Zant

He couldn't believe it at first, he was hopping mad. How could Midna, the little sneak, betray him like this? Her own family. Ok, yes they were only distant cousins, half a dozen or so times removed, but still. She had been his friend, and to betray him like this. They both had equal rights to the throne. After the last king had died the council of elders had taken over until the king's heirs were old enough, then they would vote on who should be the next ruler. The voting was a mere formality, it had always been. Yes Zant and Midna's relation to the king were both equally distant so on paper either could be next in line. But Zant was the eldest, by at least a couple of months. And he had prepared for this role, he had plans. He'd spent his whole life preparing, studying, waiting for this moment. After the old king passed, Zant had gotten serious about it. He straightened his posture, deepened his voice, threw out his chest when he spoke. He covered his malformed hands with long sleeves. He was the perfect model of kingship.

Midna didn't even want the crown until was thrust upon her, she had planned nothing. She hadn't gone to the lengths Zant had. If the elders knew half of what she got up to, they never would have chosen her. And now she clutched the crown greedily, acting as if it was her birthright, her duty to "protect her people", as if she cared about that before she was in the limelight. Who were they to decide that Zant was 'emotionally unstable'? How dare they suggest that his intentions to return the Twili to their rightful places among the light dwellers was 'absurd'?

He contested against the elders decision many times, arguing that he wanted to help his people. That the Twili shouldn't be punished for the mistakes of their ancestors. They claimed he spoke lies so they punished him. He struggled as best he could as two men held him down but that didn't stop them cutting his mouth and sewing it shut. Midna just let it happen. She didn't lift a finger to help, didn't even shed so much as one tear. That was the true end of their kinship.

After that they laughed him out of the court. Well he had stopped them laughing. Although...that hadn't gone as planned either. He hadn't meant to turn his people into...those things. It was a mistake, a horrible thing gone wrong when he plunged Hyrule into twilight. He tried to console himself with the idea that maybe it was what his god, the great Ganondorf, had wanted. The balance of light and twilight was off, he knew that, but he could fix it. He just had to finish what he had started. Secretly those monsters horrified him. It was their hands that disturbed him the most. The fingers were all wrong. The middle and ring fingers were short, while the index and little fingers were too long. Whenever he looked at them, he found himself glancing down at his own hands, at his...disfigurement. It was as if he had infected them. It was one thing to turn them into monsters, but this had an element of cruel irony, as if to suggest he was one of them. A monster.

It wasn't true of course. It had been the right thing to do, he knew that. For the greater good of his people. That didn't stop it going wrong in the end. How could Midna use such forbidden magic against him? It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. And that light dweller hero had no right to interfere. But Ganondorf would bring him back and Zant would prove that he could do better. He was worthy of a second chance.