During the events of Ocarina of Time, Link is sent forward seven years (and aged up appropriately) to fight the coming evil. When all is settled, Zelda sends him back those seven years, to live them out as a child since it wasn’t fair to deprive him of those years of his life. While it would, theoretically, be feasible to make one cohesive timeline from this, it is also the cause of the second split in the timeline. Where we have the “child era” and the “adult era”. The prior takes place after Link is sent back and shows what happened to him after that, while the latter shows what happened seven years in the future after Link disappeared from that timeline.
As the child era begins, the Sacred Realm is still protected. The timeline notes something called “The Dark World & The Heroes Descendants”. I know that all the Links are generally considered to be descendants of each other, but beyond that, I’m not really sure what this is supposed to point out.
In any event, it is here where the events of Majora’s Mask take place. It is here where Ganondorf is executed. Question, I know that Ganondorf was a thief who turned into a demon (Ganon), but that transformation already happened. Can he revert back and forth at will? Was his spirit thrown back in time and given corporeal form somewhere in the past? Maybe someone more well versed in the Zelda mythos can clear that one up for me. It’s possible that it’s just a hiccup that comes with trying to connect a bunch of games who’s order was already scrambled and put them into something resembling a linear order. I don’t know, it could go either way.
We then come to what is known as the Twilight era (no not that Twilight). It is here where the events of the relatively recent Twilight Princess take place, most notably, something called The Shadow Invasion.
Fittingly, the Shadow Invasion brings us to the Shadow era. It is here where the 4 Swords sequel games take place. At least, I think that’s what the line means when they say “4 Swords Plus”. There’s something called the Hyrule Adventure (haven’t these all techincally been Hyrule adventures?) and Ganondorf is reincarnated. Not only that but Vaati is resurrected. Two big bads existing simultaneously? I can’t imagine that would be a good thing for Hyrule. Then again, it’s a pretty solid guess that both of these problems are resolved in the games. Considering that’s where this branch ends, it’s as good a guess as any. Either that or that timeline has left fans on a pretty serious cliffhanger.
With that said, we’ll move on to the third and final line in the Zelda…timeline in the fifth and final part of this little breakdown.
Sources
The Official Legend of Zelda Timeline Revealed. Sterling, Jim. Destructoid.com
The Official Zelda Timeline Now With Added Detail . Kotaku.com