[FONT=Verdana]Warning: Spoilers[/FONT]
The Zelda history begins with Ocarina of Time, progresses to Twilight Princess, and finally reaches The Wind Waker, which I personally believe is totally conclusive, and ends the Legend of Zelda.
In Ocarina of Time, we see the origins of the Hero of Time, and in The Wind Waker we see the dramatic end of that legend. My purpose in the following few paragraphs will be to try to piece together as accurate possible of a transition as I can between the few glimpses of Hylian society we have.
Following the destruction of Ganondorf’s Castle, 7 years after he ascended to the throne, the Hylian monarchy is restored to power. However, with their traditional city and seat of power destroyed, the Hylian people, currently living in Kakariko set out to build a new city with a new administrative center that will be more defensible than the old city.
To do this, they move South, and build an extremely deep canal surrounding their new castle, which encircles the castle fully, meaning that it will only be accessible via a few easily defensible bridges that can be drawn upward.
To enable this massive building project, the Hylians put up massive demands for labor, explosives, and refined rocks/materials from the Gorons. The Gorons maintained a positive balance of trade, which led to a large influx of precious metals into public Goron coffers. Because of this, the Goron are able to buy important manufactured goods from Hylian and Zora artisans. The Goron lifestyle also changes dramatically, becoming significantly less Spartan then previously, with new generations of Goron becoming less military oriented and more interested in new commercial dynamism.
The Hylian demands required to build the canal quickly overwhelmed antiquated Goron means of production. With a powerful and centralized leadership, the Goron quickly acquired Hylian engineers, who they studied from, and eventually trained their own engineers to modernize Goron society. The Hylian professionals, mainly engineers and scientists, began to dominate Kakariko village. These Hylians gradually began to adopt Goron ideas and customs, as their economy was focused wholly around fulfilling professional roles in Goron society. In many cases, Kakariko craftsmen refined materials imported from Goron, and served to export them to Castle Town and Zora communities, using an extremely extensive under-water canal built to link Hyrule lake to Kakariko.
The Goron mines became almost entirely automated, with electromagnetism powered by extreme geothermal heat making manpower unnecessary for mining. This allowed the Gorons to successfully meet Hylian demands for strong metals, as well as for explosives. The Kakariko community also developed rapidly, with new generations, born in Kakariko, associating themselves more with Goron culture than with the older view that Kakariko was simply an offshoot of Hyrule. The Goron had no standing army, but they were nonetheless improving their weaponry dramatically. Their weapons focused on high-explosives combined with high-range bows and arrows. Given their difficult terrain and ability to retreat very deep into the mountains, the Gorons tended to find range weapons to be the most logical. Hylian engineers in Kakariko developed small and practical mechanical scopes that would enable skilled archers to hit targets from extreme distances. Gorons also were able to attack bombs to arrows, allowing teams of archers to decimate any approaching forces. Given these advantages, the Gorons found no need to develop a standing army.
A significant change however, occurred. When the Hylian canal was complete, it diverted water-flow that traditionally would have flowed near Kakariko. Because of this, the climate became more arid, and the Kakariko had to dig deep wells and build under-ground canals that tapped into Lake Hylia. Nonetheless, a scarcity of water changed the lifestyle of Kakariko peoples dramatically, and forced them to copy Goron irrigation techniques and methods for water usage (even though Gorons had relatively low water needs), which brought the two societies even closer together.
The Zora had always served a unique role in the Hylian system. Their ability to transverse through water enabled them to quickly cover vast distances, and reach diverse societies, yet no other society could ever reach them, because they were only accessible through water routes. The canal did not connect Zora’s Domain to Hyrule Castle, and eventually Lake Hylia, but rather the canal had its upstream source in the extreme northern section of Hyrule, and eventually connected to the natural lake Hylia. The Zora realized the opportunities of a direct water-route to Hyrule, but also feared that the Hylians would take the Zora out of their trade system by using their own merchants to move resources around the river. The Zora realized, importantly, that their position on a now unimportant water route made them easy to cut off and remove from the trade process.
The Zora, therefore, made a decision to completely move their society from the old Zora’s Domain in east Hyrule, to Northern Hyrule. The mountains in Northern Hyrule were taller than those in Eastern Hyrule, and therefore put the Zora in a position to monopolize Hyrule’s water supply and trade routes. The Zora built a new domain, and began to gain dominance of the water-ways all the way to their end at Lake Hylia. The Zora made some settlements in Lake Hylia, and built an extremely secure temple at the bottom of the lake, which they named Lakebed Temple.
The Zora accumulated vast capital through their key trading role, but remained primitive compared to Goron or Hyrule. They mastered manipulation of wood and natural stones to build tools, and acquired bombs from Kakariko to use in construction projects, but for the most part they acquired most important materials from Kakariko, and simply acted as Hyrule’s bonding element.
Upon the completion of the canal, and the partial construction of Hyrule castle/castle town, the Hylian Royal family assumed control through their newly built and modern military, and ruled as they had before they were deposed. Many merchants, however, resented having to take orders from a monarchy, and desired to return to a plutocracy as they had been using during the Kakariko exile.
Many Hylian merchants decided to leave Hyrule, and choose to settle along the banks of the Zora river. These people were free from direct Royal authority, and survived mostly on fishing. They began to take on a role as another intermediate in the Zora river trade. However, the Hylian immigrants did not act as competitors to the Zora, rather their relationship was mutual. The Hylian immigrants brought new technology to the trade, and thereby improved Zora standard of living, whilst the Hylian immigrants gained a degree of control in the trade, and were able to grow wealthy while living freely.
Another wave of immigrants left Hyrule Castle and Town upon its completion, but for dramatically different reasons. These people were the Ordonians, and unlike the Hylians who left for Zora river, they valued traditional farming lifestyles and resented living in a densely populated city. They therefore, migrated south into a deeply wooded region inhabited by the Kokiri. The Kokiri community was quickly overwhelmed by the Hylians, who were dramatically more advanced, and were forced to accept the new settlers in their lands. The two cultures of Kokiri and Hylia gradually assimilated into each other, although Hylian ideas were often dominant. The new society became Ordon, which settled itself south of traditional Kokiri lands. The Ordonians, desiring to build a farming society, settled most heavily in the southern section of Kokiri, which had much less dense forests than the Northern section. Gradually, the land once Kokiri evolved into two distinct areas: Ordon in the south and Faron in the north. Faron was lightly inhabited, and was mostly natural forests.
Ordon gradually became a distinct society from either Faron or Hylia. As a mixture of Kokiri and Hylian peoples, the Ordonians focused around farming and breeding of horses and goats. Although Ordon had no standing army, regular civilians were trained to ride horse and use swords. Although Hylians warriors were capable due to their extreme competence with horses, they had only primitive range weapons, and were in many ways incomplete.
As Ordon and Goron society began to take form, Hyrule Castle and Castle Town became focused around manufacturing, and professional, highly educated services. The Hylian army became immense, as evolved new, more powerful tactics. The soldiers fought in dense formations with chain mesh armor and long spears. The Hylian soldiers fought in tight lines, with a wall of spears facing their enemies. Their advanced chain mesh armor was light but also extremely strong, allowing Hylian soldiers to successfully take many hits from enemy forces. This tactic made sense given the Hylian focus on defending the small passes which exposed the Castle to the outside world, however Hylian soldiers needed to fight in tight formation, and therefore were weak when fighting on open fields.
The Hylians however, had an important problem: The Gerudo. Intending to prevent another potential Gerudo invasion or takeover, the Hylians sent soldiers to destroy Gerudo civilization. Hylian soldiers, ferried to Lake Hylia by the boats of Hylians living on Zora river, crossed into Gerudo desert. Their tightly packed phalanxes could not be matched by Gerudo swordsmen (even though they were women). Their swordsmen could not break through the wall of spears advancing upon then, and then swords were ineffective against Hylian chain-mesh armor and heavy shields. Hylian javelins (thrown spears) tore through the lightly armored Gerudo.
The victorious Hylians massacred the Gerudo, and used explosives to redirect water flow from Zora river away from the Gerudo desert, ensuring that any surviving Gerudo would quickly die of dehydration.
The destruction of the Gerudo, however, left a power vacuum. This was filled by Bulbins, a nomadic group of peoples traditionally from Kokiri, but who had migrated to Gerudo and other parts of Hyrule during Ganondorf’s reign. They quickly found an alliance with the Twili, a tribe from west of Hyrule, both of which were eager to conquer all of Hyrule.
Using unconventional tactics, the Twili and and Bulbin were able to push through Hyrule rapidly, even taking Hyrule castle. Their armies rapidly moved south, taking Goron mountain and Kakariko. Conventional Hylian arms were near useless against the Twili. At the peak of their power, the Twili and Bulbin ruled all of Hyrule except Ordon village, where a fateful battle would determine the fate of Hyrule.
At this point, the events of Twilight Princess occur. The Zora dominance of the water ways allows. I’m sorry that I promised to give a theory for Twilight Princess -> Wind Waker, but I think this post is already long enough. I will do that in another post.
