hot take, zelda and link in echoes of wisdom aren't in love and probably feel a whole lot more awkward around each other. no shame to people who ship them, i just dont see it. here's why.
link found zelda because he was following his rift sense, and maybe he knew ganon was there too. he enters the room, sees the princess of hyrule trapped in a crystal, goes "that's wild bro, anyways" and fights ganon. rescuing the princess wasn't part of the plan, but he regularly saves random people so it's just another tuesday.
and then he gets sucked in the rift. he goes, "wuh oh" and as a quick thinker, shoots a single arrow at zelda's crystal, hoping she could get out before the rift expanded.
luckily she did, and went home only to watch her father and his retainers fall into a rift, getting replaced by imposters who throw her in prison and order her execution. then she gets rescued by a weird glowy thing and escapes to find impa coming to get her. she has to hide her identity and leave her nursemaid behind to get captured in order to escape. that all happened in a SINGLE DAY. she's too focused on surviving to be thinking about the guy who saved her too hard.
she then goes to the still world to seal the rift, and encounters the swordsman again. but now he's trying to kill her. and will do this again before she puts the pieces together that this isn't actually link, it's an echo.
so by the end of the game, these two have actually interacted like three times. the other times zelda saw link, it was a copy of him that was dead-set on her death.
so as she stands before the real link near the end, being told to rearm the guy by tri, she hesitates. she grips her rod tightly. she doesn't feel safe giving the weapons of might to him, because how can she be sure this isn't another trick? any second his eyes could turn red and he could strike with the weapons she upgraded. She was barely able to hold him off when using just one of his weapons on her. He would be a nightmare to face with all three.
and as they go through null's body, she keeps looking at him ahead of her, expecting him to turn around and charge at any moment. the fact that she feels significantly less powerful without the weapons of might doesn't help. She fends off the monsters with only the rod, feeling like her chances of winning any battle on her own have been halved. She keeps watching Link tear through the enemies like a beast, effortlessly fighting three times better than she ever had in swordfighter form.
but despite what her paranoia kept screaming in her ear, link never turned on her. they won the battle against null and saved the day. they returned to hyrule, and life picked up more or less where it left off. link visited from time to time, and he and zelda properly got to know each other. and after a long time, link finally gained her trust as a friend.
but with everything that happened, i just can't see them being more than friends or siblings. but maybe somebody who reads this atrociously long post can change my mind? idk, tell me what ya'll think.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
gummygunk
origamiaround
kaledo-art
vaporwave
