Prologue: For the darkness

Let us start from the beginning, with the basics. The current princess, the only royal child once more, was born on a winter's eve. The frail queen lost her life that night, with not a single drop of her listless blood tainting nature's pure white snow. The child herself grew into a quiet, but inquisitive child, loved by many. Or so it seemed. For even at this young age, the nobles had only lust for a powerful marriage in their eyes, imagining the fantasy-fulfilling woman she'd become in but a few years. In time, parts of their sinful whispers became reality, as time transformed the young princess grew into a gentle young woman. Nature had graced her well, it seemed, for she had the bright blue eyes of an ocean she'd never seen and the golden hair of famous ancestors long dead. Her figure was slender and not as full in some places, but it was still graceful and kept far from scarring activities. This princess, this Zelda, seemed to be full of life and love for life, despite her quiet and composed demeanor. Yet even with all these blessings, for no reason anyone could see, a foul shadow would at random times befall her, tainting her thoughts with pain and seemingly needless cynicism. "It is an illness of the mind" the doctors would say, in hushed tones to her father. Powerful as he was, even the mighty king could not banish this dark infliction of his daughter's mind, and so the princess was left to cope the best she could with her mental affliction. The information was locked away, and word of her mind's curse was kept behind the castle's grey stone walls, whispered only to the fountains in the gardens below.

One summer month brought word of political unrest. It seemed that the Gerudo in the deserts were stirring; their activities were highly suspicious. "How dare they claw at our blessings with their filthy hands? How dare they grasp for our pure waters and demean our saint's names?" the Hylian people cried out, though the Gerudo had not actually been seen with their fingers on the stone walls quite yet. Given the two countries' history, however, this outreach of supposed blasphemies was taken as a given, and both sides reacted violently. Whispers soon reached the Hylian streets, filled with fabricated rumors of vile acts the damned Thief King had supposedly committed recently. Word was spread of abuse that 'a friend of a friend' had heard of, or someone with 'a cousin in the army' would speak of vile defilements of the human body he had committed on the Goddess' green earth. "For is there not a reason water will not reach them?" the people would exclaim, as they already imagined the beats of war drums darkening the ever-greying skies.

So it was inevitable that the two sides would clash. No one was clean; human beings of both sides often found themselves being visited upon by shadows in the night, who hoped to catch glimpses of defiled ground to use against their religious enemy. Religion was quickly brought into it, and again both sides were defiled by this too. Each cited the Goddess' influence as a sign of their own status as a victim in this never-ending bitter war.

So it came to pass that on one raining summer's eve, the Kings would be moved into place. The perceived black king moved to the perceived white king's territory, to fight their immediately foreseen battles with politics and words instead of poison and shed blood. Many cried "Words are useless; strike the blasphemers down now!" as negotiations took place.

This brings us to this raining summer's eve, where the two Kings spoke, in the presence of a princess who was both damned and divine.