this is a public service announcement to all revali fans: i invite you to join my campaign for the belief that mipha and revali are like, besties. there is no textual evidence to support this however i would like to dedicate the rest of this post to basically form a manifesto for this dynamic.
first it's important to acknowledge that botw and all champion related materials are kind of underbaked and don't elaborate on possibly any idea related to the champions enough to create Analyzable Depth, so when talking about these characters there's always an element of identifying either potential/setup for these characters and kind of trying to extend this. engaging with these characters kind of inherently means doing, in at least some part, the job of the writer and low key Making Shit Up. i acknowledge this and also embrace it and i suggest you do too.
so, mipha and revali: they are low key parallels, or at least play parallel roles to each other. the champions could be 'divided' into whether they relate more to zelda or link, and coincidentally link gets the boys and zelda gets the girls. daruk and urbosa are the older figures who take on a low key parental role to link and zelda respectively. daruk hangs out with link and gets him to loosen up a bit (source: his dlc diary) and urbosa is the one who cares for zelda and understands her deal the most (source: every single time urbosa is on screen). revali and mipha are, then, the peer character meant to 'challenge' link and zelda respectively.
revali challenges link's status as 'the chosen one', whether he really deserves this title and status etc by being the only champion with no inherent authority who had to work his ass off for any status he does have. mipha challenges zelda's role as a princess, by being also a princess with special powers who's practically perfect at everything zelda sucks at (being good at her power, getting along with link, having a loving family, having her people have complete faith in her, being mourned extensively after her death etc). revali and mipha further foil each other: revali is the most Outraged by the entire situation, whereas mipha is the most complacent. revali bases a lot of his beliefs about the situation largely on misunderstanding and projection, whereas mipha possibly has the most understanding about everything (about her entire role in this, about how special princess powers work, about link and generally the people involved). having these two characters interact and like, talk about things is inherently an interesting concept because of this.
furthermore, i believe they could bring out sides in each other that are largely unseen in most contexts. mipha is generally quite passive and quiet, despite having the most understanding she doesn't proactively voice it nor tries to actively 'enlighten' anyone. the one time she does try the apocalypse happens and even then she isn't like 'ok we are on borrowed time zelda lets debrief u need to unlock ur powers stat' shes just kind of like oh ok. guess the Very Important Conversation That Could Solve Everything has to wait. revali, on the other hand, doesn't shut the fuck up, and never even considers that he's wrong or working off of wrong premises. despite this, both of them have sides to them that are not like this: revali acts like a pompous asshole, but from his dlc scene and journal we can infer he has a bunch of underlying insecurities and also does Genuinely Care. and mipha, again from her dlc scene, has some older sister snark that comes out when she interacts with sidon, she's actually willing to be proactive with him and not overly coddle him.
with mipha's whole thing as the understander i think she'd be able to catch onto revali's shit almost immediately and see through his facade. at the same time she's not the type of character to actively try and fix him, i actually think she'd express her understanding in a kind of cheeky, snarky way, 'match his energy' so to speak, because she knows that's something that would actually ruffle some feathers (heh) and get revali out of his comfort zone. for revali, on the other hand, i think it'd be a very disarming experience to be actually called on his bullshit by a peer who seems to actually get him and not buy his whole pompous asshole thing. i also think he'd kind of project his own feelings of being upstaged by Some Guy onto mipha, an actually competent princess who also has to step back just because she's from the wrong royal family. their kind of opposite personalities and perspectives are able to complement each other, coming together to a perfect equilibrium of 'yes there are things that are very unfair about this but there are reasons for the way things are and we kind of have to accept that'. it is kind of beneficial for both of them to hear about/engage with the others' perspective.
a quick aside bc i know a bunch of you are revalink fans: the dynamic of revali and link one sided rivalry meanwhile mipha is great friends with both of them is really funny, and also opens a door for revali to develop a better understanding of link and give him a chance. i don't go here i am a miphzel girlie however this is something to consider.
now: would they actually like each other? the answer for mipha is simple because like, i think she just kind of likes everyone. for revali it's a little more interesting and i think it's important to bring up the way he views zelda: he talks about it in his diary, but basically there is an element of him looking down on her there's also a distinct sense of pity ("It's not that I dislike the Princess. She tries her hardest. It's simply not good enough"). there are a few reasons for why there's a pity present where it is not for link, part of it is pretty much explicitly stated with how he views zelda as earnest meanwhile link as emotionless. i, being me, read botw as a very deliberately gendered story and will assert that in my reading, part of the reason why he has a distinct rivalry with link and does not with zelda is because link is also male.
part of it is because the roles of the hero and the princess are inherently gendered, and revali wants the role of the hero, the role he thinks is being taken away from him. he understands the role of the hero as the main fighter, which is what he wants to be, and he doesn't have the same interest in whatever role the princess plays in defeating ganon. part of it is the fact that revali is a teenage boy, and link is also a teenage boy. the way he provokes him and tries to enter an adversarial relationship with him reads to me as like, the kind of bickering you do with specifically a peer you view as a challenger, in this case the role they're both aiming for is the 'knight', in the case of link literally, and in the case of revali more symbolically, as the top archer and 'protector' of his village.
now this is where we veer off into the 'Making Shit Up' part of analyzing botw champions, namely there's a lot of interpretations one could come up with using the implications of this aspect of his character, to name a few: he potentially does still hold a kind of respect for the authority of royalty, namely princesses; he is a feminist; my personal favorite: he has some aspects of toxic masculinity making him pursue rivalry with other men, while not viewing women as rivals in the same way. either way, one think is clear: he doesn't react to princesses with the same antagonism he does to knights.
so, what we have here: he values 1. competence 2. sincerity 3. people who cannot rival him for his status or any status he wants. mipha checks all three.
furthermore, now that we have established that revali is a kind of 'knight', and mipha is a princess, and they both foil link and zelda respectively, they are, like link and zelda, a knight and princess pair, ergo their potential friendship is in itself a foil to link and zelda. with link and zelda, we have a very complacent, passive knight and a princess with a propensity for projection who is very vocally not happy with the situation. and with revali and mipha, we have a knight with a propensity for projection who is very vocally not happy with the situation and a very complacent, passive princess. the first pair's dynamic leads to conflict between the two of them, and who survive despite their incompetence. the second pair's dynamic, in my pitch, leads to closeness and friendship, and who die despite their competence. Are You Seeing This.
so yeah. i have mostly focused on their synergy and narrative foilage instead of the specifics of their potential dynamic, although i do have opinions on that too, however i have omitted those largely bc of what i have discussed in paragraph one. this is not a pitch for you to subscribe to my personal interpretations of these character's personalities, it is a pitch for you to make them interact. more.
TL;DR: the potential dynamic between revali and mipha is scrumptious because they're literally foils to each other and to link and zelda and we should all be exploring it more
I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE OMG
I love imagining them as bestiez, itz been my HC for yearz ;w;
