Imprisoning War



The Imprisoning War (Seal War in Japan) started after Ganondorf entered the Sacred Realm and laid claim to the Triforce, becoming Ganon. Although it was confirmed by Nintendo that this war is retold in Ocarina of Time shortly after its release, many fans don't accord with these statements. The similarities between Four Swords Adventures and the Imprisoning War may also mean that Nintendo no longer considers Ocarina of Time to be the Imprisoning War.

Although The Imprisoning War was first mentioned in A Link to the Past and was covered in detail in the instruction manual, the American translation differed in several key places from the original Japanese. This made it inconsistent with the story told in other parts of the series. (See below for comparisons in translation of the manual.)

Storyline
The story of the Imprisoning War is first told in the backstory of A Link to the Past. A long time after the creation of the world, an opening to the Sacred Realm was discovered in Hyrule and the people began to seek the Triforce for themselves. No one returned, however, and evil forces began to issue forth from the Golden Land.

This was because the leader of a band of thieves named Ganondorf had serendipitously discovered the entrance to the Golden Land. After killing his comrades and seizing control of the Triforce, he made his wish on it. The evil forces coming out of the Sacred Realm swarmed over Hyrule and threatened to engulf the Light World. These evil forces emanating from the Sacred Realm were the first signs of its transformation into the Dark World.

The king of Hyrule summoned seven Sages to seal the entrance to the Golden Land shut, so that Ganon's darkness could no longer plague the land. The sages searched far and wide for the Master Sword so that Ganon could be vanquished, but neither the sword nor one worthy of wielding it could be found.

Without a hero worthy of wielding the blade, the Knights of Hyrule engaged in open combat with Ganon's army as the sages cast the seal. Though most of them were killed , the Knights' lives were not lost in vain, because the seal was cast, and Ganon and his dark forces were cut off from the Light World until the events of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Version Differences

 * Ganondorf is given the surname "Dragmire" in the American manual.
 * The Japanese version tells that the Master Sword is ancient, and was forged at the direction of the gods. The American version has the people forge it on their own initiative to fight Ganon.
 * The American version of the story has the sages forget where the Triforce is hidden.
 * The Japanese name for the war is the "Seal War," referring to the Sages' seal.
 * The story was heavily truncated for the manual of the Game Boy Advance version of A Link to the Past and did not include such important details as Ganon seizing the Triforce or the search for the Master Sword. These details are still provided by in-game text, however.

Candidates for the Imprisoning War
To date, no game has seamlessly told the story of the Imprisoning War without some discrepancies with the backstory provided in A Link to the Past. However, three games in particular stand out as the most likely candidates for the Imprisoning War: Ocarina of Time, Four Swords Adventures, and Twilight Princess. The strengths and weaknesses of each candidate are listed below.

Ocarina of Time
Many believe the events of Ocarina of Time chronicle the Imprisoning War spoken of in A Link to the Past. The main events of the Imprisoning War do seem to occur within Ocarina of Time, such as the opening of the Sacred Realm, the seizing of the Triforce, the Sacred Realm’s transformation into the Dark World, Ganondorf’s imprisonment within the Dark World, and the involvement of the Seven Sages. Furthermore, statements by Nintendo from 1998 indicate that Ocarina of Time was developed with the Imprisoning War in mind. However, there are several continuity errors that come into question between the games. Some of these errors appear below:


 * The King’s commanding of the Seven Sages in the legends of the Imprisoning War even though he was presumed dead in Ocarina of Time following Ganondorf’s assault on Hyrule Castle.
 * The story telling that there was no hero found who could wield the Master Sword, yet Link was obviously in Ocarina of Time.
 * The seven sages being of all different races of Hyrule even though in A Link to the Past their descendants, the seven maidens appear to be humanoid.
 * Ganondorf is sealed in the Sacred Realm with only one piece of the Triforce. In the backstory for A Link to the Past, he steals all three pieces and makes his wish on them.
 * The Knights of Hyrule are not as prominent in Ocarina of Time as they are in the original story. Only one Knight is seen in a back alley, and though his dialogue indicates he was killed by Ganon, the battle waged by the Knights to protect the Sages does not happen in Ocarina of Time.
 * Ganon could not figure out how to return to the Light World after the seal was cast. Two direct sequels to Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess feature Ganon's return. Thus, a seamless OoT-ALttP chain of events has been rendered improbable.

While there are several other questionable events, these prominently stand out since they were present within A Link to the Past, the first game to give an overview of the Imprisoning War and mention the war at all. The exact reasons for these supposed errors are of course not known for sure, leaving many gamers to merely speculate on the differences between the games. Possible theories explaining the continuity errors appear below.

It is not known for sure whether or not the King of Hyrule is killed in Ocarina of Time, although this is heavily implied by his absence following Ganondorf’s siege of Hyrule Castle. Some speculate that the Hyrulean Civil War was fought over the Triforce, as has been implied by A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess. If this was the case, then the King of Hyrule may well have commanded the essences of the Sages (the ethereal Sages of Twilight Princess that may be the possible source of the Seven Sages' powers in Ocarina of Time) to seal the Sacred Realm shut if some evil entity should gain entry into it and cause evil power to start flowing from it shortly after the conclusion of the Hyrulean Civil War (seeing as it caused the previous war). This would be in keeping with the King’s command spoken of in A Link to the Past since gamers are not told explicitly that the King commanded the Sages to seal the Realm at the particular moment of Ganondorf’s invasion of the Sacred Realm. Alternativaly this can be explained as the king was killed in the adult timeline but not in the child timeline.

The Seven Maidens of A Link to the Past are supposedly the descendants of the Seven Sages of Ocarina of Time, and yet while the Seven Sages are of differing races, the Maidens all appear to be human. This could possibly be due to the fact that A Link to the Past occurs many centuries (if not millennia) after Ocarina of Time. As such, the races of Hyrule have been known to integrate and evolve over time. One such example would be Telma, who appears to be of Gerudo descent in the absence of the Gerudo race in Twilight Princess, which occurs roughly a hundred years after Ocarina of Time. This would seem to indicate that the Gerudo (who were humanoid) integrated into the Hylian race at some point in that hundred years. Another such example would be the Rito of The Wind Waker. They are heavily implied to have descended respectively from the Zoras due to the ancestor of Medli being Laruto (a Zora). This would seem to indicate that the Zoras evolved at some point following the Great Flood into the Rito. With such drastic evolutions occurring in that timeline, it makes it plausible that the different races of Hyrule could have evolved into humanoid figures as well, or possibly integrated into Hylian society like the Gerudo. Four of the Seven Sages (Rauru, Impa, Nabooru, and Princess Zelda) were all humanoid, making it very easy for their races to integrate into the Hylian race over time. The others, as stated before, could have either evolved or also merged into the Hylian race over time as well. These explanations could account for the descendants of the Seven Sages being the Seven Maidens, who all appear human.

Although it could be said also that since A Link to the Past was only the third game in the series there was hardly any way that the person who wrote the story for the Seal War could have known what was to come in the future of the Zelda series. It can also be said that A Link to the Past happens so long after the events of the Seal War that the story has been changed over the years in Hyrule in ways that would make it harder to connect Ocarina of Time to it.

Four Swords Adventures
As indicated by deleted text in Four Swords Adventures the original concept for that game would have included elements which might have made it the game in which the Imprisoning War occurred. Deleted text talks of Link not being able to wield the Master Sword, and more explicit references to the Hylia. Several elements of the backstory from A Link to the Past are present in Four Swords Adventures such as the Dark World, the Knights of Hyrule, and a new origin story for Ganon. However, the absence of such elements as the Master Sword and the Triforce in the final version of the game likely means that Four Swords Adventures does not cover the entire story of the Imprisoning War. A common answer to these discrepancies is to answer that the Imprisoning War is a myth, a combination of the stories of Ocarina of Time (The Triforce and seal) and Four Swords Adventures (The Knights, the Dark World, human sages). Supporters of this theory point to the Palace of the Four Sword included in the GBA version of A Link to the Past which could indicate that the Four Sword was sealed in the Dark World sometime following the events of Four Swords Adventures.

Twilight Princess
The events of the Twilight Princess backstory bear at least a superficial similarity to the events of the Imprisoning War. Ganon invades Hyrule, but is captured and sealed in the Twilight Realm by seven sages. Upon further inspection, however, it is evident that these similarities are merely superficial. Although Ganon sought the Triforce, he did not take it by force as in the story, but had it mysteriously granted to him (and only in part). Likewise, neither the Knights of Hyrule nor the Sacred Realm are involved in the plot, as the Twilight Realm is explicitly not the Dark World. The similarities between the plot of Twilight Princess and the Imprisoning War could simply be developer homage or reused memes.

As a Separate Event
A common explanation for the discrepancies between the Imprisoning War story and Ocarina of Time and Four Swords Adventures is that neither game is the true story, and that because the backstory does not include Link, it cannot be adequately told in any game. Thus, these theorists place it as an event separate from any particular game, sometime before A Link to the Past.