The Zonai explained
Update for Age of Imprisonment
The Kingdom of Hyrule and the Decline of the Zonai.
This (increasingly impenetrable) series has been in limbo for a while; I’ve been in a sci-fi mood. But there isn’t much more to say. The last post outlined the first great cataclysm of the Zonai. They abandoned their home in Eldin Volcano (changing their architectural style), found sanctuary in the sacred realm and ultimately resettled on the sky islands.
To conclude, I’ll cover the founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule and the final disappearance of the Zonai. There’s a lot less in-game evidence to go on for this section. This will be more speculative.
Rauru and Sonia
Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) revealed that the Kingdom of Hyrule was founded by a Zonai, Rauru. He married the Hylian priestess Sonia, presumably a descendant of the goddess Hylia (from Skyward Sword).
It isn’t shown whether Rauru and Sonia have children, but it’s implied that the Hyrulean royal family is descended from them.
Future monarchs get their time powers from Sonia/Hylia and their light powers from Rauru (a neat explanation for why they have two sets of powers in other games).
This ultimately suggests that there are part-Zonai people in the Zelda series. More on that in a moment.
(The real twist is that there’s a female member of the Hyrulean Royal Family whose name isn’t Zelda.)
The Last Zonai
During a cutscene, it’s revealed by Ganondorf that Rauru and his sister, Mineru, are the last Zonai. Generations ago, he says, the Zonai descended from the sky and then, for some reason, disappeared.
I previously said there was a second cataclysm, which wiped out the Zonai and caused the architectural change seen in Totk. (Zonai surface ruins have a different architectural style that was built on top of their dominant ‘sky-style’).
I’ve changed my mind.
The Zonai did live in the Sky (Ganondorf confirms), but some sky ruins were built on the surface, such as the Zonai Temple of Time, which moves to the sky in a cutscene after Rauru’s death. The Temple is built in the earlier sky style.
This implies that Zonai architecture didn’t change until after Rauru’s death. Since Rauru and Mineru are the last Zonai, it can’t have been a Zonai-wide cataclysm that caused the style to change.
The End of the Zonai
The Zonai may have a much sadder ending.
It’s possible they died off gradually due to a lack of numbers. Previous posts suggested their numbers collapsed during the first cataclysm, explaining their dependence on robots.
Perhaps their numbers were so low that they weren’t a viable population. A species with only a couple of hundred members can’t survive for long. So, after returning to the surface and seeming “like gods”, they just gradually died off.
Second Architectural Change
If Rauru and Sonia (the last Zonai) died prior to the second Zonai architectural change, why did it change?
As mentioned, it’s possible that some half-Zonai/half-humans existed. Over time, they probably diffused through the human population and became less noticeable, but at one point, they may have been prominent.
It’s also plausible that some human followers preserved Zonai culture. Indeed, Ganondorf says the Zonai seemed like gods, and gods do have followers. In the flashback cutscenes, humans are seen wearing Zonai-inspired clothing. Perhaps confirming this.
A potential timeline
Between the events of Skyward Sword and the TotK flashbacks, there were two major human nations in Hyrule.
First, the descendants of Skyloft who followed the goddess Hylia and were seemingly led by priests and priestesses (Hylia’s descendants).
Second, the human followers of the Zonai. They saw the Zonai as gods and sought to preserve the dying Zonai culture. This group likely includes any half-Zonai. As the last Zonai, Rauru and Mineru were probably the leaders.
Rauru’s marriage to Sonia, a Hylian priestess, was effectively a dynastic merger of the two nations, which thereby created the Kingdom of Hyrule. (Many real-world countries were formed through dynastic marriages.)
When the Zonai were gone, their human followers probably attempted to maintain and rebuild their surface structures. This gradually led to a new human style, covering up the earlier sky-style.
Before TotK was released, Zelda fans often speculated that the Zonai were ancient warlike humans who lived in the Faron region. This was due to the Barbarian Armour set, which, in Breath of the Wild, is found in the Zonai ruins.
There might be some truth to that after all. Maybe the human warriors (who wore that armour) became the human followers of the Zonai and swapped their armour for Zonai-esque clothing.
Moreover, warrior and Zonai designs could have merged to form a new aesthetic. The final change in Zonai architectural style, that is, may have originated within that warrior-Zonai society.
Again, this style was built on top of the earlier structures through gradual repairs.
When the Kingdom of Hyrule was founded, trade probably increased. The subsequent interaction between different groups would have led to the emergence of a broadly unified Hyrulean design style (taking influence from Skyloftian and Zonai architecture both).
This Hyrulean style eventually replaced the Zonai style entirely. Catastrophes, like the Imprisoning War and the First Great Calamity (10,000 years before Breath of the Wild), probably had an aesthetic impact as well.
Post Zonai – The Ancient Hero
There are two final points to mention. First, the Ancient Hero.
In Totk, it’s revealed that the Ancient Hero who fought in the First Calamity is a Zonai, sort of. The Zonai are meant to be extinct by the First Calamity. And there are notable differences in appearance between him and the other Zonai.
A couple of explanations might be given.
The Ancient Hero could be half-Zonai. Though you might say they look too different even for that. But the First Calamity presumably occurred a while after the deaths of the last full-Zonai. By then, they’d probably have more human features than Zonai. The ancient Princess (a descendant of Sonia and Rauru) also appears human in the tapestry, which supports this idea.
Alternatively, I previously suggested that there were two other Zonai-esque groups, that I’m calling the Typhlo and the Lomei (the mystery statues of the Depths depict Typhlo). The three groups represent the three aspects of the Triforce.
The Ancient Hero could have been a Lomei. Since they were close to the Zonai, it’s likely that they were also decimated during the various cataclysms and likewise died off due to their low numbers, but they did last longer. They probably joined the Human-Zonai society of the surface.
Post Zonai – Oocaa
The final point to talk about is the Oocaa.
In Twilight Princess, you meet a group of Chicken-Human hybrid creatures, called Oocaa. They live in the Sky, are apparently close to the gods, and helped found the Kingdom of Hyrule. Given this history, it seems probable that they’re related to the Zonai. How they’re related to the Zonai, is another question.
Again, there are a few possibilities. Perhaps a handful of Zonai remained in the sky and then turned into the Oocaa. How this happened, and why, is difficult to say (I’ve got no clue). They either did it intentionally, to save themselves from impending extinction, or it was done to them. Probably by one of Demise’s incarnations.
There’s no sign or evidence of this transformation or curse during Tears of the Kingdom’s flashbacks, however (and the Zonai still exist at that time, just about). So I’m going to rule out that option.
Another possibility is that the Zonai created the Oocaa. I once saw it suggested (I can’t remember where) that the Oocaa were pets, who took over once the Zonai were gone. But that doesn’t quite add up with the status given to the Oocaa by Twilight Princess.
To modify that idea, I’d suggest the Oocaa were created by the Zonai during their final days as a repository of knowledge and power. To remember and preserve, in other words, the Zonai’s history and culture. Later, during a post-Zonai crisis, the Oocaa then advised the increasingly human royal family on how to stabilise and/or re-found the Kingdom of Hyrule.
And that pretty much brings us to the end.
PS.
On reflection, I don’t like how the previous posts in this series were written. They don’t read very well. I think I’ve gotten better at writing since then, so at some point, I’m probably going to massively edit and re-release this series. If you’re a Zelda fan, keep an eye out for that.
-Dexter
Thoughts and Fiction 
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