Throughout his adventures in Ocarina of Time, Link encounters a number of eligible ladies who could be seen as viable love interests, and it’s long been a subject of fan debate who among them, if any, won the Hero of Time’s heart. But in reality, we can determine that most of these women couldn’t have settled down with Link due to how the events in the Adult Link Timeline differ from those in the Child Link Timeline, as well as other factors. When we look at the hard facts, it becomes clear that if Link ended up with any love interest from Ocarina of Time, it would have been Malon.

The Hero’s Shade

The first question is: did Link wind up with anyone, and the answer is a resounding yes given that we know for certain that Link had a child. Twilight Princess provides key evidence of this fact.

Most of us know that, at the close of Ocarina of Time, Hyrule’s history was split in three parts: a world where Link saved Hyrule as an adult from Ganondorf’s terrorizing reign, a world where Link failed, and a world where Link returned from the future as a child just in time to warn the royal family of Ganondorf’s plot beforehand. The timeline Link returned to is known as a the Child Link Timeline, and it’s where Link lived out the rest of his days, leaving the Adult Link Timeline behind. This theory mostly involves the Child Link Timeline, and comparisons between it and the Adult Link timeline are crucial to the evidence behind it. However, the Hero is Defeated Timeline is irrelevant to this discussion.

In Twilight Princess, which occurs long after the Hero of Time died in the Child Link Timeline, we meet the Hero’s Shade, a spirit who teaches us important combat tips and regrets how he was never seen as a hero. Although, in the Adult Link Timeline, Link goes down in history as the Hero of Time who defeated the King of Evil, in the Child Link Timeline, Ganondorf is stopped prematurely due to Link’s warning as a child. It stands to reason that Link was never revered as a hero the way he would have been in the Adult Link Timeline. Further, the Hero’s Shade continually refers to Link as “son.” Speculation that the Hero’s Shade is the Hero of Time and the ancestor of the Hero of Twilight is confirmed in the Hyrule Hystoria. Obviously, for Link to have a descendent in the far future, he must have had a child at some point.

Elimination Round

But the question remains: who was the mother? There are several possible love interests for Link in Ocarina of Time: Ruto becomes interested in Link after he saves her from Lord Jabu-Jabu’s Belly, and she gives him the Spiritual Stone of Water as an engagement ring; Nabooru makes a romantic promise to Link as a child and regrets that she didn’t fulfill it when she sees Link as an adult; Zelda forms an intimate relationship with Link in both timelines, working with him to stop Ganondorf’s evil plans; Saria, Link’s childhood friend, has a very close bond with Link before the timeline split; and after Malon befriends Link, her father states Link would be a good husband for her.

We can, through logical inference, eliminate most of Link’s romantic interests as end game. Ruto is one of the easiest to rule out as a possibility. If Link had a child with Ruto after Ocarina of Time, as weird as it is to even consider that idea, their offspring would be a Zora-Hylian hybrid. Even if you want to argue that a distant descendent of the two could have lost all traces of fish scales or gills generations later, in Ocarina of Time, before Link saves Ruto and obtains the Spiritual Stone of Water, Ruto displays nothing but disdain for him. It was only after dragging her unwilling highness through a dungeon and proving his heroics, that Link won Ruto over. That said, this odd couple would have had no reason to meet, let alone become engaged, in the Child Link Timeline, where Link never even obtained the Spiritual Stone of Water.

Next, Saria becoming the mother of Link’s child is an impossibility considering that, as a Kokiri, she will never age from her childlike state or become old enough to bear a child. And ultimately, we can also cross Nabooru off the list, as it’s unlikely Link ever befriended her in the Child Link timeline, given that he met her after Princess Zelda during his quest to defeat Ganon. During the Adult Link Timeline, Nabooru and Link established a bond due to their shared enmity toward Ganondorf, but they would have had no reason to meet or become friends in the Child Link Timeline. Further, Link in Twilight Princess lacks any Gerudo traits.

There are a lot of fans out there who want Zelda and Link to end up together. Yet, we can deduce that Zelda from Ocarina of Time never married Link either. First of all, the Hero of Time’s descendent in Twilight Princess is not royalty and lives far from the castle, in a region arguably not even part of Hyrule. Even if the Hero of Twilight were a distant relative, he’d be some form of nobility at the very least, possibly a knight – not a mere farmhand. More damning to the Zelda/Link theory is the fact Link is a nobody in the Child Link Timeline, a fact the Hero’s Shade seems to mourn. Why would the royal family ever allow Zelda to marry a strange orphaned boy from the forest? Granted, his warning of Ganondorf’s plot certainly came in handy, and the mark of the Triforce on his hand made his tale believable, but that doesn’t make him marriage material for a princess. If he had received the acclaim he deserved for saving Hyrule, Hero’s Shade would have no reason to lament not being seen as a hero.

Also, Link and Zelda procreating arguably results in incestuous implications considering the romantic undertones of the relationships between most Links and Zeldas, including in Twilight Princess. This is a big problem I have with the Zelda/Link pairing: many Zeldas and Links are descendants of other Zeldas and Links, and because of the ambiguously romantic interactions they have, any Zelda or Link having a family together would result in incest down the line. The only game I’d argue they likely wound up together was The Legend of Zelda II, which concludes with a strongly implied kiss between the two, but this game occurs at the very end of the Hero is Defeated Timeline, avoiding awkward implications.

A Friendship Across Time

A process of elimination leaves Malon as the only viable candidate from Ocarina of Time for Link’s wife. Of course, Nintendo could have had no particular women in mind for the Hero of Time, leaving that fact undetermined, or thought up a hypothetical spouse we’ve never encountered in the franchise, but evidence actually points to Malon being the one.

First, unlike Ruto and Nabooru, Malon must have met Link in the Child Link Timeline. We know Link met Zelda, as indicated by the end screen of Ocarina of Time and the subsequent events, and this proves he also met Malon. To get to the princess in the castle, as we see him accomplish in the end screen, Link must first converse with Malon, receive a cuckoo egg from her, and wake Talon, her

father, who is sleeping in front of the secret entrance to the castle.

Link didn’t just meet Malon, however. He must have also befriended her considering that he has Epona in Majora’s Mask, which directly follows the Ocarina of Time in the Child Link Timeline. This means the childhood friendship Link established with Malon in the Child Link Timeline mirrors the one in the game. Talon would have in all likelihood made the same, or a similar, offer of marriage to Malon when Link beats the Super Cucco Game. Talon’s offer (that he insists is a joke) doesn’t tell us much about his future plans for Malon, but it does indicate in-game information Nintendo could have drawn on for Twilight Princess. It also highlights an important fact. For Talon and Malon, as opposed to Ruto, Zelda and Nabooru, it didn’t matter if Link had any impressive social station or accomplished any particularly valorous tasks; he was still worthy of Malon’s friendship and, perhaps, even hand in marriage.

All in the Family

But we see further evidence of this theory in the character of the Hero of Twilight himself. As Gametheory’s MatPat has pointed out, Twilight Princess‘s hero is a ranch hand, skilled with a horse and bow and arrow. Unlike Link in Ocarina of Time, the hero in Twilight Princess doesn’t acquire his horse from a farm he visits, but, rather, grows up with his horse on a farm, herding cattle and performing other rustic duties.

How did the Hero of Time’s descendent become a farmer? We know that the Hero of Time or his descendants must have, at some point, relocated to Ordona Province. It could be a coincidence that this Link wound up being a farmer, but, in Medieval Europe, which Hyrule is based on, it was most common for careers to be family-based and passed down generation to generation. People were organized into strict classes in the social hierarchy – usually the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich. Link’s family would not have randomly decided to be farmers. They would have been farmers for generations. Accordingly, there’s a strong likelihood that Link in Twilight Princess inherited the career of farmer from his forbears and that his horse is a descendent of Epona.

Not only that, but Link knows “Epona’s Song” in Twilight Princess and uses it to call his horse. Fans have speculated this could mean the song was passed down in the family, an idea supported by Malon’s statement in Ocarina of Time that her mother sang it to her as a baby. While it’s conceivable the Hero of Time passed down all his songs to his descendants regardless of who he married, Link in Twilight Princess learns the other songs from Howling Stones, whereas he knows “Epona’s Song” from the beginning.

A Retired Hero

This theory also ties in nicely with the themes of the Hero’s Shade, as a bittersweet conclusion to his life. While, in my mind, Link and Malon ending up together is endearing and sweet, the Hero’s Shade rues much about his life, even after death. One wonders why he wanted the recognition of a hero, given that Link doesn’t seem prone to egoism or liable to seek praise; many of his good deeds throughout games go unacknowledged. Then again, if Link was seen as an ordinary boy, social conventions would have been barred him from pursuing any relationship with Zelda, even friendship. Link meets Zelda by sneaking into the castle. Why would the royal family ever allow him to associate with Zelda after his warning of Ganondorf’s plans? He is a mere orphan. They likely acted on his warning and moved on, especially since we next see Link wandering the Lost Woods alone. Perhaps, tragically, though Zelda and Link were bound through time, they were never able to be together in any capacity.

Enter stage left, Malon, the cheerful farm girl who nicknamed Link Fairy Boy in one timeline, and perhaps, in a timeline without Navi, fondly called him Forest Boy when they met again. Unlike Princess Ruto or Nabooru, who only noticed Link after his accomplishments, Malon was charmed by Link for who he was, and unlike Zelda, social status wouldn’t get in the way of any friendship or romance. After helping Talon, visiting Lon Lon Ranch, being gifted Epona, and adventuring abroad, Link very well could have returned to the quaint Hyrulean farm. Maybe he even wanted to return Epona, feeling indebted to Malon and her family. A friendship subsequently blossoming into something more, with Talon’s firm approval, is not difficult to imagine.

And yet, while we can envision a happy life for Malon and Link, the spirit of the Hero of Time we encounter in Twilight Princess is filled with regret. The reason might be that, after some adventuring following Ocarina of Time and a failure to establish himself as a hero, he settled for a quiet life on Lon Lon Ranch. We can only speculate what kind of marriage he would have had with Malon, if any, but even if it were happy, considering Link’s adventurous spirit, the lifestyle of a farmhand may have left him with regrets.

Still, as the idyllic image above illustrates, Link and Malon likely lead a peaceful life together if they did marry. It’s worth noting that, unlike the other female characters in the game, who admired Link either partially or mostly for his accomplishments or heroics, Malon just saw him as a simple, kind-hearted boy and that was enough for her. Perhaps Malon, more than any other love interest for Link, loved him for who he was as a person, with or without the trappings of the fateful role he lead. In that sense, I think she was the right choice, even if it meant Link experiencing a more pedestrian end to his days.

Banner art: alinemendes

First article image: eternalegend

Fourth article image: lynlynlora

Last article image: Damien Canderle