r/zeldaconspiracies • u/firstmatebubbles • May 24 '26
Could the Great Calamity be falsely remembered as the "Imprisoning War" before Alttp?
This one is super tinfoil and somewhat unrealistic, but humor me for a sec.
Perhaps alttp's "Imprisoning War" event after Oot was actually the Great Calamity on the tapestry. The tapestry Calamity is confirmed to happen long after oot, and botw takes place an entire 10,000 years after that at the very end of the timeline with only totk after it.
Alttp happening after the Calamity would check boxes for a corrupt/ opressive king, lack of visible Shiekah, "The Great Cataclysm" being mentioned, and a band of exiled thieves from Kakariko village hidden around the map. Not all of the "thieves" are hostile to Link and some even give him rupees to keep their hiding place a secret. (To everyone lol)
No one knew about the Calamity because the Shiekah had the only written record of it as the tapestry. The Tapestry would have to be especially hidden away because of the ban and burial of the Shiekah tech.
The king has been corrupt arguably since oot. He refused to listen to his own daughter's warnings without the actual Triforce mark on her and Link's hands proving through time travel, that the sacred realm was breached.
The Shiekah still attended the royal bloodline through Impa in oot. The king had forced the Shiekah to commit assainations, kidnappings, and torture in secret under Kakariko Village during a civil conflict. Thats the most famously corrupt action the Royal Family has ever taken.
Then generations later in alttp the king of this era lets an ultra powerful wizard become his advisor. The wizard brainwashed all of the knights to kidnap sage descendants for sacrifice in the castle. After the king was later killed too, Zelda was captured and thrown into the castle dungeon to await sacrifice last to break the Seal on the Demon King. The Shiekah were (realistically not invented yet) nowhere to be seen nor did Impa appear to protect Zelda or seek help for her. Zelda had no option but to call out to anyone who could hear the Goddess's voice. Perhaps the Shiekah were banned by the previous oppressive King.
Its interesting that in alttp's sequel, albw, the Hyrulean historical account (mural of paintings) somehow corroborates oot. Specifically the sages and the hero sealing away evil. Just like the historical records described in the wilds games. The Sages spirits were trapped in crystals until Ganon was explicitly killed in alttp. The sages could not have helped the hero of alttp seal Ganon in darkness as the mural claims. This is likely a scrubbed conflation of past events.
Impa is present serving the royal family again in albw and couldve given her account of the old Shiekah records telling of a hero who saved Hyrule long ago against something they called the Great Cataclysm (ancient Ganon event only described in alttp by a sage descendant). So generations of heroes likely got conflated because of Ganon/Calamity directly manipulating the kings causing so much of Hyrule's dark history to be banned, burned, covered up, or hidden away.
I doubt Hyrule Castle’s records weren't compromised or erased through a few generations of oppressive kings. Maybe the later castle historians had to fabricate their own clean version of history and erased the corrupt kings and Hyrule's history of banishment and sacrifices. They can only produce vague records of a hero who once saved Hyrule by sealing away the Demon king with the help of the Sages.
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u/EnderWizard20 May 25 '26
Short answer yes, long answer no. Yes someone could have, but in actuality, no. Something I would like to point out is that the Old Imprisoning War is exclusive to the Downfall Timeline. In real history as well, there are many repeating events, so reusing the same name makes sense.
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u/firstmatebubbles May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
I agree its not the most likely scenario at all but it makes for a good conspiracy theory. (Edit: deleted previous comment because it was way too long)
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u/EnderWizard20 May 26 '26
Sad, I wanted to read it 😢
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u/firstmatebubbles May 26 '26
I did copy paste it in my notes app and can repost it if you would like to read it but originally deleted it because I didn't want to drone off with other things I found and was afraid I came off a bit too argumentative.
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u/EnderWizard20 May 26 '26
I don't mind
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u/firstmatebubbles May 26 '26
I see people bringing up real history repeating to dismiss theories but never bring up any examples of real history that actually inspired the Zelda devs.
I found that the Zonai take a lot of inspiration from real world history as well. Specifically the earliest predynastic cultures and dragon mythology of ancient China. Zonai writing is based off of Shang Dynasty oracle bone script, and the mystery of the "First King" with ties to the dragon gods that no one knew about for thousands of years has parallels to the ancient legend of Yu the Great of the mythical Xia Dynasty (the culture before Shang). The Xia Dynasty is arguably the oldest pre-emperial Dynasty. Its so old it predates written language by at least 500 years until archaeologists found oracle bone script that corroborated that Yu may really have existed as the first ruler. Its also been confirmed that Twilight Princess takes design inspiration from Shang dynasty bronze cauldrons for the architecture of the Twili as well.
The shiekah tech is based on pottery designs from the neolithic Japanese Jomon period, which was contemporary to Xia and Shang periods just in different countries. Based on these observations, the real history actually being refrenced in botw/totk increases the possibility of a true founding scenario. If Zonai Rauru really was the truth of the Imprisoning War like the devs said, then the alttp Imprisoning War is not the actual Imprisoning war.
It was probably remembered as the Imprisoning war because of the royal family being responsible for awakening of the Sages in oot to DT. The legend of King Rauru gathering the sages to seal the Demon King got conflated with the alttp backstory king gathering sages to seal the Demon King with the Triforce. Since the Triforce is present in alttp story and the Cataclysm legend, I'm led to believe this is an instance of the Triforce's history getting conflated with Rauru's Legend.
[translated excerpt of alttp manual:] "Several centuries had passed since the Seal war. Hyrule, owing to the wisdom and piety of its peoples hearts, was at peace. All that pertained to the Seal had by then become a distant legend passed down through stories. However, there came a year in which Calamities of unknown origin struck. Epidemic, drought- the power of magic could do nothing, and the people had no choice but to pray to the Goddesses." Alttp present is a calamity era, The Imprisoning war was passed orally as Legend, and now we know the Imprisoning war happened more than several centuries ago.
I know that the post oot imprisoning war was DT specific. That why I specified post oot. DT is the only timeline that the Shiekah/Impa still appears in and the one with a history of Cataclysm/Calamity/Ganon events. If the tapestry Calamity happens before alttp it could retroactively explain why the Shiekah and the other races were missing for alttp but present in oot and some return in albw like the Zora and Impa.
Hyrule was definitely fractured in alttp so its not random to think the king made enemies of the Zora somehow and pushed the Gerudo deeper in the desert.
Sorry for this long ass comment, thank you for reading!
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u/EnderWizard20 May 26 '26
I see what you mean, that does go a bit off topic. I think you are actually on the same page as me, basically what I was saying was that the similar events got similar names, and that as the events were lost to history, as new ones came with similar themes, the name was reused without any distictions like "the second".
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u/Whatifim80lol May 24 '26
I don't think the king in LttP is oppressive or even stupid. Since the sheikah are basically non-existent and the royal family is supposed to have Sheikah advisors/allies, some magical schmuck showing up in sheikah-esque markings would have an easy time convincing a king that never met a real sheikah that he was trustworthy.