Zelda Wiki:Goddess Collection

"This chronicle merely collects information that is believed to be true at this time, and there are many obscured and unanswered secrets that still lie within the tale. As the stories and storytellers of Hyrule change, so, too, does its history. Hyrule's history is a continuously woven tapestry of events. Changes that seem inconsequential, disregarded without even a shrug, could evolve at some point to hatch new legends, and, perhaps, change this tapestry of history itself."

- (Dark Horse Books), p.68

Zelda Wiki regards the books within The Goddess Collection trilogy (,, and ) as Canon material. There are several reasons for this that stand in spite of concerns from fans over authorship and plagiarism.

Authorship
Though there are concerns over whether the books in The Goddess Collection truly represent "" from the core developers given that the easily named Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto had no direct writing role in the creation of these books, an encyclopedia that connected and expanded the lore of the core series of games, which was later expanded into a trilogy, was Eiji Aonuma's idea. As can be seen in the attribution section below, Eiji Aonuma and Nintendo as a whole had a direct supervisory position in the creation of the trilogy of books in much the same way that the games themselves are overseen and guided by these recognizable entities. The books themselves are therefore written with the consent and will of the creators of to represent the Canon story.

The purpose of these books is to expand the lore of, primarily through the Timeline narrative that connects the titles in the main series. Though fans have the right to disregard the narrative of the Timeline that was first established in and later updated through, Zelda Wiki does follow the official timeline as the true narrative and we seek to make note of when discrepancies arise. The canon and the timeline of the series are malleable and subject to change with each new iteration in the series, so the latest chronological iterations of the lore are considered to be the best representation of the canon, following the spirit of the disclaimers provided in each book and quoted at the top of this page. While the lore established within The Goddess Collection remains a significant part of the canon, this may change with future releases in the series and our articles will update accordingly to follow with the will of the developers and writers of the series.

With that goal in mind, we also remain critical of any errors found within these books. They are not perfect or complete works by any means, but that does not mean that we should disregard them wholesale. A list of errors from can be found here.

Plagiarism Concerns
Following the release of the , people noticed that many of the names and terminology within the book reflected those on various Mario fan sites including fan-made names found on. Consequently, some people have also expressed concerns that this breach in professionalism may have also affected the books within The Goddess Collection. There are many reason why this is not the case, namely that the writer responsible for copying names from unofficial sources, Zack Davisson, was a sole actor who had no part whatsoever in the creation or localization of the books in The Goddess Collection, as evidenced below.

Super Mario Wiki's name sourcing processes differ from Zelda Wiki's, though both wikis undergo their own rigorous processes to determine an article's name. An explanation of Super Mario Wiki's naming procedure can be found. In short, names are cited directly when the subject is obscure or the subject is unnamed in recognized source materials. Conjectural titles are employed in circumstances where no official name can be used, though these must be marked with a specific to notify readers when the name listed is unofficial. As such, Super Mario Wiki is in no way responsible for any negligence from official representatives of Nintendo to verify official names.

Zelda Wiki's process requires that we cite all statements and terminology in particular, and we typically do not host or create articles if there is no official term that matches the conditions of our guidelines. To ensure that all names provided are as accurate as possible, we make use of the Term template. Though we do not condone deriving names from Zelda Wiki for official purposes especially if they are unsourced, it is extremely unlikely that an official source would be drawing names created by the fanbase if they were to refer to our articles.

If you have any concerns about potential instances of plagiarism for terms derived from Zelda Wiki, feel free to join our Zelda Wiki Discord server and we can work through it with you. As an example, there were concerns that Zelda Wiki came up with the name for NaN Odolwa's Insect Minions because of the presence of the name on our article for Enemies in prior to its appearance on page 196 of. However, as the edit in which the name was added to the article explains, this name actually originates from page 45 of, not from Zelda Wiki. This wasn't adopted as an actual term on Zelda Wiki until it was later affirmed in, as evidenced by the fact that the article for NaN Odolwa's Insect Minions wasn't created until after the book was released.