It's not that I am indifferent to the timeline, I actively dislike that it exists. Anyone who thinks that someone was keeping a timeline in their head for this series from the start is fooling themselves. The creator of the series is an ardent promulgator of mechanics and gameplay over story, and has resisted or outright stymied attempts at bringing more story into his games in the past. When such games do get greenlit underneath him, he takes steps to undermine them, like giving Majora's Mask only a year to be produced (in a move some speculate was designed to sink the project), or saying in interviews that emphasis on story is or was a mistake. So he never would have been designing those early games with a mind to an overarching narrative. A dependence and desire to cling to continuity is a recent cultural trend deriving from the popularity and dominance of continuity driven media like comic books/movies, young adult series, and yearly release games. These artifacts did not exist in the 80's. These development mindsets did not exist in the 80's. No one was paying attention because these elements were far less important than gameplay in selling and making games. Even when devs put a lot of stock in a game's narrative, that attention was largely in the story of a single game in a series, with no effort to connect games to each other. So all the story-driven RPGs and whatnot of the era are wholly contained stories per game.
The 90's saw the emergence of the internet, and with it, the ability of fans to congregate and share ideas. This spawned the concept of lore theorizing as a widespread idea, and fed the growth of the concept of continuity being important to a series and to its fans. Though these things had always existed to a small degree, they were largely confined to niche groups of culture, and those conversations tended to be locally hosted. They were not a driving force of video game development or consumption. So yes, I agree with your statement about the Hyrule Hystoria (and I personally extend this sentiment to the Timeline itself) as "a tacked on piece of fan service".
I know I'm probably gonna get some rebuttals for saying this, so I want to make the qualifier on my opinion perfectly clear. I am not against people debating a timeline. I'm not against having your theories. If that's how you enjoy Zelda? Go. Nuts. By all means. Have a blast. What I hate is Nintendo trying to push the concept of a united timeline, and people insisting that there was one from the start. And then they turn around and get angry that Nintendo isn't following their precious timeline, or they want to spackle in every little gap with a game that addresses those tiny little areas. There used to be a member who fervently argued for a game that fills in the spot between OoT and Wind Waker for godsakes. Well, maybe it is perhaps a bit unfair to use such a toxicly overzealous individual as my example. But my point still stands. Insisting that Nintendo use their own self-imposed timeline, or one invented by the internet, to write itself into corners is ludicrous. Wind Waker was famously designed proceeding the whims of a single character designer who sketched a Moblin. Then other team members hopped on board, and soon they were happily designing all sorts of delightful characters, and inventing for themselves the sort of world those people and monsters would inhabit. That seed of creativity is what birthed Wind Waker, and even though it would later go on to be beleaguered by development issues, it's still a wonderful and enjoyable game whose aesthetic has withstood the test of time. I can't imagine how that game would have turned out if someone had come to them and said "here, now make one that is set 500 years after Ocarina, because Corporate said so. Gotta fill in that history." Any insistence that should happen is idiotic.
