Disclaimer: I don't own the Legend of Zelda.
Three little anecdotes, three spontaneous increases in entropy, three musings into three sad, sorry truths about the world.
Please note: If you would like to debate any of these "truths" with me at greater length, please do NOT debate in any review you might leave. Please leave a PRIVATE MESSAGE saying you wish to debate, instead of a writing a review concentrating solely on what is not even the main issue of each chapter. Thank you.
This is the story of King Ganondorf Dragmire, told during the timeline of Ocarina of Time.
Increase in Entropy 1 of 3:
Dirge of Power
When I was born, I lived amid the merciless dunes of the desert. The arid, sand-filled winds tore at my people, morning, noon, and night.
Our tribe was small, and tight-knit by necessity. The hunters and gardeners, craftspeople and caretakers and leaders all needed to work together with a cooperation unparalleled in order to survive. Should any one person fall, all the rest would feel the burden.
All were female save for me. As the sole male born to the tribe once a century, I would be next in line to assume leadership of the tribe. My two godmothers watched over it during my youth, two accomplished witches adept at elemental and dark magic.
But despite my kingship, we would all be almost equals. I suffered the same hardships as the rest of my tribe; I fought for my food and my life, I learned the skills needed to live on next to nothing, I shared the happiness and pains with every other woman in the tribe. Though I would take the role of leader, this was something symbolic more than anything. I would have to listen to each and every voice and make decisions based on them, and then do more than my part to see those decisions enacted. I would be a general of war and a common soldier, a craftsman, huntsman, and caretaker, a ruler and my own subject.
Then, in the east, came war.
We fought only to defend what little we had, what those of the East would not bother to take except to lay claim to it in title. That enraged me more than anything; that in the East, on fertile plains where no one should want of food and adequate shelter and a feeling of safety none of my people ever had the chance to feel once in their life amidst the desert wilds, man had room to be greedy, narcissistic, and unequal. The hierarchies filled me with a deep, dark fury; social restraints meant to better the lucky few, stronger of will! Even with all these abundant resources of fertile land, fresh sources of water, and a mild climate, many people, subjugated by the few, want of food. Those few, who sent the many to war to gain every more resources they could put to waste, pitting them against enemy after enemy with an identical goal. Drowning the fields of sweet green in showers of blood!
Perhaps the slaughter would eventually be for the better. Weakened and lacking in numbers, the greedy would not be able to control the masses they ruled with an iron fist. Towards the end of their fighting, I led my people onwards from our western canyons leading to the desert to the threshold of their battlefields, to put the fighting to an end, even if by a show of force. The races of the Hyrulean valley, the Gorons, the Zoras, the Hylians, and the Humans, all came together to sign a treaty and lay down their arms. They came together in the center of the wasteland they hew, surrounded by dying men and dying flames and dying fields, to work together and breathe life into it all once again.
And I was naïve enough to think they would do it correctly.
They just made things worse.
Instead of realizing how weak their forces were, and opting for a more egalitarian society, the other tribes pooled their resources together and voted to unify the land they fought over under the flag of the Hylian King. Once again the pompous royal standard was raised, the castles and palaces rebuilt better than ever, the tribes repopulated... and for the common people, it was almost worse for them than before the war. Their situation hadn't changed much, except that the people in it had multiplied.
And they included my people in it. My land became a new province of the Nation of Hyrule, ruled by a simpering, exorbitant King out of touch with the majority of his people, making me the representative of my tribe. And we were forced to pay tribute, from what little we had.
I tried so hard to convince the Hylian court that the current regime was unfair, ineffective, corrupt. The royalty, nobles, and even better-off peasants gave me strange looks, muttering behind my back about the strange, alien nature of my own culture.
Words would not work. I was left only with force.
The coup on Hyrule Castle spilled more blood than I would have liked. I honestly wished that the King would simply surrender to me. After all, I was going to usher in an age of enlightenment, in which cooperation between peoples would be more important than anything, in which a leader's only role was to coordinate, and not command. A simple surrender would have spared the King the fate of death and given him the chance to accept a new role in life, one where he was just as free, just as equal, as every other man, and just as happy.
The Princess thought to thwart my plan by sending that green-garbed boy to retrieve the Spiritual Stones before I could. But instead, he has opened the door for me, and led the way. With the power of the Triforce, I can make this dream of mine a reality.
And when I touch it, the world goes dark.
The fertile fields become wastelands, as bare and lifeless as my own desert dunes. Monstrosities appear on the plains and terrify and kill the people there. The rivers freeze, the volcano rages uncontrollably. The sky darkens perpetually, and the people despair.
How can this be? My intentions are good, for the betterment of all, despite how I have been forced to enact them. The little pockets of rebellion still loyal to the greedy former king had to be quelled, but how can that make me an evil person? I have everyone's best interests at heart! I am a kind, benevolent king!
…
Aren't I?
When a man seeks pure equality he creates inequality.
The age of nomadic, migratory societies was therefore the golden age of man, and the dream of today's common man. By the nature of a civilization, a ruler, and hence, a ruling class, must inevitably rise to keep the order of the civilization. Thus, a government. In any civilization that can flourish and not just survive, a pure anarchical, communistic, or Utopian order is rendered impossible to achieve, both by civilization's need for a ruling class to maintain the order and the need and greed of man to profit from what he does.