27th December 2011, 8:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 27th December 2011, 8:20 AM by Dark Jaguar.)
I present to you an OFFICIAL timeline published in a Nintendo artbook overseen by Eiji Aonuma.
According to this, there are in fact 3 different timeline splits all coming from Ocarina of Time.
Further, this timeline is simply perfect. I can find no flaws in it. It incorporates every last detail we've been told by the official channels over the decades about the chronology, excepting the temporal hiccup that was the Zelda official web site in early 2000 (which no one took seriously anyway). Better yet, it puts the Oracle games and Link's Awakening in their proper place. It seems that the Oracle games took place after Link to the Past (using the same Link), and that same Link went on to do Link's Awakening (which was the original official statement on when that took place anyway). Then a "golden age" happens, followed by the "age of decline" with Zelda 1 and 2. That whole timeline from LTTP onward is the timeline where Link fails in his mission and Ganon is apparently imprisoned during a much more devastating massive war (the imprisoning war that LTTP mentions during the prologue). In fact I think that "failed in his mission" split happened at the exact moment Young Link entered the Temple of Time and grabbed the Master Sword. He was taken out of his world during that time, and I think that event would create a split where he never returned in one line (thus failing) and returned to defeat Ganon in the other, thus leading to the third where he was able to go back and prevent Ganon from coming to power to begin with.
I was confused about Four Swords Adventures for some time because it seemed odd that Ganon would come to power BEFORE OOT and be sealed in the sword with no explanation of how he escaped. Well, this explains it. Apparently when he died in Twilight Princess, he later got reincarnated along with Vaati years later, and that's where Four Swords + stands. For that matter, it explains why there is a dark world in that game. Majora's Mask of course takes place after OOT, though it doesn't mention that that whole game took place with Link travelling to an alternate reality. That's incidental though and doesn't affect the timeline.
Haha! It even notes where the "Tragedy of Princess Zelda the 1st" (described in the Zelda II manual) happens. Apparently that marked the end of the Golden Era, and so apparently during that time princesses stopped being named Zelda until that incident.
<img src="http://www.glitterberri.com/content/zelda_series/hyrule_historia/timeline.png">
So where do the CD-i games fit in all this?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)