The Legend of Hyrule
Nintendo's official timeline. After Ocarina of Time it branches into the child, adult and fallen-hero eras.
Hyrule's History
Long before the Kingdom of Hyrule, people live on Skyloft, an island the goddess Hylia raised above the clouds. When a dark storm pulls Zelda down to the Surface below, her friend Link takes up the Goddess Sword to find her.
At Hyrule's Picori Festival, Vaati breaks the sacred Picori Blade, frees the monsters it kept locked away and turns Princess Zelda to stone. Link sets out with Ezlo, a talking cap, to find the tiny Picori who can reforge the blade.
Generations after a boy sealed the wind sorcerer Vaati inside the Four Sword, the seal fails and Vaati carries off Princess Zelda to be his bride. Link draws the Four Sword and is split into four.
Ganondorf, king of the Gerudo, wants the Triforce hidden in the Sacred Realm. Princess Zelda and Link, a boy raised in Kokiri Forest, try to reach it first, a quest that carries Link seven years into the future and back.
Long after the Imprisoning War sealed Ganon away, the wizard Agahnim takes power at Hyrule Castle and sends the descendants of the Seven Sages away to break the seal. A telepathic plea from Princess Zelda wakes Link.
The Triforce sends Link from Hyrule Castle to two distant lands. In Holodrum, General Onox has taken Din, the Oracle of Seasons. In Labrynna, the sorceress Veran has possessed Nayru, the Oracle of Ages.
Sailing home to Hyrule after a journey of training, Link is wrecked in a storm and washes up on Koholint Island. An owl tells him that to leave he must wake the Wind Fish, asleep in an egg on the island's mountain.
Centuries after A Link to the Past, a sorcerer named Yuga is turning the descendants of the Seven Sages into paintings. Link, a blacksmith's apprentice, follows him into Lorule, a dark counterpart of Hyrule with its own princess, Hilda.
Several years after A Link Between Worlds, Link reaches Hytopia, a kingdom devoted to fashion, where the witch Lady Maud has cursed Princess Styla into a jumpsuit she cannot take off. King Tuft calls for heroes to enter the Drablands.
Hyrule has shrunk to a small kingdom when Ganon's army invades and steals the Triforce of Power. Princess Zelda splits the Triforce of Wisdom into eight pieces and hides them. A young traveler named Link sets out to find them.
A few years after Ganon's defeat, a crest appears on Link's hand. Impa tells him of a Princess Zelda of long ago, put into an endless sleep, while Ganon's followers hunt Link, believing his blood can bring their master back.
Months after Ocarina of Time, Link is searching for a lost friend when a Skull Kid wearing a strange mask leads him into the land of Termina. Above its Clock Town a moon is falling. It will strike in three days.
Long after Ocarina of Time, Link works on a ranch in Ordon Village when monsters take the village's children and twilight spreads over Hyrule. Inside it Link becomes a wolf and meets Midna, an imp from the Twilight Realm.
Dark clouds gather over Hyrule. As Princess Zelda and six maidens check the seal on Vaati, a dark double of Link carries the maidens off. Link draws the Four Sword to stop him, splits into four and sets Vaati free.
Centuries after the Hero of Time, Hyrule lies under a great sea and its hero is a legend. When a giant bird carries off his little sister, Link of Outset Island sets sail with the pirate Tetra and her crew to find her.
Soon after The Wind Waker, Link and Tetra's pirates go looking for a ghost ship said to take sailors. When Tetra vanishes aboard it, Link washes up in the World of the Ocean King and sets out to find the ship and her.
A century after Tetra founded New Hyrule, the Spirit Tracks that keep an ancient demon sealed begin to vanish. Princess Zelda's body is taken. Her spirit joins Link, a new royal engineer, to restore the tracks.
Link wakes from a hundred-year sleep to find Hyrule in ruins. Calamity Ganon, which destroyed the kingdom a century ago, is coiled around Hyrule Castle, held there by Princess Zelda, whose voice guides Link.
Some time after Breath of the Wild, Link and Zelda follow a sickening Gloom into the caverns beneath Hyrule Castle and find an ancient body held down by a glowing arm. The seal breaks, the castle rises into the sky and Zelda vanishes.
Rifts are swallowing Hyrule. After Link frees Princess Zelda from Ganon and vanishes into one, a false king blames her for the rifts. With the fairy Tri and the Tri Rod, which makes echoes of things she has seen, she sets out to close them.
The three Golden Goddesses create the world. Where they leave it the Triforce remains.
The Golden Goddesses leave the Triforce in the care of the goddess Hylia. It grants the wish of whoever holds it, so she keeps it from those who would misuse it.
The Demon King Demise and his armies make war on the land to take the Triforce. The goddess Hylia gathers the people who survive.
Hylia sends the survivors and the Triforce into the sky on land above a sea of clouds. Then she seals Demise away. In time Skyloft forgets the Surface.
A people skilled in magic try to take the Triforce from the Sacred Realm. Hyrule's histories call them the Interlopers. They are banished to the Twilight Realm.
To keep the Sacred Realm safe, the sage Rauru builds the Temple of Time over its entrance. Its Door of Time opens only with the three Spiritual Stones and an ocarina.
Zelda's descendants found the Kingdom of Hyrule on the land below the clouds. Its royal family keeps the old stories of the goddess and the Triforce.
Civil war spreads across Hyrule. A dying mother leaves her baby son with the Kokiri, forest children who never grow up. The King of Hyrule ends the war.
With the hero fallen, Ganon takes the whole Triforce. The Seven Sages seal him and his monsters in the Sacred Realm, now the Dark World, in the Imprisoning War.
Kings rule with the united Triforce. Then a magician puts Princess Zelda into an endless sleep when she won't say where the Triforce of Courage is. Hyrule declines.
Years after Link warns the king about Ganondorf, the Sages try to execute him. He survives by the Triforce of Power, so they banish him to the Twilight Realm.
Ganon breaks free and no hero comes. The gods answer Hyrule's prayers with a flood that seals the kingdom under the sea. The people they chose live on the peaks.
Link and Tetra's crew find a new land crossed by rails called the Spirit Tracks. Tetra names it New Hyrule. The kingdom grows for a century.
In the age of the gods the Zonai, a people said to descend from them, found Hyrule. A Ganondorf of this age becomes the Demon King and is sealed away.
Some 10,000 years ago Calamity Ganon is sealed with Sheikah machines. About 100 years before Link wakes it returns, seizes them and ruins Hyrule.
Beneath Hyrule Castle the sealed Demon King wakes. The castle rises into the sky. Floating islands, chasms and Gloom, a sickening poison, appear across Hyrule.
The Hero is Defeated: Link falls in battle. Ganon claims the Triforce. Child Era: Sent back in time, Link warns Zelda. Adult Era: The hero vanishes. The gods flood Hyrule.