The Tragedy of Ganondorf: the Burden of the King

by WearinOTheGreen

The story we know of as the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was actually a much simplified version of the actual events surrounding the time. I try to unpack what actually happened, starting with the fact that Ganondorf was not the evil character we know him to be. There is no villain in this version of the story, only events, reactions, and historical trajectories.

1. Prologue

Ah, so you've heard it then already, the Legend of Zelda. The one involving her Highness, the warrior Link, and the mysterious Ocarina of Time? The version that Nintendo story writers used to create their version of the history as a game? So you must be familiar with how pure the Princess was, how brave young Link was as both a child and young adult, and how evil and power-hungry the much-maligned Ganondorf was. Doesn't that story sit so nicely in your mind? The story of triumph of good over evil, of bravery over cowardice, of the finality that once Link and Zelda banished Ganondorf to the Sacred Realm, peace could at last reign everlasting throughout all time? But of course we know that's not true, because there are many Legends of Zelda. And there always seems to be a time of calamity that precedes the Legends. Why does this evil Ganondorf always come back? Why is Hyrule so cyclically caught in the claws of some dangerous monster, like a pendulum swinging back and forth or a floating driftwood on the waves of the ocean?

Would you believe me if I told you that the true story behind this Legend is not so simple? Or comfortable? That Ganondorf was not the evil, power-hungry king as we know him, and Link and Princess Zelda not so brave? Or maybe Link and Princess Zelda were indeed brave, but Ganondorf was as well? That in reality there was no villain to the story? No unified evil force that brought the destruction upon Hyrule? What if I said that a series of cascading negative circumstances, mostly environmental and progressing for many decades, were actually behind the events of this history, and our collective human need to create heroes and villains out of any situation twisted another complicated historical event into a neat, convenient, and morally acceptable Legend?

If you can't accept that another version of this story exists from what you've been told by Nintendo, then there is no need to continue reading this. You have already rejected what I am presenting, and I think it is a waste of both of our times of you try to read and process what I am saying since you have already arrived at your conclusion regardless of what combination of words and sentences and facts I have laid out.

If you are willing to question your assumptions about the characters you feel you know so well, the actions they took or didn't take, and make the story a bit more complicated, uncomfortable, but ultimately more true and complete, then I present my version of the events that I believe to be as accurate a history as any presented so far. I claim it is true, and you can claim otherwise. No one who was there remains alive today to set the story straight, so all I can offer is what I know from the descendants of those there that I've talked to, the accounts I've read from various sources, mostly non-Hylian, and my understanding of what emotionally comforting alterations humans make when simplifying a complicated history into a succinct morality tale we can teach to our kids.