AAAHHHHHHHHHHH! REAL TIMELINE!

[A Black Falcon]

The "Good" and "Okay" labels are backwards in that list though... should be the other way around. :)

So I suppose your idea is the original sages are never "awakened" but are killed, and their sage powers end up transferring to compatible candidates a generation later during the imprisoning war? That's interesting in and of itself, but it does present a problem. All the towns in Zelda 2 are named after those sages (also Mido), which doesn't make sense if they died in obscurity in the imprisoning war.

Well, only Link had to actually die; the other sages didn't necessarily have to die right there. You're right that the towns in AoL being named after the sages wouldn't make sense if those sages hadn't been important, though, and if it was actually other sages that saved the day in that timeline, as it would probably have to be, I'm not sure what the solution there is really... it is a potential issue with the timeline. Unless the other sages just happened to have the same names or something, but that'd be stupid even for Zelda.

I'm sure it'd be possible to come up with an excuse (um, those sages were still important but weren't the ones that actually sealed him, or something), but yeah, I'm not sure what the answer is.