#mywriteups*

The speculation surrounding the mysterious origins of the Twili in Twilight Princess is far from a new topic amongst fans of the series; I distinctly remember staying up late into the night scrounging around old forums in my early teens, ingesting thread after thread on the very subject, hoping against hope that someone smarter than me would at last have found the truth amidst the lies.  Those kinds of analyses, the pure intrigue that leads to hours of reflection and research, has long been one of the series’ drawing points for me; that no matter how cracked and inconsistent the story Nintendo has chosen to weave, fans of the series will again and again use everything at their disposal to fill in the cracks.    

If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely you’re familiar with the the two most common theories: that they were either Sheikah or Gerudo (though the evidence I’ve seen for the latter has always been shaky at best). When you get right down to it, it’s not as if who the Twili once were really matters - it’s certainly something Nintendo didn’t give more than a few seconds thought - but speculating is fun, and something on which I’ve spent much more time than I’d like to admit.  Though the reality, of course, could simply be that they were no one, just a hodgepodge group of dark magic users, never before seen, I always found myself asking: If they were anybody, who would they be?  Is there any in-game evidence to suggest as much?  I would argue that yes, there is - and though what I’ve written here is hardly groundbreaking, it is fairly comprehensive, and with any luck, I’ll be able to convince a few of you along the way.

With all that out of the way, I would at last like to state that, if anyone, I firmly believe the Twili’s ancestors were Sheikah, and I’ve done my best to compile my reasoning for this below.

Midna, being a descendant of a relatively small group of people who were banished from Hyrule long before the events of Twilight Princess, would almost definitely know an entirely different sign language, if she knew signs at all.  For her to be familiar with Hyrule’s signs, that would mean that at least one of her ancestors would have a) not only needed to know them, but also b) be proficient enough in them that that information would then be recorded and passed down, largely unaltered, for centuries if not millennia, and chances of that happening are slim to none at best. (The fact that the Twili even speak Hylian is bizarre in and of itself, but that’s another topic for another time.)

So, picture this: Midna, on an pilgrimage to the World of Light to undo her curse and save her people, finally stumbles upon the divine beast spoken about in legends amongst her pepole.  She watches him transform right before her very eyes, and follows him fully with the intent of using him to do her own (nefarious) bidding.  And it works!  She does all the talking - because he can’t speak, for crying out loud, he’s a gotdamn wolf - and she doesn’t mind that, because she doesn’t have to hear him complain, outside of the occasional growl.  They go through the motions: meeting Princess Zelda, going back to Ordon, crossing the curtain of Twilight back into Faron, reclaiming the spirit’s lost light - and now he’s back to his old self again, and she braces herself for him to open his mouth and say something, anything to her...

...only he doesn’t.  And now, suddenly, it’s a huge inconvenience.

He moves his hands about, but gods, what is he saying, what does any of it mean?  And this goes on for weeks, as they travel across Hyrule to the provinces of Eldin and Lanayru.  A lot of their communication is huge amounts of guesswork, the occasional nods and some vague gestures (frequently resulting in Midna getting very frustrated), but somehow, they manage to work together to retrieve the three other fragments of the Fused Shadow...

...and then Zant happens, and everything changes.

It’s quite easy to recognize that Zelda’s sacrifice marks a turning point in Midna’s story: her voice grows softer from that point onward, no longer laced with arrogance and a disdain for Hyrule and its inhabitants, she begins to treat Link with more kindness, she opens up more about who she is, etc. - but I like to think that it also marks a huge turning point for Link and Midna’s relationship in particular, for one reason and one reason alone.  And she doesn’t notice it at first - after all, Link is a wolf again, and wolves don’t have hands - but when they finally make their way through the Lost Woods and retrieve the Master Sword, maybe Link makes an off-hand comment about helping her find the Mirror of Twilight.  Maybe he jokes about being able to transform into a wolf whenever he pleases, or maybe he doesn’t say anything at all, till the two of them go back to Castle Town, on the hunt for clues to the Mirror’s whereabouts - but in any case, she soon realizes...that the things he’s doing with his hands make sense.  “Thank you.”  “I'd love to do that, but I can’t.”  “Horses are people, too.” “What should we get to eat?”  For the first time since they’ve met, they are now able to properly communicate, and that changes...well, like I said, everything.

Y’see, Zelda was a princess of Hyrule, learned in many things, and she definitely knew sign language - and while Midna wouldn’t know to quite the full extent exactly how their spirits were bound together until much later on, her first indication that the other princess wasn’t fully gone was...this.  This gift of knowledge, a mere fragment of Zelda’s former self, but there all the same.  It’s interesting, especially, to put this into the context of the game, because Midna’s initial reaction to Zelda pouring her own spirit into her body to save her is one of abject horror, as if she believes it would simply be exchanging one death for another (“No! Link! STOP HER!” / “Zelda... I’ve taken all that you had to give...though I did not want it.”) - yet after defeating Zant in the Twilight Realm and reclaiming the Fused Shadow, she says that she will be able to return the “cherished power” Zelda bestowed upon her, meaning that somewhere along the line, Midna did indeed realize that Zelda was still very much alive.

I’d always thought it strange that Zant would curse her into a form with such volatile follicles, but it makes far more sense if he had nothing to do with it.  And if you compare the arms of the spider-like form she transforms into after gaining all four pieces:

To what her hair looks like when she attacks Zant:

You can see some similarities, from the odd, bleeding colors to the darker, vein-y bits.  There’s also the fact to consider that when she transforms, she transforms into a humongous, seven-legged monster, each limb ending in a hand, and her hair typically manifests itself as...well, as a hand.

Also worth nothing that, after Midna strikes Zant down, she says:

“I... I used just a fraction of the power that’s in me now... I did THAT using only a fraction of my ancestors’ magic?!”

Ancestors’ magic meaning, of course, the Fused Shadow - and she struck the final blow...with her hair.

“... Wielding powerful sorcery, they tried to establish dominion over the Sacred Realm. ... It was then that the goddesses ordered us three light spirits to intervene.”

Sure enough, in the visuals that accompany this scene, we see three orbs of golden light appear before the Fused Shadow...but as we all know, there are actually four spirits of light: Lanayru, Eldin, Faron, and last, but certainly not least, Ordona.

Although it’s safe to say that Lanayru was definitely one of them, it’s never explicitly stated which three light spirits these were; however, we can infer through series meta and some in-game details that these were Faron, Eldin, and Lanayru.  They are named for the three golden goddesses, after all, and it is these three who guarded over the three fragments of the Fused Shadow that remained in Hyrule (while the fourth stayed with the Twili’s ancestors).

And that just leaves us with Ordona.  So...what gives?  The obvious explanation would be that Ordona simply didn’t exist at the time that the Hyrulean Civil War (and ergo, the banishment of the Twili’s ancestors) happened; this is was a decades-long struggle that ended only shortly before the events of Ocarina of Time, an era where Ordon Village had yet to be founded.  I believe that a majority of the spirits and deities that exist in Hyrule are not created by any higher power, but rather, arise naturally when there is a need for them, so it’s not entirely out of the question that Ordona wouldn’t exist until Ordon did.

However, I think it’s far more interesting to consider the alternative: that Ordona did exist, and chose not to help the other light spirits seal away the Twili’s ancestors or their dark magic anyway.  This creates a narrative in which the goat-like spirit actively disobeyed a direct order from the gods.  Perhaps they saw the dismal future left in store for the innocent descendants of those banished to the Twilight Realm (Zant refers to life on the other side of the mirror as a “miserable half-existence,” and not without reason) and actively sought to avoid this fate; maybe they foresaw that the Twilight Realm would continue to be used as a dumping ground for Hyrule’s undesirables (see: the Arbiter’s Grounds) and found this to be, at best, in incredibly poor taste, and at worst, a complete violation of the original laws set into place which ordained all of Hyrule’s life, created by the very goddesses themselves:

“... When all was chaos, the goddesses descended and gave order and life to the world.  ... They granted power equally to all who dwelt in the light, and then returned to the heavens.”

The Triforce, perhaps?

Let’s stop and think about what we know about our beloved goat herder, Link.  We know from the scene where Ilia recovers her memory that Link has lived in Ordon for a long time, since the two were young children, at the very least.  But we can also extrapolate that he isn’t Ordon born; he’s the only Hylian in a village filled with plain humans, and he has no parents, no siblings, no relatives to speak of whatsoever.  Whatever the circumstances might have been - maybe he lost his real family, maybe he lost his memory - we can tell that Link was taken into the village at a very young age, and it was there he stayed until our story begins.

So, imagine you’re Rusl - you’ve finally settled into living in this quiet little forest town with your dearly beloved, you’re freshly married, and the two of you have even got to talking about trying for a child in the near future.  And then one day, out of the trees and out of the blue comes this messy-haired, long-eared kid who talks with his hands and he’s got the fiercest eyes, but above all else, on the back of one of his hands is the symbol of the gods - and you don’t know what that means, gods, no, you’re just Rusl, after all, but it must certainly mean something - and then you and the mayor and the rest of the village end up raising him as if he had always been one of you because he’s got nowhere else he knows he needs to be and before you know it the lad’s grown into a young man and you’ve got a son of your own and another on the way and everyone who’s anyone looks up to this kid named Link in their own uniquely special way.

And Link?  He grows up obliviously; he thinks of the mark on the back of his hand as an incredibly strange birthmark, having grown up in a such a small village at Hyrule’s outskirts, far away from the hustle and bustle of Castle Town’s stone walls.  But you, Rusl, know better; you asked him about it a few times as you watched him grow up, always met with the same non-answers and half-shrugs.  Years and years passed, but you never forgot about the significance of the mark he bore, the only clue to his past, unable to tell him outright, as you yourself didn’t have a clue as to what exactly it might mean.  But you do know that if there are answers, they lie far from your tiny little settlement, and you are hardly the person to go looking for them.

And then, an opportunity:

“I have a favor to ask of you, Link.  I was supposed to deliver something to the royal family of Hyrule the day after tomorrow... Yes, it was a task set to me by the mayor, but...would you go in my stead?”

You have ample reason for asking him to to deliver Ordon’s gift in your place; your wife is on the verge of giving birth to your second child, and it’s important to you that you stay with her.  But underlying this request is much, much more than that: a desire for the young man you’ve come to care about considerably to uncover something, anything, for a humble farmhand waltzing into the heart of Hyrule Castle bearing the mark of the Triforce for all to see would surely not go unnoticed.  Your next words come more slowly, carefully:

“You have...never been to Hyrule, right?”

You hesitate, because deep down, it’s a question to which you can’t even begin to fathom an answer.   You know how he’ll reply - of course he hasn’t, he’ll say - but you...aren’t so sure.  And however much that uncertainty might bring you unease - no matter how deeply you care about him, no matter how much you pray that what comes next will not see him lost to this home, to this family - you know that, whatever the answer might be, it’s an answer that he deserves.

The Usurper King’s is a story with which we are all intimately familiar; angry at the injustice of his people’s banishment and estranged by those who refused his rule, he flees the Palace of Twilight in a fit of anger one day, where he looks to the sky and finds his salvation in the form of Ganondorf, whom he believes to be a god.  With his newfound power, he banishes the true ruler of the Twili and usurps her throne, transforming his own people into dark and malformed Shadow Beasts - and with them at his side he invades the World of Light, storming Hyrule Castle and scattering the land’s Light Spirits in all but one fell swoop.  He commits countless atrocities, reducing Kakariko Village to a mere village of three, murdering the Zora Queen as a sheer display of power, and possibly even killing the King of Hyrule himself - but when all is said and done, he meets his demise at the hands of Hyrule’s hero and the very princess he had cursed, exploding in an agonizing but powerful display of the Fused Shadow’s might.

However, there is one scene in particular that always struck me as out-of-place in this overall narrative.  It comes when Ganondorf finally meets his own demise at the hands of Link, and he stands alone on a hill, Master Sword struck center in the scar he received over a century ago.  He gives us his last words - “The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!” he spits menacingly - but before he perishes, we cut to another scene, and are greeted with this:

It’s Zant, another evil man who recently perished himself, and he ostensibly looks down upon Ganondorf, before cracking his neck in a very morose, very fatal way.  We cut back to Ganondorf, and only then do his eyes go white, and the wind blows over the field, signalling that finally, it’s over.

For a long time, I had assumed that this scene was meant to be symbolic: that Ganondorf, having had such a strong connection with Zant, was only able to perish because Zant, too, was already dead.  But now - an incredible thirteen years later - I have come to believe that this isn’t the case, or, at the very least, there’s a chance it might not be, and I’d like to take a moment to talk about that here.

(Credit for this one 100% goes out to @therealflurrin​​, who also gave me permission to make this write-up.  Their conversations are always an excellent source of primo TP content.)

Something that is important to understand about the relationship between Zant and Ganondorf is that it is one of co-dependence; Zant, angry but utterly powerless to do what he thinks needs to be done, is found by the bearer of the Triforce of Power in a moment of outrage and weakness.  Ganondorf, reduced to mere a giant mass of malice and darkness in the Twilight Realm, tells Zant: “I shall house my power in you… If there is anything you desire, then I shall desire it, too.”  From Zant’s perspective, it’s not hard to believe why he believed this to a blessing from a god; in a great moment of need, a powerful entity appeared before him, offering him seemingly unlimited power.  But we know that Ganondorf is no god; that he only approaches Zant for reasons that are entirely self-serving, as a twisted and misshapen light dweller trapped in the realm of shadows.  He allows Zant to house him and his power with the ultimate goal of being “reborn” and returning to Hyrule, tricks the Twili into believing him to be a “god” so that he will carry out his will unquestioningly - but ultimately, Ganondorf needed Zant just as much (if not far more) than Zant ever needed him.

We know from the very scene where Ganondorf’s death unfolds just how deep this co-dependency runs.  It is my belief that the two formed a sort of “soul bond” following their initial encounter, intertwining their fates so that neither could perish while the other still lived; although Zant is not entirely aware of Ganondorf’s true nature, he is at least somewhat aware of this bond:

 “As long as my master, Ganon, survives, he will resurrect me without cease!”

These are his very last words before Midna strikes him down, in a move that ultimately seems to be very final, indeed.  But now we must return to the death of his supposed “master,” and the implications Zant’s appearance has in that moment.  Ganondorf is on death’s doorstep for the second time; the first, at the hands of the Great Sages, it was the Triforce of Power that saved him - and now, here, he sees Zant in his final breaths, a beacon of hope in a great moment of need.  But the scene plays out how we expect: Zant is already dead, and with nothing yet tethering him to life, Ganondorf meets his end, this time, for good.

Except there’s one teensy, tiny problem here, and I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this: Zant and Ganondorf’s relationship is one of co-dependency, as you’ll remember, their souls bound to one another in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Zelda and Midna’s after the former gave up her own light in order to save the latter.  If this were untrue, then we would not see Zant in the moments leading up to Ganondorf’s death; furthermore, if Zant were somehow already dead despite this co-dependency, then Ganondorf would simply keel over sometime shortly thereafter following Link’s decisive blow with the Master Sword.

Instead, there is a pivotal moment where Ganondorf’s fate is evidently sealed, and it’s the moment where we see Zant snap his neck - a display, which, frankly, was probably far too gruesome for a 10-year-old me playing through the game for the first time.  It is immediately following this scene where Ganondorf reels back, releasing one final, raspy grunt as his life leaves his eyes, and Hyrule again knows peace.  If Zant had died X amount of time before this ultimate battle, it seems very peculiar that Ganondorf would have such a sudden and visceral reaction to it, as if it had happened elsewhere, simultaneously.

So, let’s scrutinize this scene under the lens of their co-dependency; let’s say that, despite the destruction of his body, Zant was able to survive his final blow in some way, as his master still lived on.  Following this, and going back to the initial scene, we can arrive at two simple conclusions:

That Zant was alive up until the very moment that Ganondorf perished, and

in that final, critical moment, he chose to sever their bond.

The question, then, is…why?  Why would the Usurper King, who had once thought the Gerudo King his god, choose to sever the only thing keeping him alive?  It’s true that Zant was undoubtedly a deeply troubled and hateful man; he was angry at the world of light and its inhabitants, whom he saw as oppressors, perhaps even rightly so - and he was angry at the Twilight Realm’s own “useless, do-nothing royal family that had resigned itself to [a] miserable half-existence.”  But Ganondorf’s spirit is one of pure malice, and it had invaded the world on the other side of the mirror long, long before the story of Twilight Princess begins.  One cannot help but wonder exactly what kind of effect such evil might have had on the realm and its denizens, though it is not hard to imagine the harborer of Demise’s Curse slowly and carefully plotting from the shadows, decades spent as whispers in the ears of the unknowing Twili until, finally, one suitable enough to become his vessel appeared - one who was vulnerable and angry enough to listen to those whispers, and would submit to anyone and anything if it meant obtaining the power to do what they thought was right.

Perhaps, then, Zant’s story is not one of an evil, bloodthirsty tyrant who met his rightful end at the hands of Link and Midna; perhaps his is a tragedy, the story of a man who fell victim to the malice residing within Ganondorf, only worsened the moment he became the Gerudo King’s vessel.  Perhaps - lost in fugue state in the Twilight Realm, formless and lost, but still otherwise alive - it took the apparent death of a particular someone at the hands of his “god” in order to finally snap him back to his senses.

(Zant could have simply killed Midna when he usurped her throne, yet he didn’t.  I personally think the two are related, but I can talk more about that in a different at a different time, as it is far more headcanon than analysis.)

Let’s refresh ourselves on what happens here: we see Midna standing before the entrance to the Twilight Realm, facing Link and Zelda, who have come to bid her farewell before her return home.  She says a few words about about how light and shadow can’t mix, and Zelda steps in to tell her that this is untrue - “Shadow and light are two sides of the same coin,” she says.  “One cannot exist without the other.”  She mentions that the gods must have left the Mirror of Twilight in the world of light for a reason, and Midna is silent for a few moments, eyes downcast, before turning to Zelda once more and telling her how kind her words are.  And then turns away - and she sheds a tear of light - and the mirror is shattered - and she’s gone.

@theseventhsage very succinctly wrote a post just a handful of days ago about how this entire interaction “feels like a visual representation of an angsty 250k words mutual pining fanfic,” and not only could I not agree more, but there’s very good reason for it - a small, simple reason that’s really rather obvious, and is probably news to almost no one, but is no less heartbreaking for it:

Zelda knew.

It’s a notion that I’ve seen present in more than one fanmade piece of media: the idea that while their souls were as one, Zelda was able to see Midna’s hearts and its intentions as if they were her own.  But what’s important here is that this isn’t some baseless widespread headcanon of how events transpired - it is written plainly in the game’s text, directly from Zelda herself.

When Zelda’s soul reunites with her body, Midna is struck with awe, and she tries and fails to say something to the fellow princess.  Zelda speaks up first: “Say nothing, Midna,” she says.  “Your heart and mine were as one, however briefly... Such suffering you have endured.”

Such suffering you have endured.

Zelda knew Midna as intimately as Midna knew herself - she saw her past, her home, her struggles as the to-be ruler of a realm bathed in anti-light; she saw Zant’s violent usurping, and the transformation of her people by his dark power; she saw Midna’s true form, and her curse, and the moment she clutched her fragment of the Fused Shadow and fled her people in search of a divine beast.  Such suffering you have endured, she says, because she felt that suffering as intimately as her own troubled past - and with all of this taken into consideration, it’s inevitable that we arrive at one, completely irrefutable truth:

Zelda knew that Midna was going to destroy the Mirror of Twilight.

And Midna knew that she knew.  She had talked openly about the possibility of destroying the mirror as early as the Temple of Time: “You know, we could be assembling something truly terrible here...” she says to Link, after the battle with Armogohma. “It could be something that we'll ultimately have to destroy.”  Their final farewell in the Mirror Chamber feels so aggressively like an unspoken mutual pining because in more ways than one, it is - “Light and shadow can’t mix, as well all know,” Midna says aloud.  This is a decision I have to make, she says without saying.  Zelda’s response - that shadow and light are two sides of the same coin - is a silent plea, a gentle rebuttal: You don’t have to do this, she’s saying.  We can coexist.  I know we can.

Midna turns from her to face the entrance to the Twilight Realm, and Zelda opens her mouth as if to say more - but she stops.  She knows that, no matter how much she wishes for things to be different, this is a decision that only Midna can make.  A gentle desert breeze stirs up from behind her - as if to signify her resignation.

There is so much power hidden behind this scene, and the realization that this is all very real, based-entirely-in-canon goings-on here is one that helped me start to see Twilight Princess as more than a mere Ocarina of Time copycat.  The juxtaposition between Zelda’s measured, sorrowful poise and Link’s clueless smiling face as Midna bids them farewell is so carefully planned, so beautifully executed, and I am grateful every day that the devs went to such lengths to show the depths of their relationship in so few words -  even if we had to do a bit of digging beneath the surface in order to see it.

Let’s face it: Link has every single reason to believe that Midna is dead.  Hyrule Castle has just been decimated, and she was there not moments ago--and suddenly the Demon King stands before them on horseback, wielding her Fused Shadow like a trophy and crushing it in his fist as if it were nothing more than a mere twig, and not an ancient and powerful artifact made of dark magic.  Link goes into the final stretch of the battle with the knowledge that his dear friend and companion for the entirety of his journey has been slain by the King of Evil (and in a way, I believe she was killed--saved only by the strength of her own magic, or the Light Spirits, or the goddess’ will, or some combination of the three), but when the long-awaited battle is finally, truly over and the dust settles, he sees this in the distance:

And it’s simply too good to be true.  How could it possibly be her?  Was her iconic Fused Shadow not destroyed right before his very eyes not long ago?  Whatever the case, he moves toward the distant figure--slowly at first, in disbelief, but before long he’s sprinting toward it, hoping beyond hope that it’s not a figment of his imagination...

And then he stops.

Because this is not the Midna that he knew.

Who is this? He doesn’t know this figure.  He remains motionless, hopeful but anxious, thoughts racing.  Even as she stands and reveals herself to him, all he can do is continue to stare, unsure of what to say, unsure of who this person might be--he has an idea, but what if he’s wrong?

And then she speaks.

And with these few words, all uncertainty in his mind has been extinguished. 

Without a doubt, this is the Midna he knew and cared for: whimsical, sarcastic, never missing an opportunity to poke fun at him.  In short, he’s not smiling because of how beautiful she is--he’s smiling because, moments ago, he believed she was gone.  He’s smiling because there she stands before him, undeniably her, even with a face he doesn’t recognize.  He’s smiling because he never thought he would see her smile again.