Princess Zelda's Strange Plan

It’s been fairly quiet on the Zelda news front of late. We’re all anxiously waiting for news of the next Zelda game, but so far all we know is that it’s being made.

This is why I think it’s a good time to take a bit of a look back at the very first Zelda game. This game has been around for longer than some of the people reading this article have been alive. It’s the game that started off the entire Zelda phenomenon, but in the company of bigger, prettier games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda, with its 8-bit graphics, doesn’t get that much attention these days, despite a couple of re-releases in the last few years.

As Ocarina of Time was the first Zelda game I played, I must admit, that it is my favorite, though the original Zelda has much to offer. There is something that bugs me, though, about it.

Why in Hyrule did Princess Zelda choose to hide eight Triforce fragments in eight horrible, nasty dungeons swarming with enemies?

Here’s an excerpt from the story that introduces the game:

”One day, an evil army attacked this peaceful little kingdom and stole the Triforce of Power. This army was led by Ganon, the powerful Prince of Darkness who sought to plunge the World into fear and darkness under his rule. Fearing his wicked rule, Zelda, the princess of this kingdom, split up the Triforce of Wisdom into eight fragments and hid them throughout the realm to save the last remaining Triforce from the clutches of the evil Ganon.

“… in order to fight off Ganon, Link had to bring the scattered eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom together to rebuild the mystical triangle.”

So in short, Zelda doesn’t want Ganon to steal the Triforce of Wisdom, splits it into eight pieces, and hides them all over Hyrule. However, the only way that Link can fight Ganon and save Hyrule is by having the Triforce of Wisdom whole and in his clutches.

So far, this makes sense. For the later-generation gamers, you may be questioning why Zelda didn’t keep the Triforce of Wisdom whole in the first place and fight Ganon off herself, but this Zelda was far less warrior-princess than say Ocarina’s Zelda, without whose power Link would have never been able to stop Ganondorf.

The story also tells us that this Princess Zelda feared Ganon’s rule, hid the pieces of the powerful relic, and then commanded Impa to go out and find “a man with enough courage to destroy the evil Ganon.” Therefore, this princess is far more helpless than some of her later-game counterparts.

After she hid the Triforce, she promptly got herself captured by Ganon, and remained a prisoner in his lair, helpless until Link came to rescue her. However the action she took by hiding the Triforce ultimately does lead to Link’s victory over Ganon.

It is when you examine this action more closely that you start to be amazed that her plan ever worked in the first place. You don’t need to have played this game yourself to understand how it works: Link journeys deep into eight dangerous dungeons in order to recover the Triforce pieces. These dungeons are crawling with all sorts of nasty monsters who enjoy nothing more than making mincemeat out of young heroes. If these monsters aren’t enough, there’s also an even bigger and nastier monster at the very end of each dungeon, guarding the Triforce.

So we need to ask ourselves why Zelda would choose such horrible places to hide the Triforce fragments. The story makes it fairly clear that Zelda is working by herself here: ”At the same time [as she hid the Triforce fragments], [Zelda] commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to secretly escape into the land and go find a man with enough courage to destroy the evil Ganon.”

Couldn’t she have buried one under the ground, or hidden one in one of Hyrule’s numerous secret caves? She could have sank one to the bottom of one of the waterways not guarded by an evil Zora. No, she chose the dungeons for her hiding places.

It’s fairly easy to assume that all of the monsters in this game are controlled by or loyal to Ganon. The game’s story tells us that Link only became involved in this whole quest after encountering and rescuing Impa, who had been cornered by Ganon’s evil henchmen. So presumably, at least some of the enemies Link encounters as he travels through Hyrule are these henchmen, if not all of them.

The instruction manual describes all of the monsters together as “enemies”, which is why it’s logical to assume that all of the monsters work for Ganon. Link and Zelda are good. Enemies are bad. Ganon is bad. The writers of the Zelda cartoon series, based on this game and its sequel, also made this assumption. The enemies in this series not only served Ganon, they were created by him.

If this is all true, why would Zelda put the Triforce pieces into the places with the highest concentration of Ganon’s servants? Couldn’t a dungeon boss just nip into the next room, take the Triforce piece, and hand it to Ganon? In fact, since his enemies have such a hold on Hyrule that the few humans/Hylians are forced to hide in caves, couldn’t Ganon himself just stroll (or teleport) around Hyrule and take the pieces for himself? Zelda might have tried to hide the pieces from him, but I’m willing to bet that since most of the enemies spend all their time flying, walking or bouncing around aimlessly waiting for a hero to kill, they get bored and gossip amongst themselves.

“Hey Keese, I heard from a Stalfos who heard from a Wizzrobe that Gohma’s guarding something pretty sweet in here.”

“Pssst! Yes you, Octorok out there, come over to this cave. The word is that in this cave there’s a powerful treasure. Isn’t that cool?”

The Octorok tells a Moblin, the Moblin tells a Tektite, and word gets back to Ganon.

Maybe Zelda’s idea was that old saying, that sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight. After all, the door in between the dungeon boss and the Triforce is always sealed shut. Maybe the bosses actually have no idea what they’re guarding. But if that was Zelda’s idea, how did she get the pieces into the dungeons in the first place? I doubt that someone who needed to hide the Triforce while they waited for a courageous hero would have the courage to journey into all those horrid dungeons

So let’s look at another idea.

Maybe the monsters in the dungeons do not serve Ganon. This game has two distinct areas: the overworld, and the underworld. Each "world" is populated by different monsters. It may be that the overworld monsters serve Ganon, but the underworld ones do not. Before becoming hiding places for the Triforce fragments, the dungeons just happened to have been where all of the nasty creatures in Hyrule liked to lurk, or maybe they were even forced into them, now watched over by crazy old men who like to spout strange advice (not to mention those men who stand there and demand, “Your money or your life,” who have obviously been down there way too long). Wouldn’t it be nice in real life if we could banish away all of the biting, poisonous spiders into one place, and keep all of the harmless ones in our gardens?

Even if these monsters don’t serve Ganon, it’s clear that they are not very nice. Some, like Wallmasters may simply want you out of their home, others may have a penchant for eating shields instead of heroes, while another is simply hungry and wants to be given food. But there are many more that will easily kill brave adventurers in any one of a number of horrid ways, from swords to magic, fire to boomerangs, beams to spikes… the list goes on. So this still does not explain why Zelda hid the Triforce in the dungeons and was able to brave all of these monsters.

So could it be in fact that these monsters actually serve Princess Zelda, or the Royal Family of Hyrule? This would make sense in explaining how Zelda was able to get the Triforce fragments into the dungeons, and why the bosses protect them. At the time when she hid the Triforce, Zelda did not know who her courageous hero was going to be, and so she ordered her monsters to kill anyone who came in, figuring that if this future hero was going to be able to stand up to Ganon, surely a few more monsters wouldn’t trouble him; they could be a test. A little cruel towards her loyal monster servants perhaps, but maybe Zelda didn’t consider her monsters as being equal with her human subjects.

There’s still a big flaw with this idea though. If the underworld monsters served Zelda, why did she not raise an army with them, and drive Ganon and his minions away? Most of the underworld monsters are more deadly than the overworld monsters, and combined with the Triforce of Wisdom, Zelda may have had exactly the force she needed to do away with Ganon altogether.

And if the underworld monsters were loyal to Zelda, why did they allow Ganon to hide in a dungeon with them? His lair on Spectacle Rock is teeming with some of the deadliest underworld monsters of all. If they’re not protecting him, they do an excellent job of pretending to. Suddenly, we’re back at the idea that all of the monsters serve Ganon himself.

I doubt we will ever be able to fully understand the logic behind Princess Zelda’s strange plan. Maybe there was no logic involved, just pure panic as Ganon began taking over her land. Regardless, this plan eventually worked, and the courageous hero Link was able to save the day in the end. So next time you sit down to play the original Legend of Zelda, you don’t need to stress yourself with the thought that Link’s quest is somewhat improbable. Rather, be reassured that Zelda’s plan is successful in the end, so long as you ”Use the Triforce wisely.”