Yet Another TotK Timeline Placement Theory

[Ryuu Kage Desu]

A now outdated note, since the current official timeline contains no such note.

Additionally, throwing an asterisk at the end saying how much your chronology sucks is... not good.

Typical. Have fun ignoring information that doesn't align to your view. The statement goes without saying, at this point, with how many official timelines there have been, and with the creators going on record countless times explicitly stating that they want fans to create their own.

 

[Guinea]

While we do get that text, as I had pointed out earlier, we do see evidence, in game, that not all of the Zora had changed into the Rito. We can translate menu items, in WW, that tell us there are still Zora present. And, there are items that can be found in later games of that timeline that still indicate that they are around. So, we know from in game information, that not all Zora were changed. Plus, a population of Zora becoming Rito, and a Rito that is quite different from what we see in BotW & TotK, does not preclude the existence of a Rito people before that.

I never stopped to wonder exactly which race of Zora became the Rito. Was it the Sea Zora or the River Zora? Hmm...

 

[Guinea]

Actually now that I think about it... it's gotta be the River Zora that became the Rito. You actually see a Sea Zora as a sage in WW, and there aren't any River Zora in BotW or TP but you do see Rito in BotW and Rito on the mural in TP, and both of those games have Sea Zora.

So... I guess at some point, River Zora become bird people.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

A refounding makes significantly more sense than a fourth timeline branch, I fully agree. Post-DT or AT are the obvious contenders, but we need parallel events or a merged timeline for it to truly make sense, whether refounding or pre-SS. Pre-SS makes Ocarina of Time a narrative nightmare; post-AT makes Wind Waker a narrative nightmare; post-DT makes the most sense but the missing Triforce and Z2 infrastructure is inexplicable. At the end of Z2, the kingdom is actually well-off, has multiple settlements, a complete Triforce and no need for a refounding.

That's fair points about the ending for Zelda 2, but a refounding could still make sense considering the time gaps we're dealing with. It's 10k years between just the last Calamity Ganon attack where the Divine Beasts were deployed, and the Calamity Ganon attack 100 years prior to Link waking up in the Shrine of Resurrection in BotW.

The time between Rauru's refounding of Hyrule and the Calamity Ganon attack of legend is probably as long if not longer, and then the gap between Zelda 2 and the refounding could be as long as well. The timeline page in TotK Masterworks, which was translated to English last month, even seems to lay out Zonai history in a way that implies that hundreds of thousands of years elapse before Rauru shows up. Stuff like the book suggesting Hylians are a group of Zonai that stayed on the surface when the others migrated to the sky, those surface Zonai evolving to look as Hylians do, and then eras of Zonai prospering, followed by some extinction level event forcing the sky Zonai to return to the surface. These sorts of things happen over the course of extremely long lengths of time. In fact, it's completely possible with this info that as events in ancient Hyrule were taking place the sky zonai were in their era of prospering in the sky somewhere far from Hyrule.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Ah, fair enough. That's the updated official timeline as presented by Nintendo at Nintendo Live over in Sydney, Australia.

Hence they are the current rules.

I just want to chime in here

That timeline from Nintendo Live is the same timeline that has been on the Zelda Portal since it launched in 2018. It doesn't update anything, BotW was divided off like that for a long time now and people have argued for years whether that divider means BotW is it's own timeline, or if it just connects to the end of one of the three timeline branches.

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