Age of Imprisonment and the History of the Zonai.

Spoilers for Age of Imprisonment

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment was released a couple of weeks ago, and it introduced a ton of new lore. Not just Zonai lore either, but Zelda lore in general. It’s also canon, which is cool. The previous Hyrule Warriors game, Age of Calamity, has an alternate universe time travel story in which Breath of the Wild never happens (I swear I’m not bitter!).

I will undoubtedly have a lot to say about the new lore details in future. Here I want to focus on the Zonai.

My Old Zonai Theory

Some time ago, I wrote a five-part series of articles (part 1 here) about the history of the Zonai tribe, since they’re a relatively new addition to the Zelda lore. The term Zonai first appeared in 2017’s Breath of the Wild (BotW), but very little was known about them. 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) was their first actual appearance.

The game revealed that the kingdom of Hyrule had actually been founded by a Zonai, King Rauru, alongside the Hylian priestess Queen Sonia.

At first glance, the introduction of King Rauru and the Zonai does seem to clash with some of the established Zelda lore. But I do like the new editions. Especially because this means there’s still a lot of mystery in the Zelda universe.

As such, I don’t want to frame TotK and BotW as an alternate timeline or as taking place in the distant future of re-founded Hyrule (as is sometimes done). I want to integrate them into established events. A big part of this involved weaving Zonai history into the events of Skyward Sword. That game was a sort of origin story.

The essence of my Zonai history theory is that Zonai civilisation has risen and fallen on two separate occasions. This is indicated by their changing architectural styles. They evolved in the Depths and reached the Surface via Eldin Volcano/Death Mountain, a natural bridge between them. The Volcano developed into a trade hub and then, a civilisation. When the Demon King Demise (the Skyward Sword antagonist) escaped his imprisonment within the Depths, however, he promptly attacked the Zonai.

The first Zonai civilisation fell, and the survivors fled into the Sacred Realm. After Demise was defeated, they remerged and found themselves in the newly vacated Sky Islands. This was around the time that the humans were leaving the Sky. They lived there during Skyward Sword. The Zonai built a new civilisation, with a new architectural style. And that fell too.

In the first few entries of my Zonai history series, I suggested that the Zonai underwent a second cataclysm. In the final instalment, I changed my mind. Instead, I theorised an arguably even sadder ending. There were so few of them after the war with Demise that their new civilisation was never viable. That’s why they needed constructs. Ultimately, I said, they just gradually died out.

Age of Imprisonment Revelations

Age of Imprisonment has compelled me to modify this theory again. The game reveals two important bits of information about the end of Zonai civilisation. First, the Zonai were destroyed by their own machines. They created a new class of warrior constructs that were more advanced and autonomous than their regular constructs. They lost control of the constructs and were wiped out by them.

Second, the game indicates that this happened a long time before the game’s events. So long that Rauru and his sister, Mineru, the last two Zonai, don’t know how it happened. It’s ancient history to them. Still, since Rauru and Mineru would have had parents and grandparents, we know that some Zonai survived. This suggests a synthesis of the two theories above.

A Possible Timeline

After the events of Skyward Sword, the surviving Zonai returned to the main dimension and built a new civilisation in the abandoned Sky Islands. With their numbers depleted, they became increasingly dependent on their robotic constructs. Most notably, they used these constructs to mine and process Zonite (their energy source) in the Depths. The disastrous battle with Demise still fresh in their minds, however, they began to develop military constructs.

Eventually, their most powerful military constructs turned against them and destroyed their new civilisation. Their already small society was decimated. The survivors were so few in number that the population was no longer viable. Then, they gradually died out over the course of several generations. Eventually, only Rauru and Mineru remained. Though that wasn’t quite the end of their story.

It’s heavily implied by Tears of the Kingdom that Zelda is descended from Rauru and Sonia. That’s presumably why the royal family, throughout the games, has both light powers and time powers. They get light from Rauru and time from Sonia. Previously, only the time powers had an explanation. (It’s details like this which make me appreciate the new lore additions.)

This, in turn, means that there were human-Zonai hybrids. TotK’s ancient hero might be an example of this. The hybrids presumably became more and more human as the millennia went by.

Rauru and Sonia’s children are never mentioned during Age of Imprisonment, which does seem like a slight oversight. Still, since they both die during the game’s events, their children must already be out there. They probably sent their children to live somewhere safe while they deal with various conflicts. Indeed, their Kingdom’s troubles don’t start with Ganondorf but with the (presumably related) Shades. Evil spirits that plague the land.

The sanctuary they sent their children to was probably on one of the Sky Islands. That seems like a reasonably safe place, though not entirely. Still, they would have had constructs watching over them. They may have also had the early Sheikah warriors protecting them. This would explain why the Sheikah don’t appear in the game either. They were busy protecting the princes and princesses.

Oocaa

I’m going to conclude by going out on a wild swing. Rauru and Sonia’s children may have also had contact with the Oocaa. Hear me out. The Oocaa are a mystery within the Zelda lore. They’re chicken-human hybrids with a lot of similarities to the Zonai. They live in the Sky Islands, they’re close to the gods, and they apparently helped found Hyrule. Their connection to the Zonai is, subsequently, a point of speculation.

My theory, covered here, is that the Oocaa were created by the final generation of Zonai. This would be after the fall of their second civilisation, as they gradually died out. I reckon they were a sort of biological data record that could preserve all the knowledge, history and culture of the dying Zonai civilisation.

If Rauru and Sonia’s children grew up hiding in the Sky Islands, surrounded by Oocaa, they could have learnt a lot from them. In time, they could have then used that knowledge to rebuild the Kingdom of Hyrule after the Imprisoning War and the death of their parents.

In this sense, the Oocaa would have helped to create Hyrule. The Sheikah’s own interactions with Oocaa, during this time, may have also led to the later development of Sheikah technology. Their tech does, after all, have certain crossovers and similarities with the Zonai, like the Divine Beast Masks.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. At some point, I plan to release an edited and heavily revised version of my previous Zonai theories.

-Dexter