Spoilers ahead for the finale!
An aspect of the final battle that got lost after Viola's amazing attack, was the fact that Tula nearly killed her son. And that, I think, is something I would really like to delve my teeth into, to properly look at what happened.
The thing that struck me the most during Tula's attack on her son, was that Jaysohn did manage to snap her out of it. In the context of the story, Jaysohn grappled his mom to get her to stop, and even after getting viciously bit by her, he still managed to get her back to herself. He managed to get to his mom fast enough, and used himself to protect the others from the mindless being Tula had become. And, even when faced with near death, this little kid manages to get back up and attack the creature that did this to his mother. Not once did he blame her, having understood enough about the situation to realise his mom was not in control. He knows, he understood, that this was Phoebe, not Tula. And so, the moment he is able to free his mom, still wounded and near death's door, he goes after Phoebe so that his mom won't be taken again.
Tula, however, was aware of everything she did to Jaysohn. She was painfully aware of how badly she hurt her son, how she nearly killed him. And, as Brennan describes;
She is broken, in a way she has never been before. She nearly killed her baby, used as a puppet because she's alive when she should have been dead. The Blue that keeps her alive is what nearly caused her to kill her son. Tula nearly lost everything, yet, once more, it was hope and love that brought her back once more. Her son brought her back.
However, she was silent for the rest of the battle until Phoebe finally fell, and Jaysohn nearly died. She was quiet, too horrified with what she nearly did. Perhaps, had more time been afforded to that moment with Tula and Jaysohn before he decided to retaliate against Phoebe, there would have been...something...that went on. A focus on the fact that it was Tula who went for another member of their family, whilst Ava went for the ground and the reactor. What would that do to her, I cannot help but wonder. What did that do to her, in the immediate aftermath, when she could slow down and process what happened. She must live with the knowledge she nearly killed her own child, and that, had he been just a little weaker or just a little slower, she would've succeeded. She might have been able to bring him back, like she did with Sybil...but she would have to live with the knowledge that she took her son's life. And that thought is horrifying.
Yet, it makes her gentleness with Lukas later all the more significant. Even with the blood of her son on her hands, she still chooses to hope for a better tomorrow. She still chooses to give Lukas - and herself - another chance, another tomorrow. Bad things could have happened, but they didn't, and they all made it out. The "what ifs" will remain in the shadows, in the nightmares, but in the daylight, she will keep her head high. It doesn't lessen the impact of her deeds or her burdens, but it can make them bearable. And, with the addition of her son's refusal to blame her, it makes it just the little easier. She deserves a new tomorrow, too.
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Totk spoilers but not major ones, minor spoilers
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So I’m still playing through Totk but very slowly, I’m super invested in taking my time and enjoying the scenery, same way I played BOTW. But I had an idea, as per usual. So know those poes you find in the depths? Know how poes in ocarina of Time are mean to you? I have two things on this
1. Since Wild had a near death experience (or just. A death experience would be more accurate) he can see poes and they don’t hurt him! So when visiting Times hyrule, the pies don’t attack him. They just vibe together. This leads to Shenanigans.
2. The poes are actually his fellow knights, or just in general people whom he knew in life before the calamity. That’s why you see those random ghost knights handing out weapons. Those are his coworkers! They speak to him, maybe vibe with him. Now, imagine: he’s in Times Hyrule getting attacked by Poe, and one of HIS Poe, (his Poe friends) come out and fight the other Poe for him, and maybe pass on a weapon afterwards. Angsty? Fluffy? Crack? So many options.
Aight, back into my little hole in the ground I go!
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you also have to consider that i don't think Zelda had a lot of high thoughts about herself because of everything her father told to her, it's pretty clear she thinks of herself a failure not fit to save anyone or even be a royal in botw especially the closer to the calamity we got in the memories. if they just had her and link go around hyrule helping people (which is what I assume they did) in the timeskip they should attribute people liking her so much to her being helpful and literally fending the calamity off for 100 years instead of being royalty, which they could have done easily because it's pretty obvious she did go around hyrule to help (the school is a pretty good example)! it would make zeldadorf going around being malicious way cooler as link has to clear her name around Hyrule
Yeah, Zelda's helpful and all the level of obsession the NPC's in the world have with Zelda doesn't at all match up with all the (fairly basic) nice things she's done, and ESPECIALLY doesn't work with how everyone is totally cool with Fake Zelda raising hell. Ensuring that one village has an elementary school should not generate enough goodwill to let people forgive brainwashing and attempted murder. Not to mention the long list of Good Deeds she apparently has time for is just... bizarre, and a sign that she's actually a pretty crappy leader considering she has zero time management skills. Like lady, you're rebuilding a fucking kingdom after a century long apocalypse, I really don't think you should be spending your time teaching people how to cook random recipes and helping to plant flower gardens. And the random carved little monuments for everyone who died in the Calamity also strike me as just... no. You can commission the fancy monuments later, everyone fucking knows it happened right now. Hell, why don't any of the villages have memorials for the Calamity victims, they're the ones that actually had to deal with the immediate aftermath. Having Zelda place generic memorials everywhere just makes me wonder why the hell there aren't any old memorials made by survivors in the immediate aftermath, in the places where people actually live and can visit them.
Also while I know all of the memorials having a respawning silent princess flower on them is just the game continuing to be wildly unsubtle about "look this flower represents zelda DO YOU GET IT GUYS", from an in-universe perspective it's absolutely hilarious. Those flowers are extremely endangered, and not even the best pre-calamity conservation efforts were enough to help. They're STILL very fucking endangered, and were believed to be extinct! They canonically cannot cultivate this plant, it's very rare and only grows in the wild... which is why they're picking these extremely rare flowers to use as decoration on a memorial. And now you can't find them growing in any of the spots they used to florish in, except the Lost Woods. They're not even tied to the fairy fountains, because there's none of them growing around the new fountain locations. I like to think that Zelda decided to make all the stupid memorials and have a silent princess flower left on each one, and so her loyal followers have been replacing all the cut flowers every time they wither, and as result the silent princess flower is on the verge of extinction again. I know it's not what the game was trying to say, but it's the logical conclusion to make - people have been picking this very endangered plant all over the country, and now you can't find it anymore. And also it's a really funny mental image that Zelda was so concerned about their conservation back in BOTW that she spent a whole memory talking about it, but now she's having them picked en-masse to make sure her vanity project has the correct aesthetic. I hate Zelda in TOTK for many reasons, but her new habit of intentionally killing an endangered plant is easily the funniest problem the writing accidentally gave her.
Anyways as for her mental state before the Calamity, I do see that as being very complicated. She's got a lot of Issues, mainly stemming from her family, religion, stress and powers. No need to go over all that though, as I think everyone has long since analyzed that to hell and back. BUT at the same time, while her personal life is fucking miserable, we can't ignore that she's still literally the crown princess of an extremely powerful nation, and has spent her entire life being told that she is fundamentally a better person than everyone else. She was being emotionally abused by her father, but that does not change the fact that she's incredibly privileged, and doesn't seem particularly aware of that fact. I mean fuck, the BOTW memories show Zelda had a habit of actively trying to lose her bodyguard and run off alone into the wilderness on a whim. And when said bodyguard caught up with her (with zero judgement or displeasure), her only reaction was to emotionally abuse him. She genuinely did not seem to understand or care that it's a universally bad idea to let an unarmed teenager run off alone into the monster infested wilderness, with nobody knowing where she's going or when she'll be back. And that's without taking into account people actively trying to kill her.
All of that behaviour right there is just a combination of teenage dumbassery and Zelda being extremely privileged. She lives in a world without any serious consequences, why would she need to learn self preservation? And her abusing Link was a hell of a lot more serious than the fandom likes to see it as. Being a knight is literally his lifes work, he's been training since he was a small child, he has no idea how to support himself in any other way. And he answers directly to the reigning monarch, which is currently King Rhoam... but in the very near future would be Zelda. If he doesn't follow Rhoam's orders to be Zelda's bodyguard, he's fired and his life is ruined. If he does follow his orders, he's angering Zelda, and then in the future she'll probably retaliate by firing him, and his life will be ruined. I absolutely hate that most of the fandom has decided Link was reacting to the verbal abuse with just "wow she's so smart and pretty, what a girlboss", because that's completely insane (and in the context of shipping, wildly unhealthy for Link). I see Link silently tolerating Zelda's harassment as just him desperately trying to minimize how much she hates him, because she can absolutely destroy his life on a whim, and her actions all suggested she will absolutely do so. Princess Zelda does not want Link to ever exist in her presence; why the fuck would she want to keep him employed after she becomes Queen?
...To be clear, I think all of this is a good thing. I mean, Zelda being a privileged little shit and coping with stress by abusing her personal servant are very negative traits for her as a person, but as a character I really like it! These are very serious flaws, but they're understandable - she's not a total bitch because she's pure evil, she acts like a bitch because she's a stressed teenager lashing out at the easiest target, and she genuinely does not realize how harmful her actions are. I liked that the game wasn't afraid to show us an uglier side of Zelda, and trusted the audience to understand that she was more than just her worst impulses. I think the closest we've ever gotten to that was Skyward Sword Zelda admitting that she pretended to be in grave danger to manipulate Link into doing her dirty work, and he should not be okay with that... but that wasn't quite as nuanced, because that was more Zelda literally being a god in mortal form, and doing something morally sketchy for the Greater Good. BOTW Zelda is just a person that hurt someone because it was an easy way to make herself feel better. It gives her a depth that very few Zelda's have been allowed to have.
And it really bothers me that apparently all of that is just gone in TOTK. Zelda, who is inexplicably still a princess for some reason, is the unquestioned almighty ruler of Hyrule. The Zora King and Gerudo Chief both swear eternal subversience to her in the ending, and Zelda happily accepts their submission as just what she is rightfully owed. When she's in the past she feels completely entitled to declare that Link will finish the battle for them, even though the last time she saw him he'd lost his entire fucking arm and was falling to his death, and also the entire situation is very political, and she has no idea which side Link would interpret as being correct. For fucks sake, she stole his goddamn house, made extensive renovations, added a large second room for herself, and still did not allow him to have any space in there. They're not sharing that bed, shippers. Link just does not live there anymore. That's why one of the TOTK sidequests is... Link getting a house again, on the other side of the country from where Zelda is living. The game repeatedly tells me that Zelda is actually the single bestest person who ever lived, but she never shows any real consideration for the wellbeing of someone who isn't Rauru, Sonia or Mineru... apart from the opening where she expresses concern that Link was seriously wounded by slapping three keese with his sword and killing them instantly. Which is more condescending than anything else.
And as I think I've mentioned before, all the apparently great and noble deeds Zelda performs are done with the overall goal of ensuring the Kingdom of Hyrule continues to exist under the control of the royal family. She's the current reigning monarch, so literally all of this is for her own benefit. There's nothing wrong with doing good things that also benefit you, of course, but once again the game constantly insisting that Zelda is a perfect selfless martyr... doesn't really track with the fact that she's the only one with a real motive to want Hyrule to remain under her rule. Everyone else has been getting by just fine without her for the last century, and Zelda going missing at the start of a crisis doesn't really cause any issues with leadership; things keep running smoothly, the only issues that ever show up is from Zelda not being there to do specific tasks she said she would do, like help plant a flower garden. Idk, it just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth; there's absolutely no reason for Hyrule to be a monarchy post-calamity, and the fact that everyone is so fanatically loyal to Zelda makes me feel like she's actively working to keep herself on the throne because she wants the power. If her first priority was being a good leader, people wouldn't be scared to question her.
But I'm with you on the Puppet Zelda plotline being wasted, it's like the whole thing was just there bcause the devs realized the main story quest (regional phenomenon) had nothing to do with the supposed main quest (find zelda), and just threw in a fake zelda to chase so the players would feel like they were making progress on that, but couldn't be bothered to make the fake zelda subplot have any consequences. That or they were just cowards with no faith in the audience, and figured if the fake Zelda's actions made NPC's express fear and hatred for the real one, the player would also be convinced that the real Zelda was bad. Which is ironic, considering the NPC's refusing to express any negative thoughts about the fake Zelda is a massive red flag about what the real one is like, and has convinced a lot of the audience not to like her.
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