The Zelda timeline doesn’t matter

polygon.com:

Last week, Polygon ran a definitive breakdown of The Legend of Zelda’s ridiculously byzantine timeline and where both Breath of the Wild and the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom fell on it. But we also pointed out The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion’s claim that “Hyrule’s recurring periods of prosperity and decline have made it impossible to tell which legends are historical fact and which are mere fairy tale.” It makes the chronology (or even reality) of all the previous games suspect.

With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s release fast approaching, let’s return to that question of where it fits in The Legend of Zelda series’ timeline. We know that Tears of the Kingdom happens shortly after Breath of the Wild, which falls at the distant end of one of three possible timelines.

After we thoroughly broke down Link’s adventures across all 20 mainline games from the series’ nearly 40-year run, it might sound weird to ask: But what if it doesn’t matter?

Maybe it doesn’t. Like, at all.

The earliest game in the Zelda chronology is Skyward Sword, but Hyrule’s creation myth starts with a story from Ocarina of Time.

In it, the Great Deku Tree explains that the world was created when the three Golden Goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore came to the chaos of pre-creation and introduced some stability. (If those names sound vaguely familiar, that’s because they’re echoed in Breath of the Wild’s three dragons.)

Their work done after creating the world, the Golden Goddesses just kind of left, but not before creating the Triforce — the Triforce of Power was made by Din, the Triforce of Wisdom by Nayru, and the Triforce of Courage by Farore. The whole Triforce was guarded by another, non-Golden goddess named