One of the longest running shipping debates in LoZ is whether or not OoT Link got with Malon, Zelda, or some unknown woman. Because, due to TP Link being his "direct descendent", we know he must have gotten with someone. And, often, one of the things that gets brought up as "proof", one way or another, is the exact color of TP Link's hair. And the two popular camps are:
"TP Link is strawberry blond" and "TP Link is dirty blond/dark blond/light brown".
But what are those specific hair colors, and how do they differ? Which one does TP Link actually have? Well, I've heard this debate long enough that I'm going to try answering it.
If you've taken middle school biology, you probably know that people inherit pairs of genes from their parents (one from mom, one from dad), and that some genes are more dominant than others. But middle school biology greatly simplifies how dominance works.
Strawberry blond is basically a case of co-dominance, where a person has genes for both blond and red, and both recessive genes "combine". The end result is a (very rare) color that varies between "spun gold" and "faux red", usually resting in the middle as a kind of "pinkish/orange-ish blond". The person might appear to have gold hair in the summer, and red in the winter. Or they might have been born with blond hair, only for it to "turn red" as an adult.
It is the color you'd likely expect for a Malink kid. Red is the most recessive color, meaning a "true" redhead like Malon must have two pairs of it. And Link, a blond, must have at least one blond gene. But that's where we hit the first hurdle to this debate... Because you could actually argue that OoT Link is strawberry blond. And OoT Zelda, with her more orange-ish blond, absolutely is. You could even argue Midna is, which is an even wilder take given how often she's depicted as a straight-up redhead.
What about the other colors? Well...
"Dirty blond", "dark blond", and "light brown" all refer to the same thing. Someone with this can look very blond as a kid, and then their hair will darken into brown as an adult. And, as a teenager (which TP Link is in his game), the hair can look like blond hair streaked with brown, with darker roots (& eyebrows) and lighter ends.
But, unlike with strawberry blond, it isn't this weird hybrid thing. Technically, these people are brunette. The change has to do with a separate gene, entirely - one that controls the amount of "dark" in hair. Basically, this gene can be "dormant" until the person starts producing certain hormones. Sometimes, it takes a woman's first pregnancy to fully darken her hair.
And it affects hairs individually. So, yes, the streaking is literally a mix of two colors of strands.
To me, TP Link appears to be dirty blond. With the game model giving him darker hair, the manga giving him lighter ("wheat") hair, and the amiibo giving him a decidedly unappealing greenish yellow.
What can we draw from all this? Not much, actually.
"Direct descendent" doesn't mean "child". If anything, it implies multiple generations have passed between Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess. At which point, all we can really say is that TP Link had at least one blond ancestor and... either one redhead/red carrier or one brunette ancestor.
Basically... TP Link's hair color was never flawless, slam-dunk proof of anything.
But this does make for a fun fandom research topic. I learned something, the people that read this hopefully learned something, we can maybe see less of an overused part of the OoT shipping debate. All in all, a win-win.
