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angelichavenhasideas · 7 months

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Age headcanons for the LU boys

So, for Gift Of Family I need to know all of the boys ages for when they're adopted and when the last of them is adopted. However, this meant that I had to figure out not only their age order but how close I could get the boys to their canonical ages as possible. So, I'm going to share with you my findings of not only how old I think each Link is in Jojo's comic but also how old I think they are in each of their games based on vibes, official nintendo art, Jojo's art, and Jojo's past QnA stuff. Let's begin.

Time

Time is both the easiest and trickiest. To avoid the trickiness, I decided to ignore his mental age and just focused on his physical age.

For Ocarina of Time, I've put Time as 9/16. First of all, we know he's a kid, maybe the youngest of all the Links, though I doubt it. But most of my reasoning for putting Time at 9 when he starts his adventure is simply because, ever since I was a kid, I thought it was a canonical fact that Time was 9 when he left Kokiri Forest. I don't know where I got this information, I can't find any proof of this being true, but nostalgia is very good at her job and I haven't seen anything from Jojo disproving this fact. So Time starts OoT at 9 and travels seven years in the future, making him also 16 at the same time.

Majora's mask was much easier. I hadn't made Time age up from 9 to 10 during OoT and, when MM opens, Time is actively trying to hunt Navi down. So i don't believe Time can be any younger than 10 when he runs into the Skull Kid. In fact, I believe he is ten during the entirety of MM, seeing as it only takes three days and Time doesn't really look any different then he did in OoT except maybe a little bit more maturity in promotional art. So, Time is no younger then 10 but no older then 12.

During LU I'd bargain that Time is exactly 30 years old. Jojo has stated that not only is Time the physically oldest of the Chain but she's also stated that it's been around 20 years since the end of his last adventure. I took the 20 year limit literally and decided that it'd been exactly 20 years since MM ended. And since I figure that Time was 10 at the time, Time is now 30 years old. I can see an argument for both 29 and 31 but there's not much of an argument outside of that.

Warriors

Canonically the comic's second oldest Link, Warriors is also one of the oldest heroes in his own game. Asuming that his only game inspiration is Hyrule Warriors, Definitive Edition not included, we can assume that Jojo's statement of Warriors being "about 6-7 years" out of his initial adventure is the only numbers we need.

We'll be basing Sky and Twi off of Warriors age scoring too but Warriors age actually came down to US military ages. While you can join the military at 16 (as far as I understand it) most people in training are 18 or older. While Hyrule is a fictional nation, we can assume that their age of maturity is either 17 or 18, seeing as BotW is very dependent on the Calamity arriving on Zelda's 17th birthday because she can only go to the Spring of Wisdom at the age of 17.

So with the numbers 17 and 18 to work with, my new moto was established. "When in doubt, go for the higher number." With this moto in mind, I decided that, as a recruit/trainee/whatever Warriors is at the beginning of his game, he's probably 18. And, with the idea that HW took around a year to finish, if not longer, then Warriors would end his adventure at 19.

So with Warriors at 19 by the end of his adventure, we can take Jojo's higher break number (BN for short), Warriors would have had 7 years between HW and LU. So one simple math problem later, I've figured out that the most likely age for Warriors to be is 26. I would have personally liked him to be a year older so he can be even closer to Time's age but he's more likely to be 25 than he is 27, so 26 it is.

Twilight

The third oldest, this is the first big age gap of the Chain (not taking Time into account because there was always going to be a large gap for him). Now, despite how old he seems in TP, I don't actually think he reaches the age of maturity, which, for the context of the Chain in particular, we will not be counting as anything younger than 19 because of Jojo's words early on in LU's existence.

I don't believe it's Nintendo canon but when I was younger I'd heard somewhere that Twi's age was 16 and, later on, learned that he was more likely 17. So I decided that 17 was the number I would be going with. Twi's BN was 4-5 so I took the 5 and made 17 into 22. Therefore, Twilight is the easiest Link to figure out and sits as a young adult which, yes, contradicts some of Jojo's earlier statements but I've taken Jojo's latest QnA as gospel for most all of my headcanons and anything that contradicts that is free game to be thrown out the window. Besides, it's not all a contradiction for Twi because...

Sky

Sky was another big dictator for the Chain's ages as a whole for one big reason. Early on, Jojo had considered Sky and Twi to be of similar age but Twi was probably older because he acted more mature. So, for a long time, I just considered them being the same age but, after doing the math, I have come to realize that Jojo has a little more grounds in saying that Twi is not part of the young adult gang. Not a lot more ground, but still more.

My first clue to this was that Twi's BN was 4-5 while Sky's was 1-2. This seemed like a large problem but then I remembered that Sky is one of the oldest canonical Links, if not the oldest in canon games (not counting Wild in TotK, who is an actual adult).

My next clue for Sky's age was the Knight's Academy. Though I could have gone with military age like I did with Warriors, as Sky is a newly minted knight, I decided to go by the educational system. In the US, high school ends at 12th grade, which makes most every student 18/19 when they graduate. For the Knights Academy I compared it to your average boarding school with high school grades. So that would make Sky, at youngest, 18 at the start of his adventure. And, to stay with my moto, I decided he could age to be 19 during his adventure.

With Sky now at 19, we can now add two years to make 21. Not as old as I would like Sky to be, as I love thinking about Sky and Twi being twins, but it's a lot closer then I could have hoped for in any form of canon.

Wild

The Chain's perpetual middle child, he is both, very technically, the youngest and the oldest of the heroes depending on how you look at it and how you count his age. However, since we're going for physical age, it's actually easy to figure out Wild's age.

Though there's an argument for everything from Wild being 16 during BotW all the way to being around 20, I believe he's actually 18 when he wakes up in the shrine. This is for three reasons.

The first is that Wild can't get a noble pursuit, so at the very least he is not past the age of maturity.

The second reason is that he is allowed to go to the Spring of Wisdom with Zelda. While he doesn't go into the spring himself, I doubt he would have been allowed near it if he wasn't at least 17. We've seen that Zelda had other people to travel with when Link was unavailable, as seen whenever she's in Gerudo Town without enemies pursuing her. It's clear no one was expecting the Calamity to start on Zelda's birthday, so there wouldn't be an immediate need for Link to break tradition just to protect Zelda.

The third reason is that adults flirt with Link after he wakes up. This may seem strange to point out because flirty characters are in many Zelda game but in BotW it's almost like there are no weird connotations, it's just adults interacting with each other. Still suggestive but it's silly and relaxed in most cases instead of a gross joke or something to appeal to teen boys. This implies that Link is at least recognized as an adult. And since, in BotW, the age of maturity is 17 at the youngest, I went a year higher and decided Wild was probably 18, maybe being 19 by the end of his adventure.

With the added fact that LU starts a handful of months after BotW, Wild can be no younger than 19 in LU. However, as the moto goes, older is always better and, because I think BotW takes nearly two years for Wild to finish, I decided that Wild was more likely to be 20 by the beginning of LU.

Legend

The last of the young adult squad, this guy was a challenge to pin down. He's done so much and it's so tricky to just choose time periods for him, it was nearly impossible to decide where to start or end. However, to make things simpler, I decided that each adventure takes a year to complete and the next adventure will only start around a year later. the exception to this is me mixing OoS/OoA/LA together for one long year of crazy adventures.

First thing's first, let's start going backwards. Jojo says it's only been around a year since Legend's last adventure, which is where I took the 1 year BN rule from. So, with that in mind, I wanted to find a number that kept him as young as possible while still making him undeniably an adult in the LoZ canon. So, 19 was my ending number for his age in LU.

After that was ALBW. Subtracting one year, he would be 18 by the end of that. And because of all that goes on in the story and that fact Legend is still very close to Ravio, I decided they knew each other for at least a year during that adventure. That puts Legend at 17 when he first encounter's Yuga and Ravio.

Subtracting a year from that, we get LA and Legend is now at sweet 16. This was honestly a surprise because I thought for sure Legend would be too young at this point to feel genuine feelings of romantic love but when I did the math I got 16 and it finally made sense why Marin would have such a big impact on him. As a person who struggles to have an understanding of romance, 16 was when I started understanding why people got crushes in the first place. So this makes perfect sense to me and matches Jojo's Legend sketches from this time period, as well as Jojo's design of Marin.

Now subtracting a year, which I will explain in a moment, we have Legend at 15 for the Oracle games. This came as a relief to me because seeing Din and Nayru for the first time, I immediately thought they looked too old to be shipped with Link. However, this feels slightly less creepy, but only slightly. Now, I subtracted a year because I had lumped these games together, and combining that with the two ocean travel times, decided that the ocean trifecta games had probably passed his birthday before he ever got back to Hyrule. So Legend is 15 when he lands in one of the countries.

Subtracting a year, we're all the way to the beginning with Legend being 14 when he defeats Ganon for the first time. However, I wasn't satisfied with him starting at the age of 14. Despite Nintendo's official art having Legend look like a teen in ALttP promotional material, art for later games in his story have him looking vaguely, if not noticeably younger. So I decided to play it safe and hack off one more year from the poor guy, making him unlucky 13. I honestly thought he would be twelve but him landing on a notoriously unlucky number just felt right and, honestly, it felt like it was destiny. Legend probably hates the number 13 now.

Before you ask me where Triforce Heroes comes into this mess, please don't. Not only does that game have three Links, not just Legend, Jojo has confirmed that Legend is not one of the heroes from Triforce Heroes. So let that mess stay in it's own little corner of the universe. We can question it another day.

Hyrule

For Hyrule, I actually have a semi-canonical age to work with. I can't find the evidence anymore because I forgot where it was, but in AoL, Hyrule is 16 when he saves the sleeping Zelda. And with Jojo's confirmation that LU takes place around two years after his adventure ended, that makes Hyrule 18. Hyrule is the entire reason I have such a weird maturity line, because Jojo categorized him as a teen but he's more likely to be considered an adult in Hyrule by now. Whatever.

The tricky one is the original LoZ. In promotional art he looks significantly younger but there's no way to cross reference this with Jojo's work because all of her Hyrule art is from AoL and after, as far as I can tell. So I had to get creative.

The age I think of for most Links in the LoZ universe is 12. This is for a specific reason I won't get into (Wind) but essentially all of the Links look like kids and teenagers, especially the toon Links and the pixelated Links. So I debated putting him at twelve but, when comparing the official art to the 12 year olds in my life, I decided he looked slightly older and settled on him being 13.

Four

Our next age gap, Four is a tricky one. He acts super mature and confident for his age but he's also super small for his age. So literally any age could be argued for him. In fact, I've seen arguments for everything from 12 to 30. So I had to start from the canon.

Jojo has stated that it's been two years since Four finished his last adventure. From this point forward, because Four knows who Ganon is, we'll be assuming that FSA is one of his adventures. So, assuming Four took one year between adventures, Four starts adventuring at 14. This is the oldest Four could be when he started his first adventure, not considering the times it took to complete his adventures and considering that out maturity age line is 19, Four being categorized as a teen with Hyrule and Wind.

Moving on with the number 14, I decided to start adding the adventure times. MC canonically takes a day, so that was out of the equation already. I don't know the canonical time progression of the FS games so I decided that they would each take half a year because they're rather short games. This now leaves our highest number at 13.

Now, unlike Legend, a one year break between games doesn't make sense for Four. He's more relaxed then Legend, with his confidence coming from him working on himself rather than from experience like Legend. So Four probably had a little more free time. So I added another year for each of our two free break periods. This now brings our biggest number down to 11.

Still, I wasn't satisfied. Four didn't strike me as being 18 when reading LU and he didn't strike me at 11 when studying MC's promo art. He looked younger. Much younger than any other Link, even considering the toon style and naturally short figure. So this was when I decided he was around Time's age when he started. But, to make things funny, I decided Four was 8 during MC.

Now with a starting age and two year BN rule established, my job became simple. Four would be 10 at the start of FS and, for the fun of it, I said he could celebrate his birthday halfway through, making him 11 by the end. Then, for FSA, Four would be 13 at the beginning of his journey. That leaves him at 15 by the time of LU. Maybe if we push he could be 16 but I'm not going to because I've already fudged his age enough for the hell of it.

Wind

Absolutely easiest of the bunch, we already have all of his canon ages. In WW and PH he's 12 years old, Nintendo certified and everything, seeing as WW happens on his 12th birthday. By the time of LU, Wind is canonically 13, going on 14. He is the last and smallest age gap for the chain but that just makes him even younger in all of their eyes. No wonder the chain tries to baby him. He's nearly a decade younger than Twi and nearly two decades younger than Time. Geez kid, slow your role! You don't need to keep defying the laws of the universe to show the other heroes how cool you are!

And that's the list. Honestly, I have more ages I could share, specifically the two Links we haven't met yet that I think I already know the identities of, including which hidden Link is which of the remaining Links in the timeline. But I'm not gonna do that because those two have little to nothing confirmed about them and trying to give you anyone else's ages without any Jojo support at all would have me pulling my hair out within seconds of researching. Therefore, this is where I end it until more information is available. Though I can tell you that Legend and Ravio are basically twins in all but blood and Malon is likely to be a year or two younger than Time because of her in game models in OoT. That's all I've really got though.

I hope you enjoyed this rant and have a lovely day!

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu headcanons #haventalks #lu time #lu warriors #lu twilight #lu sky #lu wild #lu legend #lu four #lu hyrule #lu wind #this wasn't as hard or complicated as i made it out to be #but it was very time consuming #i have three different versions of my calculations #im very proud of myself #this was fun

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