Zelda didn’t originally like Link. She outright avoided him at all costs and wasn’t particularly nice to him. And despite her own efforts, Link’s own determination and devotion to his role finally wore her down to the point where she realized how wrong she had judged him.
Link was a prodigy, he had the sword that would seal the darkness already (had since he was a mere preteen) and was known for besting adults in duels as a literal child. She was born with powers she couldn’t unlock despite all the effort she put in. She thought he was simply handed his fortunes in life with no consequences, while she struggled daily to uphold her father’s expectations for her and neglect her own hobbies.
But when Link steadfastly protected her in a place she had specifically gone to in order to escape him, she sees the truth behind it all. Link is determined. He never backs down from a fight. He’s also reckless and she understands this as she chastises him and worries over his well-being. He’s knowledgeable about horses and has good advice, always willing to share it when someone (aka Zelda) needs to hear it. She learns bit by bit about Link until she outright questions why he doesn’t talk much. And he genuinely hesitates but decides that he can share this with her. She’s the only one he ever has. Because she asked.
And he tells her. The sword on his back brings a great responsibility and massive burden to bare. He feels the need to be strong and to be the stoic perfect knight to take on the role everyone expects him to play.
They become much closer after this and there’s multiple times we see Link actually neglect his role as her protector in order to just be there for Zelda as her friend. Once in the spring memory where he turns after Zelda berated her inability to awaken her power and the second when they’re literally running away from murder bots and he doesn’t force her to continue when she slips but rather kneels, listens, and comforts her.
And to find out that Zelda’s love for Link is the reason she awakened her powers and that it’s canonically proven through Kass’ song? Wow. And that doesn’t even BEGIN their story and how it ends in totk.
In botw, the Japanese original logs are written by Link himself and it’s revealed that one of his motivators in saving Zelda was to see her smile once again. Just. Remember that.
I want to talk about Link’s determination in TotK.
Besides defeating Ganon, we have another priority mission called Finding Zelda.
When we find all dragon tears and watch Zelda’s memories, we finish the quest The Dragon’s Tears.
And we realize that we finally found Zelda. And also we realize that Zelda cannot return to human again.
We found Zelda but Finding Zelda quest isn’t completed.
But we completed The Dragon’s Tears quest and get this quest log update.
なんとしてもゼルダ姫の想い(omoi)に応えなければ
I must repay Princess Zelda’s 想い, by any means necessary.
想いに応える(omoini kotaeru) means repay someone’s 想い. It is not like physically repaying something, It is more like heart to heart. (I made post about Zelda’s 想い. It is Zelda’s love for Link and Hyrule.)
So if I directly translate that sentence to Link’s thoughts,
“I must defeat Ganon for Zelda, by any means necessary.”
We know the quest logs are Link’s personal journal. Link seems very determined to destroy Ganon for Zelda and he will.
But now we start thinking “what about finding Zelda?” I mean, because we actually found Zelda..
And we see the answer after this cut scene.
Finding Zelda quest is finally completed after Link get true Zelda back. (And with her beautiful smile of course 😉)
This scene shows us that even after Link learned that Zelda cannot return to human again, he was determined to bring her back and didn’t think about losing her forever.
We play this game as Link, but we don’t know what he actually think.
But when we read the quest logs or find elements like this, we can see Link’s actual thoughts.
