What happened to their civilisation?

Nintendo hasn’t given many answers. To be honest, I’m not entirely convinced they have answers. Their development approach is gameplay first and story second, which is how it should be (and it’s why the games are so good). It’s up to the fan community to figure out the overarching story. But Tears of the Kingdom has not made it easy. There is almost no information about the history of the Zonai, what their civilisation was like or how they relate to the established lore and timeline. A video by Overly Sarcastic Productions suggests that there are probably more Zonai islands and ruins beyond the cloud barrier, containing much of their civilian infrastructure, but they’re not seen during the game and thus provide no information. Still, just enough information can be garnered from Totk, BotW and even some of the older games, to create a rough outline of Zonai history.

Timeline Options

To determine the history of the Zonai, and their role in the overall franchise, the Zelda timeline needs to be briefly discussed. Specifically, when do the events of TotK take place? The strength of Zonai civilisation, which is shown to have declined over time, will determine how it interacts with the known events of the other games. It’s important to figure out, therefore, if they went into decline early in the franchise or late in the franchise.

It’s generally said, and Nintendo has confirmed, that BotW and TotK take place at the end of the timeline. They occur so far into the future that the infamous timeline split doesn’t affect them, they’re completely insulated from the stories of the other games. But TotK involves time travel: Zelda is transported back in time to the founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule. This would intuitively occur near the start of the timeline, between Skyward Sword and Minish Cap, and therefore mean that BotW and TotK are no longer insulated. In addition to the above questions, however, this creates several continuity errors. Ganondorf’s TotK war with the early kingdom, for instance, contradicts his introduction in Ocarina of Time (OoT). Ganondorf is not typically one of the characters that reincarnates. If he was imprisoned by the Zonai King Rauru during the flashbacks of TotK, how could he have his first demonic clash with Hyrule during OoT?

I’ve heard three possible solutions to the continuity errors.

First, some media outlets have recently said that BotW and Totk are the beginning of a complete reboot for the timeline (due to the way Nintendo visually portrays it). As the YouTuber Zetik discusses, however, this is not the case. Nintendo has been drawing the timeline in this way since 2017.

The second possibility is that Hyrule fell and was re-founded (so that the time travel elements still occur in the future). This would completely avoid the continuity errors and continue to insulate the games. Personally, though, that feels like an unsatisfying and easy way out. It dismisses the option of a more in-depth story.

The third option is that the time travel sections do occur between Skyward Sword and Minish Cap (when the Kingdom is canonically founded), thereby creating a bunch of continuity errors that have to be theorised around. But despite these inconsistencies, TotK’s flashbacks fit quite well into this time frame (at least, I reckon so). This necessitates a brief BotW detour.

The First Calamity

The story of BotW often refers to the First Great Calamity, which occurred ten thousand years before the game’s events and saw the Sheikah Tribe build the robotic Divine Beasts. I used to figure, back when BotW was released, that the First Calamity also occurred between Skyward Sword and Minish Cap. I had a couple of reasons for this.

In the aftermath of the First Calamity, BotW reveals that the Sheikah Tribe was banished from Hyrule due to the threat they posed. Not much is revealed about this banishment, but it is consistent with their depiction in other games. They’re often implied to have experienced a period of persecution and repression (e.g. the Hidden Village and the Shadow Temple). Their banishment in the aftermath of the First Calamity could be the reason for their persecution in the other games. This implies an early timeline placement for the First Calamity.

The Sheikah’s banishment could also be connected to the Interloper War of Twilight Princess (in which Midna’s ancestors attempted to seize the Triforce). Midna’s people, the Twili, are occasionally theorised to be connected to the Sheikah, and Midna even uses the term Divine Beast. I reckon, in short, that a group of Sheikah built the Divine Beasts to fight the First Calamity and then used them to take the Triforce (the Interloper War) and were subsequently banished.

Moreover, situating the First Calamity before the Minish Cap helps (I think) with concision. Ten thousand years is a very long time, in which a lot of technological progress can happen. Hylians should be walking on the moon by now. I’ll concede that magic and regular apocalyptic events could slow down technological progress. But adding ten thousand years to the thousands of years already covered by the other games is pushing it. Combining them (with the First Calamity occurring near the start) helps to reduce it a bit.

Unfortunately, BotW itself debunked the possibility of a pre-Minish Cap timeline placement for the First Calamity. The Divine Beasts are named after characters from Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker (a fact referenced in-game), so they must have been constructed after those events. This would mean that the First Calamity (when the Divine Beasts were built) can’t have occurred before the canonically earlier Minish Cap. I once tried to theorise around this by saying that the OoT/WW characters and the Divine Beasts were, in-universe, named after the same hitherto unseen characters. This was an admittedly weak argument. But now TotK’s time travel flashbacks seem to support it.

TotK introduces a group of unnamed Ancient Sages, who all wear Divine Beast masks and could, therefore, be the in-universe naming inspiration for both the Divine Beasts and the OoT/WW characters. There’s no longer any reason then why the First Calamity couldn’t occur before the Minish Cap. So, I feel pretty validated!

If the First Calamity occurred before the Minish Cap, and if the Divine Beasts are named after the Ancient Sages of TotK, then the game’s time travel flashbacks must also take place before the Minish Cap. Moreover, TotK’s revelation about the Ancient Hero who fought the First Calamity, that he was related to the Zonai, implies that it occurred close to the Zonai era.

Summary

For the reasons above, I am inclined to support the third, and arguably most intuitive, timeline placement. TotK is not a reboot or a re-founding of the Kingdom. The time travel flashbacks of TotK, and the era of the Zonai, do occur between Skyward Sword and the Minish Cap. This does create continuity errors, but, to my mind, fits too well into the Sheikah’s history (and my own preconceived headcanon) to ignore. The inconsistencies will have to be theorised around (but I’ll enjoy doing that, so it’s fine).

With their timeline placement decided, the next step in outlining the history of the Zonai is to aggregate the limited information that TotK does provide, and then consider the implications thereof.

This might end up being quite a long series.

-Dexter