How I'd do a Legend of Zelda: Linkle's Story - The Heroine of Time

To start out, the nature of the Fallen Timeline is that it is the traditional Mythic/Fantasy one, it tells the original tales of the Legend of Zelda. Originally it was filled out quite a bit until at last newer, shinier baubles caught Miyamoto and the rest of his staff’s eyes and the old games such as Link to the Past lost their luster so to speak.

Who could blame them? They had two other great timelines to give us and an ancient past to fill out in terms of lore.

Still though, I’ve always helt some measure of regret over the fact that the Fallen timeline was somewhat abandoned. What is more is that I’ve also always felt Linkle to be a character who presents a great story-telling possibility. Sure I know a great many people are afraid of a female Link story, and sure I get it. But still it is possible to tell such a story without going ‘woke’.

It is possible to tell a story of this adorable, brave and fearless young girl all while paying homage to the classic Zelda stories of old.

The difference is that in my view not only should Linkle be treated as an oddity but her rebirth as a girl should be countered by the rebirth of Zelda as a boy. Ganon should remain the same as he is after all an ancient evil who doesn’t always change but also tends to possess others.

There should also be references to old lore, to old ideas and also see renovation done on some points. I know this sounds scary but just let me try my hand here.

Okay, first things first, the young Prince will obviously not be called ‘Zelda’ but he should still possess the spirit of Hylia. We’ll just call him for the moment ‘Prince Hylios’ if only for sanity’s sake and so that we don’t use a girl’s name, and honestly his story should be different from that of Zelda’s by nature. Zelda usually comes into the story already possessing a great deal of wisdom, but let’s have this youth earn his wisdom.

As to Linkle, we’ll have her story start out along slightly different lines as Hyrule Warriors has her reference her grandmother as having always told her that she is the ‘Chosen Hero’ so to speak, and as passing down to her the garments of the Hero of Time and a Gold Pocket Watch. These should all be kept, as these all serve to differentiate this incarnation of the Hero of Hyrule, and helps to flesh out Linkle as a character.

She’s a person with a great deal of love in her heart, and who should be shown to idolize her grandmother. We’ll have it said that she still has her mother and father, because its boring always having orphans.

At the start of the story, there should be emphasis put on the fact that Hyrule is in the midst of a civil war. One that is between an over-grasping uncle whom we’ll call the ‘Duke of Hylia’, imagine the Duke of Albany from Scottish history.

He’s already driven his older brother to an early grave and now seeks to kill his nephew. Opposed to him is the Princess Zelda, now she’s known by this name because all the women of the royal family are called Zelda, but this one seeks the throne for herself and lacks the wisdom of her ancestresses. She seeks to grasp the throne, and opposes not only her uncle but her brother even as she seeks to dominate the regency council she was named leader of.

The Feudal lords have jokeyed for position and the first battles between the Duke and the Princess’ loyal friend the King of the Zora (whom bear the appearance they have in Link to the Past), I’m thinking the battle will have taken place in the Hylian Plains and would be a monumentally big battle.

One that fixes in everyone’s minds the horror of war but also solidifies the resolve of the people of Hyrule to slug it out.

At the same time, Linkle’s grandmother falls sick as her father, a common guard for the royal family who was originally a guard to the castle, participated in the battle and disappeared. His mother thus as said worried herself sick, and may not recover so that Linkle who adores her and fears for her father, leaves the apple farm in her mother’s care and hurries off to the nearby Castle that she might plead for aid for both.

When she goes to ask for a physician and search party, she is turned away and decides to try her hand at the royal court is rejected but then insulted decides to slip in anyways.

Slipping by unnoticed, it is nightfall by the time she arrives within the castle only to stumble upon assassins (who should be Sheikahs, as they’ve been divided by the civil war also) sent to kill the under-aged King Hylios. Deciding to kill her, lest she should alert the rest of the Castle, she defeats them using a dagger her father gave her and plunges on ahead to rescue the King.

She finds him not in his bedchambers and so dashes back down only to stumble upon him and his Sheikah bodyguard Impa, in the midst of preparing their escape. Impa hands over the young King’s protection to Linkle and tells them to get away while she buys time.

This Linkle and Hylios would do though the King is reluctant. Hylios once they’re en route insists that they take refuge in the Temple of Time, hardly able to manage the young boy Linkle ends up forced to accompany him as he dashes off on his own. Thinking they might find refuge there, he behaves derisively of Linkle who is four years his senior (he is twelve or thirteen).

It turns out that the assassins aren’t concerned about sullying consecrated land, and so Linkle who is without any choices plunges forward to grab the Sword from the Pedestal and uses it to kill the assassins. Amazed the King is awestruck, and cannot bring himself to believe what he has seen.

Refusing to let her go without him around, as he considers the Master Sword a royal artefact, he accompanies her on the ensuing journey. Trained as a Wizrobe (mage) he will act as a kind of sidekick to Linkle, who will fight her way through a desolated landscape divided by bloody civil war, in search initially for the sacred fire of Death-Mountain, sacred waters from Lake Hylia and a sacred Deku nut in the forest for a cure for Linkle’s grandmother. Along the way on this particular part of the Quest, Linkle and Hylios find out that the Duke sent someone to capture the Princess of the Zora and to corrupt Lord Jabu Jabu against the Zora.

Because of this the two had to enter Jabu Jabu and kill the infection within him, thus purifying him, even as they then moved to Lake Hylia itself to rescue the captured princess, whereupon they entered a water shrine rescued her and restored her to her father who gave over as said the Sacred Water.

As to Death Mountain, as the Gorons have elected to support the Duke, the one who sent out someone to mess things up there and kill their King was the Princess Zelda. The result was Linkle and Hylios working together to stop this impulsive plan and to also plunge into Death Mountain and the temple there to slay the corrupted pheonix guardian of the mountain who takes on the shape upon its death of a large egg.

Thus we see that both sides are mucking around, but there’s something strange as both locations had a cloaked figure by the name of Daganhim carrying out the orders of both sides. It also happens that Linkle tries to once she has the medicine necessary to save her grandmother drop off Hylios off at the Gerudos.

But once there she finds out that they support the Princess Zelda, along the way they thwart an attempt to assassinate Linkle, help thwart an invasion by the Duke and also stop his attempts to corrupt a local guardian there also. In the end the heiress of the Gerudos gets a crush on Hylios, who isn’t too keen on her and has mixed feelings about the Gerudos even as he stops insulting Linkle and stops sulking about things at this time.

It is as they go to return to Hyrule proper, as the Gerudos feel nervous about keeping the King with them, and propose to reconcile him with his sister. Thinking this the end of the journey in spite of how it was Zelda who screwed up with the Gorons and the Lost Woods, Linkle accompanies the royal escort. Once in Zelda’s castle (yes she should have her own), they discover that yes she did those things but that she has agreed to the meeting to try to entrap her brother and slay him out of jealousy.

She wishes to be Queen, as she views her name and her status as a royal princess as reason enough for her to be ruler in place of her ‘spoiled’ brother who is little more than a haughty book worm.

Hurt by this Hylios, hardly responds and it is Linkle who slaps and scolds this Zelda breaking royal protocol even as other Sheikahs arrive to try to slay them all, on behalf of the Duke.

They are fought off but in the chaos Hylios turns up missing and Linkle who has rescued Zelda, decides to hide her since she’s no longer safe with Impa who arrived mid-fight to help out. Impa agrees to take Zelda to Linkle’s family’s apple-farm while Linkle will hurry off to rescue Hylios.

Severely humbled and distraught at the death of her household servants, and several of her bodyguards Zelda agrees to go somewhat meekly. She then is faced with the devastated landscape that her misdeeds has created, even as Linkle plunges away rescuing Hylios just as he is taken to a temple, by Daganhim.

Daganhim is revealed to be a servant of Ganon, and is slain on the altar of the desecrated temple by Linkle. Daganhim though has not suceeded in re-introducing Ganon to the world, but calls out to his twin brother to help him do this.

Linkle and Hylios leave the temple but are confronted by the Duke’s men who are handily defeated, with Linkle deciding to take the King to her farm also where she discovers Zelda’s been captured by the Duke and the farm was devastated with Linkle’s family having been hidden in the nearby woods, with the Skull Kid whom Linkle befriended during her time in the Lost Woods. Impa is mortally wounded and dies, to the grief of our heroes.

Linkle and Hylios bury her with full respect, then at the insistence of the King rush off to Castle-Hylia to find and rescue Zelda, who has been mistaken for the Princess of legends. Busting in, they will do so with the aid of the Gerudos, Gorons, Zoras and local farmers and such who have had it with the civil war.

Storming the castle interior they find the Duke absent, from the main hall only to find him in the Chapel where he and Daganhim’s twin seek to sacrifice her to Ganon. As only the blood of a royal member of the house of Hyrule can revive him into the world of Hyrule.

Zelda is chained to the altar and is amazed to see her brother and his protector eager to rescue her. For his part the Duke is unable to complete the ritual, but accepting a dark sword from the servant of Ganon he becomes it seems possessed by an even greater darkness, and does battle with the heroes.

The ensuing battle is heated, with Daganhim’s twin slain in the fighting by Hylios (in spite of his pleas for mercy as Zelda’s former advisor), while the Duke is mortally wounded by the Master Sword. Evil, though he is as his blood falls onto the altar it works to revive Ganon, even as the Duke dies laughing and sneering at the heroes as his Master re-enters the world of Hyrule.

It happens that Ganon re-enters the world and is stunned to find that the Hero of Time at this time is now the ‘Heroine’ of Time. Amused and thinking her and the ‘spirit of Zelda’ weaker, he unveils his Triforce of Power, which serves to awaken the Triforces of Valour and Wisdom in Linkle and Hylios respectively, with Ganon addressing them as Link and Zelda instead of their other names.

In the three-part battle, Linkle and Hylios team up to slay the Demon King, with Hylios often blinding him with light and Linkle shooting him with arrows blessed by Hylios (Light Arrows), then the two seek to use a blessed chain of the Gerudos to restrain him during short intervals, so that Linkle can slash at him with the Master-Sword.

It is however just as the battle turns foul that Linkle’s father appears among the common soldiers, revealing himself to have been injured for a time and to have when he heard of how his daughter had become a hero, plunged forward to join the army that was gathered to storm Castle Hylia. Throwing himself in the way of an attack intended for her, Hylios and Zelda he perishes, buying enough time for Linkle to hack off one of Ganon’s hands.

Blinded by pain, Ganon rears back just before Linkle plunges the Master Sword through his heart, killing him.

In the aftermath the Triforce of Power, Valour & Wisdom are released and gathered together, with Hylios gathering them together. His sister has the chance to seize them but refuses, recognizing her brother as her King, her heart having been moved and changed by his continuous rescues of her.

Hylios full of compassion for Linkle and remembering Impa calls upon the Triforce to revive all those lost in the past weeks (the adventure has been a year long, and those dead for longer than three months cannot be revived in this version of events).

The only one not revived is the Duke who pledged his soul to evil. Linkle and her dad are reunited, and they all escort the Master Sword back to its pedestal, and then the Heroine of Hyrule back to her family apple-farm where they discover ‘Granny’ to have been healed with the old woman embracing her son and granddaughter with sincere love and joy. Impa for her part ends up thanking Linkle quite heartily for having brought the siblings back together.

It is as Zelda who claimed the regency returns power to her brother, who grants her their uncle’s former domains that Linkle goes to take her leave with her father (who has been by this time knighted for his heroics).

Linkle is stopped as the regency-ending ceremony ends, with the King seeking to stutter out an invitation for her to come live in the castle. Not being particularly intelligent about this sort of thing Linkle inadvertently shoots him down, which causes Impa to tease him until he in true Edward Elric fashion demands that Linkle marry him when the time comes for him to come of age.

Linkle is amazed, and not taking the whole thing seriously (she still thinks him a little kid) agrees if in an amused fashion.

In the first epilogue it mentions that Hylios would spend four years touring the south of his Kingdom and being fostered with his sister the new Duchess of Hylia. It would be upon his return that he would indeed take up Linkle as a bride, with her grandmother living long enough to see the ceremony.

The second epilogue would show Cia observing things and looking on in ever growing frustration and envy, as she is steadily corrupted.

Next time we’ll be tackling the Child Time-Line again, this time with Link rather than a Linkle incarnation of the Spirit of the Hero, and a proper Zelda as this story was just a semi-step off the beaten path and attempt to do things slightly differently.