So why did Nintendo decide to finally show Link and Zelda in an obviously romantic relationship in Skyward Sword after dodging the matter for so long? Interestingly enough, Skyward Sword producer Eiji Aonuma thought about cutting the romance angles when the game’s development team (which, it must be said, consisted of quite a few Spirit Tracks developers) initially suggested them. While Skyward Sword‘s developers had to make some cuts to justify including the romance subplot, Aonuma’s decision to leave it in ultimately came down to his simple belief that it was an effective way to get players to care about rescuing Zelda.
“As far as the love story goes, it wasn’t that we wanted to create a romance between Link and Zelda as much as we wanted the player to feel like this is a person who’s very important to me, who I need to find,” Aonuma said in an interview with Game Informer. “We used that hint of a romance between the two to tug at the heartstrings.”
From a meta standpoint, the idea that Nintendo is aware that even hinting at the possibility of a Link and Zelda romance is a pretty easy way to engage people certainly makes a lot of sense. While Aonuma stops short of saying that was somehow their idea this entire time, you could argue that it’s more valuable for Nintendo to simply leave room open for that possibility rather than outright establish a romantic relationship more often.
Of course, that makes it all the more interesting that the one Zelda game that features such a blatant romance story is also the first game in the Zelda timeline. While the versions of Link and Zelda featured in that game are not the same characters we see in subsequent games, Nintendo did clearly establish that the foundation of their relationship (and this franchise) is partially based on their love for each other. Circumstances may have prevented them from leading the life together they hoped to have (at least based on our hopes for how two young people in love might end up), but who is to say that one of Zelda‘s descendants or one of Link’s reincarnations won’t be able to break the curse and live the life that these two were possibly denied so many years ago?
Actually, that’s what makes Breath of the Wild such a fascinating piece of this puzzle. While serious questions remain regarding how Breath of the Wild fits into Zelda‘s chronology, it almost certainly seems to take place at what we could see as “the end” of the current Zelda timeline (or timelines). It’s perhaps no coincidence, then, that it’s the game that not only openly acknowledges the complicated relationship between the various Links and Zeldas over the years but is also the game that shows Link and Zelda clearly growing closer to each other over the course of the adventure. By the end of the game, you could very easily view their relationship as “romantic” or, at the very least, heading in that direction.
While we’ll have to see whether or not Breath of the Wild 2 does anything with that implication, we’re left with the simple conclusion that Skyward Sword may be the only “overt” Link and Zelda romance story so far, but elements of that romance can be found in Spirit Tracks, Breath of the Wild, and, depending on your interpretation of the timeline, nearly every other Legend of Zelda game in some form or fashion.
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