9,900 Years Shifted and Two Great Calamities: How Nintendo of America's New Official Zelda Timeline Breaks Breath of the Wild Lore
In updating the English-language version of its official series timeline, Nintendo of America set out to clarify where The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom stands in the grand history of Hyrule. While the official The Legend of Zelda timeline on Nintendo.com now explicitly validates the long-debated theory that King Rauru and Queen Sonia refounded the kingdom, it simultaneously introduces a baffling 9,900-year arithmetic blunder that directly contradicts the foundational lore of Breath of the Wild.
The "Refounding Theory" Is Officially Canonized
Ever since Tears of the Kingdom launched in May 2023, a major lore debate has divided Hyrule's most dedicated historians. Through the Dragon's Tears memories witnessed by Princess Zelda in the distant past, the Zonai king Rauru and his Hylian wife Sonia are introduced as the very first King and Queen of Hyrule, leading the Imprisoning War against Ganondorf. That premise immediately raised a glaring question: how could Rauru's founding of Hyrule and this version of Ganondorf coexist with the original founding of the kingdom after Skyward Sword, or with the Gerudo king of thieves fought millennia earlier in Ocarina of Time?
Following an earlier update to Nintendo's Japanese portal, Nintendo of America has now refreshed its English timeline page to provide an official answer. Both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom remain housed in a standalone block at the very bottom of the chart, separated from the three classic timeline splits branching out of Ocarina of Time (the Fallen Hero, Child, and Adult eras). More importantly, the updated text confirms what fans have long called the "Refounding Theory": the Hyrule established by Rauru and Sonia is not the original kingdom forged after Skyward Sword, but a refounded Hyrule built ages after the ancient kingdom collapsed and faded into myth. It is a clean narrative solution for an era of the franchise that originally needed a creative blank slate, especially considering how The Legend of Zelda series was in dire sales straits right before Breath of the Wild reinvented the formula.
9,900 Years in the Wrong Spot: How a Subtraction Error Breaks the Great Calamity
While the refounding confirmation settles one debate, the internal breakdown of the Wild era immediately ignited another. Shortly after the English page went live, eagle-eyed members of the r/zelda community on Reddit spotted a massive chronological error in the sequence of events leading up to Breath of the Wild. Inside the 2017 game itself - as recounted directly by Impa, King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule, Purah, and Robbie - the history of the kingdom follows an unmistakable timeline:
- The Refounding of Hyrule by Rauru and Sonia, quickly followed by Ganondorf's betrayal and the Imprisoning War, which ends with the Demon King sealed beneath Hyrule Castle.
- Countless generations later, the festering hatred of the sealed Demon King manifests as the First Great Calamity, which the ancient Hero, the Princess with the blood of the Goddess, and the technologically advanced Sheikah tribe defeat using the four Divine Beasts and an army of autonomous Guardians.
- 10,000 years of peace pass, during which ancient Sheikah technology is feared, buried, and forgotten underground, until Calamity Ganon returns 100 years before Link awakens in the Shrine of Resurrection at the start of Breath of the Wild.
Nintendo of America's newly updated chart, however, scrambles those numbers completely. According to the new English graphic, the Imprisoning War takes place, followed by a gap of 9,900 years before the First Great Calamity occurs. Worse still, the chart then states that only 100 years pass between that First Great Calamity and what the website now labels the "second Great Calamity", which is then followed by another 100-year gap before the opening of Breath of the Wild!
How this mix-up happened is easy to deduce: whoever adapted the infographic at Nintendo of America evidently subtracted Link's 100-year slumber from the 10,000-year gap between the two Calamities (arriving at the oddly specific figure of 9,900 years), and then pasted that 9,900-year interval one slot too early, between Rauru's Imprisoning War and the First Great Calamity. By shrinking the gap between the ancient Sheikah's First Great Calamity and the fall of Hyrule prior to Breath of the Wild down to a single century, the chart contradicts the entire archaeological premise of the 2017 masterpiece. If the Divine Beasts and Guardians had fought their first war just 100 years before Princess Zelda's time, they would not have been a 10,000-year-old myth requiring desperate excavation by King Rhoam and Purah - living Zora elders and Sheikah villagers would have witnessed that first war firsthand.
Miyamoto and Aonuma's Golden Rule: Gameplay First, Timeline Second
More than anything, this editorial slip-up highlights how differently Nintendo's creators view the timeline compared to its most devoted scholars. Back in 2003, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto acknowledged that Nintendo kept a massive internal master document linking the games together, yet candidly admitted that the timeline "is not that important to us" when weighed against gameplay innovation and level design.
Series producer Eiji Aonuma continues to enforce that exact philosophy today. During development of the Ocarina of Time remake on Nintendo Switch 2, Aonuma actively pushed back when younger developers tried to insert new timeline nods connecting the 1998 classic to later entries, even going so far as to remove the famous Mario and Yoshi cameo portraits from Hyrule Castle Courtyard on Switch 2 to keep the world grounded without overcomplicating the canon.
My Perspective
I have to admit a certain fondness for moments when a multi-billion-dollar publisher's lore apparatus trips over elementary-school subtraction. Watching someone at Nintendo of America carefully calculate "10,000 minus 100 equals 9,900 years" and then drop that number into the wrong box on the official timeline - right after years of intense community debates over Rauru's kingdom - is peak Zelda historiography. I already know Chaya is going to have a field day pulling her Zonai notebooks back off the shelf: even when Nintendo finally confirms the Refounding Theory in black and white, all it takes is one misplaced century to turn ten thousand years of Sheikah archaeology upside down.
Originally from Lyon, France, gaming journalist Bastien "Orion" relocated nearly a decade ago to Quebec City's Saint-Roch district, right in the heart of eastern Canada's development studio hub. Before crossing the Atlantic, he honed his versatile reporting style across classic French gaming web portals and specialist television outlets in the 2000s and 2010s, notably with JeuxVideo.fr and JeuxNews. Equally passionate about AAA blockbusters, North American studio culture, retro preservation, and community modding projects, he anchors Pro-Gamer's transatlantic desk and real-time coverage of US and Japanese industry announcements.
