Rewriting Twilight Princess: The Princess Royale

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a fantastic game, filled with epic battles, an enormous world, and a…horribly flawed storyline. Each week we’ll be looking at one of these flaws to determine what went wrong and why, as well as to discuss ideas of how the tale could have been rewritten to fix these problems and strengthen the story as a whole. …Preferably without drastically departing from the original storyline of the game, but I make no promises.

It’s no surprise why the titular princess of the series was included in this game – she’s been there since the beginning of the franchise, almost always serving as a motivator for Link’s journey and oftentimes personally assisting him through the many challenges he has to face. But this incarnation of the legendary royal felt decidedly underwhelming to many of us, and her role has become yet another source of much criticism ever since the game released. Not to mention some aspects of her character arc are downright confusing.

Keep reading to hear what I’m talking about (assuming you don’t already know) and to see how it could have been done instead.

The Game We Got

Link meets the princess of Hyrule early on in the game, where she informs him of how Hyrule fell to Zant’s army. He later returns to her chamber to seek aid in curing his curse and saving Midna’s life; she points him towards the Master Sword and then does…something that causes her to vanish and Midna to be healed. It isn’t until the endgame that we learn that her body is still [somehow] in Hyrule Castle, and our heroic pair charges in to save her. Once she is restored to life, she receives sacred arrows from the Light Spirits so that she may fight alongside Link in the final battle for Hyrule’s freedom.

The Problem

Much like Ganondorf, the overarching issue with Zelda’s character arc is that it depends heavily on her previous incarnations in the franchise: she is portrayed as someone who is very important and powerful, but in the course of this game, nothing she does validates that role. We learn very little about her and only meet her twice before the final battle; as such, her role in most of the game is easily that of a “minor

character.”

That would have been fine on its own (Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask prove that a Zelda game doesn’t require much Zelda), but then comes the endgame, where she is suddenly a participant in the final battle. That’s a role you’d expect of a major character, so Zelda’s appearance feels…unwarranted. She did not earn the right to participate in that battle, but there she was. Again much like Ganondorf, other Zeldas in the series have certainly earned it (and most of them were denied it), but this Zelda did not.

If that was the only problem, I could just point back to our Ganondorf article and call it a day, but then there’s also the issue of her “death”…or whatever that was. Zelda seems to sacrifice herself in order to save Midna, only for her body to somehow appear again in Hyrule Castle. No explanation is ever given for this, and yet the game assumes it to be common sense. Seriously, how else do you explain Midna knowing that she’s still there?

“[Ganondorf]’s in Hyrule Castle, I’m sure of it… Princess Zelda is in grave danger! We must return to the world of light and hurry to the castle!” — Midna

The way Midna talks makes it seem like it should be obvious that Zelda is still imprisoned in Hyrule Castle, but that’s hardly the case. Nothing hints at this prior to her exclamation; I still remember arching my eyebrow the first time I played that part, wondering if I’d overlooked a previous mention of it somewhere (subsequent playthroughs have proven that I hadn’t).

Most likely, the developers wanted to give you renewed motivation to return to Hyrule Castle – “oh no, Zelda’s in trouble! I’d better go rescue her!” But these two issues work together to completely undermine that sensation: you don’t know TP Zelda well enough to really care about saving her, and the “twist” that she’s still somehow imprisoned there was very poorly executed. It’s more likely to stop bewildered players in their tracks than it is to spur them on to the game’s conclusion.

Proposed Solution

Frankly, the easy way to do this would be to completely remove Zelda’s participation in the final battle. Only problem: that part was awesome. No way in the Dark World are we touching it.

Instead we’ll have to alter the rest of the game to provide more development for our favorite Hyrulean princess and justify her presence in that fight. We’ll also need to work on that “death” twist to make it a little less confusing.

Presence of the Princess

I would love to throw in additional appearances for the princess throughout the game, giving us plenty of interactions between Link and Zelda to help them establish a sense of camaraderie…but the game’s storyline would need a complete overhaul to grant such opportunities. As things stand, Link has very little reason to visit her in her castle any more than he does…and after that second visit she’s kind of [assumed to be] dead.

What we can do is provide her a presence in the world, as one would expect the young monarch to have. I’ll keep this short, since we’ve already gone through a similar process with Ganondorf: we need to have characters mention her throughout the game, to see signs of how Hyrule has grown and prospered during her reign, and to build that up more as the game progresses. Several characters could speak highly of her, landmarks could have been constructed with her support, and so on. From the two times we see her, we already know she is a caring, compassionate ruler – people, places, and events should reinforce that throughout the game.

And when Castle Town falls, the refugees should fear for Zelda specifically. They don’t know if their wise and benevolent princess escaped the city’s collapse, and at least a few should constantly run up to our well-traveled Hero to ask if he has any news on her. Just as the fear inspired by Ganondorf should be seen throughout the world, so too should the love and adoration of Zelda be an ever-present sight.

Prisoner by Choice

But that presence can only help salvage her lack of appearance throughout the tale; it still won’t justify her role in the final battle.

One of the things that I only noticed when I started analyzing the game we got for this article was just how weak it portrays Zelda to be. The princess does practically nothing in her first two appearances, and what she does do only emphasizes her weakness: even with the Triforce of Wisdom, she is powerless to stand against Zant’s invasion and powerless to heal Link’s curse. She can’t even save Midna without sacrificing her own life (or at least appearing to). While surrendering for the people’s sake and trading her life for Midna’s both do a lot to display her compassionate nature, they do little to establish her

strength against evil.

Yet, come the endgame, she can suddenly call upon the Light Spirits’ magic and ride alongside the Hero as a truly mighty force of good.

Zelda’s switch from “weak prisoner” to “powerful warrior” seems off because most of the game displays her as the former. To justify the latter, we need to reinforce the idea that Zelda is far from weak – which we can do, I think, with just one additional cutscene.

Sometime during the first half of the game, let’s say shortly after you beat the Goron Mines, we jump to Zelda in her room. Still a prisoner of the Usurper King, she is looking out over the Twilit Castle Town when Zant himself enters to interrogate her about Midna. And how does Zelda respond? By coolly and calmly challenging Zant, asking if it is so hard to keep track of one little girl.

Angered, a Shadow Beast charges at her, and she doesn’t even flinch. Zant calls it off at the last second before muttering a thinly-veiled threat against the people of Hyrule. With an annoyed look she complies and informs him that Midna visited her “right before your hold on my kingdom started weakening” – another quick jab at him.

This is when Zant utters his own jab, but one that holds incredible importance for us to understand Zelda’s character in this game: he mocks her, stating that she could leave this room at any time she wanted, if only she wasn’t so concerned for her subjects. “A woman with your strength could walk out that door with ease, but your devotion to those pathetic creatures keeps you from even trying. How sad.” He then departs, and the cutscene ends with Zelda glaring after him.

A quick scene like this would accomplish much for Zelda’s character. It would show her as perfectly capable of challenging Zant, and it implies that she decides not to because he intends to harm her citizens if she does not comply. Not only that, but her entire imprisonment is her choice; she could walk right out the door at any time she wanted, tearing apart any beasts who got in her way. Zant may hold all the cards he needs to threaten her into submission, but she is not afraid or weak – she has simply placed her citizens’ well-being above her own.

The game we got did imply that to be the case already, but leaving it as a mere implication did little to help Zelda escape the hints of weakness. We needed to actually see her taking a stand against her oppressors, and we needed it long before the final boss fight. By that point in the game we got, the implication that TP Zelda was weak and beaten had been firmly established, so her final role seemed less “fulfilling” and more “bewildering”.

With this new scene having her display that kind of inner strength, then having someone – especially Zant – acknowledge her as powerful, we reverse that perception of her character considerably. Zelda is no longer a weak monarch who inexplicably gains the power needed to strike against Ganondorf. Instead she’s a mighty individual who has held herself back all this time, and when the endgame comes she is finally getting her chance to cut loose and avenge herself and her kingdom against its conqueror.

Suddenly her role in the final battle is not only justified, but necessary.

The Salvation of Midna

Finally comes the question of how Zelda saved Midna. What exactly did Zelda do? How did she end up in Hyrule Castle again? How did Midna know her body was there? If the game didn’t have Midna act like the answers were obvious, this wouldn’t be so bad…but it did, and that only served to either piss players off or make them feel like idiots. And that’s just plain rude.

We’ll change this part by building off a theory I’ve considered a few times, which proposes that the Zelda we met was not in her physical body; it was only her soul. Maybe the Triforce of Wisdom forced her into such a state to defend her from the Twilight, or maybe she used her own power to accomplish it, but she’s a ghost now (of a different sort than what we’ve seen before in TP, though). This theory has some holes when applied to the game we got, but with a few tweaks to that second meeting with Zelda…

So Wolf Link returns to Zelda’s room with the dying Midna, but the princess is nowhere to be found…until she suddenly appears before him. In this version, however, she would be translucent, making it more obvious that this is her spirit rather than her physical being. Midna could bring it up, and Zelda might even explain that leaving her body helped her to guard the Triforce from “the evil” which has now invaded the castle (new, subtle hints of Ganondorf’s presence? Yes please).

And…really, that’s all that needs changing. Her physical body is implied to be somewhere else, but it still very much seems like she’s sacrificed her life to save Midna. …Okay, sure, not as much as in the game we got, but at least this version actually makes some semblance of sense in the long run. Plus, when we learn Ganondorf is back and in Hyrule Castle, we don’t need Midna telling us that Zelda needs saving – there’s a good chance we’ll immediately remember that her body was left there, automatically prompting us to rush back to her aid.

The End Result

Zelda is mentioned throughout the game now, as a kind and loving ruler that the citizens respect and, following the fall of Castle Town, constantly fear for. As we depart from Eldin Province, we get to see her standing up to Zant fearlessly, displaying the inner strength and authority that we expect the princess of Hyrule to house within her, and we learn that she has sacrificed her freedom to save her citizens from harm – she could escape Zant’s clutches at any time, but chooses not to because of her loyalty to the people. Later on, when we seek her help, it is made apparent that it is Zelda’s spirit, rather than her physical form, that saves Midna and guides us on our quest. No more head-scratching when Midna starts talking about saving Zelda post-Palace of Twilight.

Our fair princess is often called out by critics for being nothing more than a damsel in distress – and though many of the games hold evidence to counter that claim, Twilight Princess wasn’t really one of them. There is a lot of underlying evidence of her weakness; the problem is that a lot of it is symbolic or subtle. You don’t immediately think “she’s weak” when you see Zelda surrender to Zant, but it’s still implied, both then and throughout the game.

This could have been rectified, or even made use of to demonstrate growth in her character, if we’d seen her more. Unfortunately, the story of the game we got made this rather hard to pull off, as in the first part Link has few opportunities to see her, while in the second part she’s presumed dead. Zelda goes missing for an entire half of the story, and because of that we lose multiple opportunities to get to know and understand her better.

Sad thing is, she’s not the only one who vanished for lengthy periods of the game. Next time around, we’ll be eying not one, but two groups of individuals that fell victim to this same problem. Just like with Zelda, their importance to the tale makes their disappearance and disuse rather noticeable; it’s a real shame, too, as there was tons of potential that was never realized. Come back next week if you want to know who and what I’m talking about!

Until then, this is Alpha, signing off to go do…stuff.

“Rewriting Twilight Princess” is a series focused on examining the many narrative issues of this epic Zelda game in an attempt to understand why it has garnered such negativity from the fanbase over the years. Join us each week as Tyler “Alpha” Meehan delves into each of these issues, explains what was wrong with it, and explores ideas for how the storyline could have been rewritten to salvage such problems.

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