where do you think eow falls on the timeline? i had assumed it was the alttp incarnations (because it's the same art style as the la remake) but since she doesn't know him, that would only make sense if eow is an alttp prequel, which seems unlikely
this is my current theory. there are several things in EOW that point to it being at a point on the timeline where the kingdom of hyrule and the authority of the royal family has been recently established or reestablished, most notably the fact that very few people outside of castle town recognize zelda and that she's able to introduce herself with the royal family's ancestral name to multiple other characters without immediately getting clocked. this suggests that the hyrule kingdom we're seeing in eow is significantly weaker in terms of influence than, say, botw or oot's hyrule kingdoms.
initially I was thinking about placing it somewhere after alttp and its sequels on the timeline, as that fits the bill in terms of a less-influential kingdom and the map similarities are glaringly obvious. However, there are a few things that make me think that's not where EOW goes. the most noticeable discrepancy is the triforce and how it's referred to in-game. games in which the triforce is not referred to by name usually do so to suggest a level of removal from the creation myth of hyrule--in both twilight princess and botw, it's implied that the triforce is never outright named because, for some reason or another, the people of hyrule forgot about it. because of that, I don't really want to shove EOW in after alttp on the failure timeline, because then we have to somehow justify how the triforce faded in and out of public consciousness so quickly.
what makes much more sense, in my opinion, is to place it on the timeline directly after the zonai era of totk. there are a few reasons for this. It fits the bill in terms of setting--I ascribe to the new-hyrule theory when it comes to totk's timeline placement, so a newer, less-established kingdom makes sense here, and the map is JUST similar enough to botw/totk in terms of major landmark placements for me to justify it. the one glaring flaw is the fact that the rito are missing from eow, but nintendo has historically said some insane things to justify when they exist and when they don't so i've decided it doesn't actually matter. there are a million different ways I can think of to justify that discrepancy if necessary. Similarly, the lack of knowledge about the triforce is consistent with what we know about zonai-era totk--it's never directly named, but does still exist in some form as a symbol of divine power.
The thing that really sold me on this being the placement of eow, though, is the existence of might crystals. To me, this is pretty transparently zonaite by a different name. I think the fact that it's no longer widely used or understood suggests maybe a few hundred years of removal from rauru's hyrule, but not so much that it's completely fallen out of use like in botw. Hell, if I wanted to get a little less canonically backed I could definitely make a connection between the eow rifts and the depths of totk. you see the vision.
anyway tldr i think it's after zonai-era totk but long before botw. hope this helps!
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