Princess Zelda is one of the oldest characters in gaming. She’s been around for decades, originally appearing in The Legend of Zelda on NES, and has since shown up in countless other games from Nintendo. However, despite that status and the fact that her name is on one of the most popular video game series out there, fans may not know a ton about her. She’s mostly served as an NPC damsel in distress, which sometimes doesn’t yield much characterization. As a result, here are 10 things you might not have realized about Princess Zelda.
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1. She’s in all but two games
Princess Zelda is the titular character of The Legend of Zelda, which has led to some confusion and jokes about Link instead being the main protagonist. However, despite her name appearing on every mainline game, she isn’t in all of them. There are two games in which the princess is missing.
First, she’s absent from Link’s Awakening, which takes place in a dream world, not Hyrule. She is mentioned in the game, though. She is then completely absent from Tri Force Heroes. Her dress appears, but no mention of the princess herself can be found.
2. Zelda had no voice acting until 2017
Nintendo typically doesn’t do a lot with voice actors. For a long time, most of their characters just made noises or grunted. That was the case for Princess Zelda for a long time. It wasn’t until 2017 that she got voice lines at all.
In Breath of the Wild, Princess Zelda had a voice actress (Patricia Summerset) who was one of only a few voice actors who lent their voices to the game. Link remained without one, but Zelda had a ton of speaking to do in the memories and cut scenes. This was true again in Tears of the Kingdom.
3. Zelda sometimes has romantic undertones with Link
Nintendo just clarified that Mario and Princess Peach are simply friends who help one another out, so it’s worth noting that that probably isn’t the case for Link and Princess Zelda. Though it is only in a few games here and there, there are sometimes romantic undertones to their relationship.
In Skyward Sword, it is very clear that the two young characters have a special bond, one that drives a school-age Link to defy everything to save Zelda. In Tears of the Kingdom, Link can sleep in Zelda’s bed. He can only sleep in his own bed or at a hotel, implying that he lives with Zelda here. During the ending of the linked Oracle games, Zelda kisses Link. The two hold hands at the end of Spirit Tracks, too.
4. She screams in Ocarina of Time’s boss battle
It’s difficult to pay attention to everything in a boss fight. Players are tasked with surviving the hardest part of a game, so any fun Easter eggs or references get missed. In Ocarina of Time, though, there’s a particularly sad one while Link is taking on Ganondorf for the final time.
Whenever Link takes damage, which happens fairly often in a very challenging fight between two forms of Ganon, she screams in horror. This is true whenever Link is knocked down by fire, too, and it happens even in the 3DS remake.
5. The princess has just one mainline protagonist role
There have been almost 30 mainline games in the series named after Princess Zelda. She’s appeared in almost all of them. Yet, there has only been one legitimate starring role in the entire decades-long history of the character, and it happened in 2024.
Echoes of Wisdom gave Zelda the chance to be the protagonist, and it was a really good game. Zelda took on more crucial roles than a damsel in distress in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but she was still an NPC there until Echoes.
6. Her theme has time travel abilities
Zelda’s Lullaby, which serves as the basis of her theme in virtually every single game, is arguably the best piece of music the franchise has, which is saying something. Regardless, in-universe, it has some rather unique abilities to send players through time.
Whenever Link travels through time in Majora’s Mask, he uses the Song of Time. But when Zelda sends someone through time in Ocarina of Time, she uses the same ocarina, but plays her theme instead. Her theme also opens things up in Ocarina of Time, so it also has other magical capabilities.
7. She hasn’t biologically aged beyond 20
The oldest Zelda has ever been in any video game is 20. For the most part, she’s always been pretty young. She reaches 20 years old in Twilight Princess, though the timelines make her chronologically over 100 in Breath of the Wild and over 10,000 by the end of Tears of the Kingdom. Thanks to interesting time travel wrinkles, she remains a young adult-aged character even in those games, though.
8. Tears of the Kingdom dramatically changed Zelda’s appearance
Zelda has had a number of different appearances since she arrived in 3D in Ocarina of Time, and most of them are not the same. You can certainly always tell it’s the princess, but she rarely looks the same in different games, except for one key feature: her long hair.
It wasn’t until Tears of the Kingdom that the princess sported a different haircut. She had short hair for the first time in that game, but she did revert back to normal in Echoes of Wisdom the next year.
9. She is named after Zelda Fitzgerald
According to Shigeru Miyamoto, one of the creators of The Legend of Zelda franchise, the princess was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, an American writer, dancer, and perhaps most well-known as the wife of fellow writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Miyamoto had X as a placeholder for what would go in the title, and he couldn’t think of much else, so he used Zelda because he liked the name.
10. She inspired Robin Williams’ daughter’s name
The late Robin Williams was a huge fan of The Legend of Zelda. So much so, Nintendo allegedly included an NPC in Breath of the Wild that resembled the actor a little bit. Either way, he did name his daughter, a film director now herself, after the princess. He and his wife played some of the games while she was expecting their daughter.
[H/T Zelda Wiki]
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