When they wake up in the Shrine of Resurrection, all our player character is given is a name. Yes, a mission, but even that comes from the name. Link. With it the assumptions, the expectations.

The patriarch guides them through the world, teaching us before we go. But, before he leaves, the Old Man laments for the loss of his daughter, the princess we once knew long ago.

Each memory reveals a moment from the life of a brilliant young girl that now only lives on through the blue flowers growing in the wild fields of Hyrule. Most painful of all is watching her be silenced by her father: the Monarch, the patriarch, the Old Man. He won’t ever express that regret to her though, he won’t be able to. She’s gone. So he tells Link.

All that is left from that past is a scarred world, and the scarred body of a boy trying to make sense of it all. Friends, lovers, family, all lost to the dark transformation Ganon forced onto them. Onto us.

Yet hidden beneath the darkness, like a fulcrum to the world Link inhabits with their body, is Zelda. The memories come back. It makes more sense, this world that we were already in. Ultimately it is Zelda that staved off total destruction of the world, of our body. It is Zelda that has the power to rid this incarnation of darkness from our world, and now the ability to express it. It is Zelda who defeats Ganon.

I, the hero of time. I, the wielder of the sword that seals the darkness. I, princess of Hyrule.