LoZ World-building questions
2019-May-15, Wednesday 08:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Just some things I'm thinking about that never come up in the games.
The question is slightly broader than that, because no one in any of the games has a family name except two of the named kings of Hyrule, both of whom have the surname "Hyrule": Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule and Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule. Even Zelda is never given a surname, she's only referred to as "Princess Zelda of Hyrule" (ハイラル王国のゼルダ姫). "Dragmire" as Ganondorf's surname was made up by Nintendo of America and appears only in the manual, nowhere in the games. "Smith" as Link's surname in The Minish Cap is a localization thing and not present in the Japanese version.
Obviously, the reason for this is that in a video game with a couple dozen characters, no one needs a surname to distinguish them, but in a story where there are more people even if they never appear, and where technology and social development is a bit more like our 19th century, people would have surnames for record-keeping purposes.
One guide might be the kings' surnames. Breath of the Wild says that the power to seal the darkness (退魔の力, taima no chikara) is passed from mother to daughter in the royal line, so tracing matrilineal descent would be vital for maintaining the security of the Kingdom of Hyrule. If King Rhoam has the surname Hyrule, he must have married into the royal line, and if the royal line, who bear the blood of the goddess, trace descent matrilinearly, the nobility probably do too. And they probably make everyone do it for tax purposes. So Link would be "Link, son of [mother's name]." In a few generations it'd probably be bureaucratically standardized into something resembling our own surnames, but that'll work for now.
For the other tribes, the Gerudo obviously have matrilineal descent. If the Zora reproduce like fish, they might have "clutch names," where everyone from the same clutch of eggs has the same surname. There isn't enough information about Rito names to hazard a guess, and no one even knows how Gorons reproduce. There are Goron children and brothers in the games, and Gorons and Gerudo can have children, but all Gorons shown in the games are men (or present as men). And the smaller tribes I might use, like the Zuna from Four Swords Adventures or the Wind Tribe or Pikkoru from Minish Cap have even less shown about them.
But for Link, "Link, son of [mother's name]" works.
Yes and no. Skyward Sword talks about the Blood of the Goddess and the Soul of the Hero (女神の血と勇者の魂, megami no chi to yūsha no tamashī), and Zelda and Link are each described to inherit or succeed (受け継ぐ, uketsugu) to the blood or the soul respectively. That implies that Zelda is a descendant of the ancient bloodline of the goddess and Link is a reincarnation of the Hero.
Some people prefer to read this as Link taking on the "mantle" of the hero, or it being some kind of destined role, but that's not what tamashī means. It's used pretty similarly to how "soul" is used in the West, and its compounds--霊魂 reikon, for example--are used to translate "soul" in Japanese translations of the Bible.
Meanwhile, Ganondorf is described as being 復活 (fukkatsu, "revived, resurrected"), so Ganondorf dies but is brought back by evil magic, or the power of darkness, or whatever. This is explicit in Wind Waker, where Ganondorf talks about the Gerudo Desert and Hyrule and why he wanted to conquer the world. He's lying--in Ocarina of Time after Ganondorf has won, the Gerudo still live harsh lives in the desert--but it shows he's the same person.
So the answer is that all Zeldas are different people but members of the same bloodline, all Links are reincarnations of the original Hero, and there is only one Ganondorf who keeps returning.
Oh boy.
So the idea of a race that's innately evil has a ton of problems for a variety of reasons, but they show up in video games all the time because it's an easy way to have endless hordes of bad guys for the player to kill without feeling bad. This is part of why zombies are a popular enemy, because there's no moral dimension to killing them. They want to eat you and they're already dead: remove the head or destroy the brain.
With the Red Moon, Breath of the Wild implies that the various enemies are nothing more than puppets of the Calamity's will, eternally plaguing the people of Hyrule as they are reincarnated by Ganon's power every time they die. But at the same time, there are some parts of the game that undermine this. Bokoblins and lizalfos build camps and homes (skull-shaped ones) for themselves. Lynels have enough material culture to forge metal weapons. One of the Zora monuments talks about a lizalfos army, led by a tactically-adept general, who attacked the Zora Homeland and nearly conquered them. And BotW Memory 8 shows that lynel and moblins have an existence independent of the Calamity, even if the Calamity causes them to get more hostile.
Other games confuse the issue even further. In the original Legend of Zelda, there's a passive moblin who says "Grumble grumble" and stands aside when Link gives him some meat. In Wind Waker, blins can build and crew ships and even submarines, and man the searchlights on Demon Beast Island (Eng: "Forsaken Fortress"). There's even a moblin who writes a love letter to one of the kidnapped girls, albeit one with obviously evil overtones. But despite all of this, the vast majority of blins, lynels, lizalfos, and so on are implacable enemies of the people of Hyrule.
There's a reason for this. In Skyward Sword, there's a demon (魔族 mazoku) living in Skyloft named Morusego (Eng: Bateaux) who wants to become human. He's compassionate and honorable and sincere, but he's still a demon. His very presence on Skyloft causes keese and chuchus to appear and makes the normally-docile remlits turn feral at night. So the presence of demons is itself a malign influence, and maybe it has a greater effect on certain peoples than others.
So, here's what I might go with. The various enemies in Hyrule are creations of the demons in the distant past and subject to demonic influence that causes them to become hostile when there are demons nearby. This is not a unique vulnerability, since the guards in Link to the Past were also controlled by demonic magic, and the various examples in the games show that some of the "monster" races can resist this influence. So while there's generations of history and prejudice in the past, the modern era I'm writing in has less of it. Here's a bit I wrote:
Stal, poes, ghini, and so on are animated dead and so this entire question doesn't arise the same way.
An unspecified amount. The Oracle games and Tri Force Heroes are the only games with real nations that are outside the bounds of Hyrule, and only the Oracle games really have functioning countries. Tri Force Heroes' Dress Kingdom (Eng: Hytopia) wasn't terrible, but it's much harder to make a country entirely based on fashion to the point of being named "Dress Kingdom" into a realistic society.
Hyrule isn't the whole world, though. In Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild, it's obvious that Gorons and Zora and the other tribes are self-governing. In Twilight Princess, Link's village doesn't even consider itself part of Hyrule. So I doubt the story I'm writing will go to other countries, but they're out there.
My answer is
The timeline is bullshit, all the games made after it was published try their best to ignore it, and that's the right idea. Unless the games have an explicit connection, the way that Wind Waker is explicitly set after Ocarina of Time, there's no reason to try to connect them. That way lies madness.
That's all for now. Probably more in the future!
What is Link's family name?
The question is slightly broader than that, because no one in any of the games has a family name except two of the named kings of Hyrule, both of whom have the surname "Hyrule": Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule and Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule. Even Zelda is never given a surname, she's only referred to as "Princess Zelda of Hyrule" (ハイラル王国のゼルダ姫). "Dragmire" as Ganondorf's surname was made up by Nintendo of America and appears only in the manual, nowhere in the games. "Smith" as Link's surname in The Minish Cap is a localization thing and not present in the Japanese version.
Obviously, the reason for this is that in a video game with a couple dozen characters, no one needs a surname to distinguish them, but in a story where there are more people even if they never appear, and where technology and social development is a bit more like our 19th century, people would have surnames for record-keeping purposes.
One guide might be the kings' surnames. Breath of the Wild says that the power to seal the darkness (退魔の力, taima no chikara) is passed from mother to daughter in the royal line, so tracing matrilineal descent would be vital for maintaining the security of the Kingdom of Hyrule. If King Rhoam has the surname Hyrule, he must have married into the royal line, and if the royal line, who bear the blood of the goddess, trace descent matrilinearly, the nobility probably do too. And they probably make everyone do it for tax purposes. So Link would be "Link, son of [mother's name]." In a few generations it'd probably be bureaucratically standardized into something resembling our own surnames, but that'll work for now.
For the other tribes, the Gerudo obviously have matrilineal descent. If the Zora reproduce like fish, they might have "clutch names," where everyone from the same clutch of eggs has the same surname. There isn't enough information about Rito names to hazard a guess, and no one even knows how Gorons reproduce. There are Goron children and brothers in the games, and Gorons and Gerudo can have children, but all Gorons shown in the games are men (or present as men). And the smaller tribes I might use, like the Zuna from Four Swords Adventures or the Wind Tribe or Pikkoru from Minish Cap have even less shown about them.
But for Link, "Link, son of [mother's name]" works.
Are all Links the same?
Yes and no. Skyward Sword talks about the Blood of the Goddess and the Soul of the Hero (女神の血と勇者の魂, megami no chi to yūsha no tamashī), and Zelda and Link are each described to inherit or succeed (受け継ぐ, uketsugu) to the blood or the soul respectively. That implies that Zelda is a descendant of the ancient bloodline of the goddess and Link is a reincarnation of the Hero.
Some people prefer to read this as Link taking on the "mantle" of the hero, or it being some kind of destined role, but that's not what tamashī means. It's used pretty similarly to how "soul" is used in the West, and its compounds--霊魂 reikon, for example--are used to translate "soul" in Japanese translations of the Bible.
Meanwhile, Ganondorf is described as being 復活 (fukkatsu, "revived, resurrected"), so Ganondorf dies but is brought back by evil magic, or the power of darkness, or whatever. This is explicit in Wind Waker, where Ganondorf talks about the Gerudo Desert and Hyrule and why he wanted to conquer the world. He's lying--in Ocarina of Time after Ganondorf has won, the Gerudo still live harsh lives in the desert--but it shows he's the same person.
So the answer is that all Zeldas are different people but members of the same bloodline, all Links are reincarnations of the original Hero, and there is only one Ganondorf who keeps returning.
Are the blins, lizalfos, and so on innately evil?
Oh boy.
So the idea of a race that's innately evil has a ton of problems for a variety of reasons, but they show up in video games all the time because it's an easy way to have endless hordes of bad guys for the player to kill without feeling bad. This is part of why zombies are a popular enemy, because there's no moral dimension to killing them. They want to eat you and they're already dead: remove the head or destroy the brain.
With the Red Moon, Breath of the Wild implies that the various enemies are nothing more than puppets of the Calamity's will, eternally plaguing the people of Hyrule as they are reincarnated by Ganon's power every time they die. But at the same time, there are some parts of the game that undermine this. Bokoblins and lizalfos build camps and homes (skull-shaped ones) for themselves. Lynels have enough material culture to forge metal weapons. One of the Zora monuments talks about a lizalfos army, led by a tactically-adept general, who attacked the Zora Homeland and nearly conquered them. And BotW Memory 8 shows that lynel and moblins have an existence independent of the Calamity, even if the Calamity causes them to get more hostile.
Other games confuse the issue even further. In the original Legend of Zelda, there's a passive moblin who says "Grumble grumble" and stands aside when Link gives him some meat. In Wind Waker, blins can build and crew ships and even submarines, and man the searchlights on Demon Beast Island (Eng: "Forsaken Fortress"). There's even a moblin who writes a love letter to one of the kidnapped girls, albeit one with obviously evil overtones. But despite all of this, the vast majority of blins, lynels, lizalfos, and so on are implacable enemies of the people of Hyrule.
There's a reason for this. In Skyward Sword, there's a demon (魔族 mazoku) living in Skyloft named Morusego (Eng: Bateaux) who wants to become human. He's compassionate and honorable and sincere, but he's still a demon. His very presence on Skyloft causes keese and chuchus to appear and makes the normally-docile remlits turn feral at night. So the presence of demons is itself a malign influence, and maybe it has a greater effect on certain peoples than others.
So, here's what I might go with. The various enemies in Hyrule are creations of the demons in the distant past and subject to demonic influence that causes them to become hostile when there are demons nearby. This is not a unique vulnerability, since the guards in Link to the Past were also controlled by demonic magic, and the various examples in the games show that some of the "monster" races can resist this influence. So while there's generations of history and prejudice in the past, the modern era I'm writing in has less of it. Here's a bit I wrote:
They had grown up on the old stories about heroes and knights and danger, when a king still ruled in Hyrule, protected by the knights, and the lizalfos and blins and lynel were a major threat. When the stal still came out at night. When people were vigilant against the return of the Calamity. When every journey was an adventure and hidden treasure awaited for those daring, brave, and lucky enough to find it.That's what life was like, but in modern times there's probably a few blins or lizalfos working in Hyrule. A lynel working in a factory, using his ability to generate flames to help smelt iron. With no demons around, their personalities are their own, and they're people like everyone else, even if a lot of Hylians don't see it that way.
Stal, poes, ghini, and so on are animated dead and so this entire question doesn't arise the same way.
How big is the rest of the world?
An unspecified amount. The Oracle games and Tri Force Heroes are the only games with real nations that are outside the bounds of Hyrule, and only the Oracle games really have functioning countries. Tri Force Heroes' Dress Kingdom (Eng: Hytopia) wasn't terrible, but it's much harder to make a country entirely based on fashion to the point of being named "Dress Kingdom" into a realistic society.
Hyrule isn't the whole world, though. In Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild, it's obvious that Gorons and Zora and the other tribes are self-governing. In Twilight Princess, Link's village doesn't even consider itself part of Hyrule. So I doubt the story I'm writing will go to other countries, but they're out there.
Where does Hylian Nights take place in the timeline?
My answer is
The timeline is bullshit, all the games made after it was published try their best to ignore it, and that's the right idea. Unless the games have an explicit connection, the way that Wind Waker is explicitly set after Ocarina of Time, there's no reason to try to connect them. That way lies madness.That's all for now. Probably more in the future!
no subject
Date: 2019-May-17, Friday 01:46 (UTC)EDIT: I need a Zelda icon now.... Also! A bit off-topic: I once cross-stitched Princess Peach. I have no idea what I did with it. I made the pattern on the computer, and it is long gone. I made a patter for Zelda once. Hopefully, my old dA account might have it. *goes off to look*
no subject
Date: 2019-May-19, Sunday 22:53 (UTC)