Whoo-ooh, finally finished this. This was supposed to be a simple "illustrate some reference notes, work on character design" project, but it got kinda out of hand. In any case, this is the general gist of the royal family line in my sky pirates au (au? it's more just a separate project than an au I guess, but au works as a good shorthand since the world of sky pirates isn't directly connected to any specific preexisting LoZ world). There's some notes from the semi-WIP arts I uploaded here and here, for those interested. I can't share anything that would spoil the plot, but some fun general trivia: the "Era of Fracture" refers to when Hyrule was literally fractured and giant hunks of land were sent into the sky as floating islands, which act as the setting for the story (I swear I came up with this idea almost ten years ago after playing Skyward Sword, when I thought "wouldn't it be cool if there was a Hyrule like Skyward Sword and Wind Waker with floating sky islands that were fleshed out beyond a few hunks of barely inhabited rocks"--BotW2 probably won't have cool skyships though, and Skyward Sword already made the floating islands a things, so it's fine, the settings only somewhat plot-important anyhow). Zelda I lived through the events that led to this fracturing, and, despite being dead for a very, very long time, she's actually got a bit of plot-relevance because of those events. As noted in one of my other arts, the royal family is matrilineal, with people marrying into the family and taking the surname Hyrule to reflect this (for example Daltan, the current king, came from the family Rohanus and married into the royal family). Likewise, anyone who isn't technically eligible to inherit the throne usually marries "out" of the family, i.e. Gaepora and Rauru. Surnames also get changed to reflect occupations on occasion, which is why both Rauru and Osfala are "Lightsage"" (because they serve in the role of Sage of Light), despite Osfala being born to Kaebora who married out when she eloped with the court poet, Sahasra. Actually, writing it all out like this makes my mental map of how inheritance and lines are traced in the royal family seem way more complicated than it actually is. In any case, the inheritance rules aren't even really that important for the story, and will be explained in much, much simpler terms for the like, one part of the story where they do get brought up. A lot of these are still early designs, so they're bound to change a bit as I experiment and settle into drawing the characters more often. But it was still a nice little exercise to work on some designs and color palettes to give myself a more solid idea of where I want to go visually.
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2021, Spring-Summer Digital (Adobe Photoshop) Redesigns belongs to me. Daltan, Kaebora, Sahasra belong to me (names and the unnamed "court poet" in Breath of the Wild, which were used as inspiration for the characters, belong to Nintendo). Zelda, Rauru, Gaepora, Tetra's Unnamed Mother from Wind Waker, Tetra, Seres, and Osfala are characters from the Legend of Zelda series, and belong to Nintendo. The Hylians and Sheikah come from the Legend of Zelda series, and belong to Nintendo. Artwork belongs to me.
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