Overview

This was my first article, written back in the days when I knew practically nothing. Even so, I daresay I did a decent job of summarizing the issue at hand. I think the main premise of the article, that the Zelda in LoZ and AoL are not the same person, is pretty sound.

Back when I wrote the article, however, we only knew about four Zeldas: the ones in OoT (Zelda I), ALttP (Zelda II), LoZ (Zelda III), and AoL. I made the assumption that the sleeping Zelda had to be either the one in OoT or ALttP. Perhaps this wasn't a valid assumption; after all, there could very well have been other Zeldas between these games. (And later games showed this to be correct.) Nor did I consider the possibility that a Zelda who lived prior to OoT was the sleeping Zelda. (Not until I wrote The Sleeping Zelda, Revisited article, at any rate.)

Anyway, I found it unlikely that, after ALttP, the AoL backstory events could have happened. According to Impa's legend, every princess of the Royal Family after the sleeping Zelda was named Zelda to remember this event. So, if the ALttP Zelda is the sleeping Zelda, is it just a lucky coincidence that other princesses before her have been named Zelda? And what about the fact that a wizard, looking very much like Agahnim, suddenly appears after the king's death, and nobody seems to be the wiser? Surely they would have learned their lesson from Agahnim not to trust evil looking wizards.

The difficulty with this position, however, is the scroll. According to the scroll, all three pieces of the Triforce were in Hyrule when the scroll was written. This means it can't have been written after OoT, because Ganondorf has the Triforce of Power! This difficulty can be solved by postulating that the scroll was written much later. (After ALttP, because the united Triforce did not come to Hyrule until after ALttP.) However, the difficulty with this is, why wasn't Zelda woken up after ALttP? Had people just forgotten about her? So you have to bring in other unsupported theories to justify the theory.

Updates & Additions

• The sleeping Zelda could have lived before OoT.
  It wasn't until later that I realized there wasn't one scrap of evidence that the Triforce wasn't used before OoT. So I wrote The Sleeping Zelda, Revisited article.

• The Zelda in the Oracle games could be the sleeping Zelda.
  I plan to write an article discussing this point.

Possible Objections

• You say, "when the scroll was sealed in the room with the sleeping princess, all three pieces of the Triforce were in Hyrule." Why is this necessarily the case?
  In case you've forgotten, the scroll says, "Of the three, I have left Power and Wisdom in the kingdom. But the Triforce of Courage I have hidden for a reason." This means that, when the scroll was written, all three pieces of the Triforce were in this person's possession. However, it could be argued that the scroll is magical, so what it says does not necessarily come from when it was written. Rather, the author of the scroll is still around, and is speaking to Link directly in the present tense. This could mean that the scroll was written long before AoL, but what it says pertains to events in, or not long before, AoL.

• You seem uncertain about whether the king ruled with the united Triforce or not. Isn't this clear from the manual when it says he ruled with the Triforce, not part of the Triforce or the Triforce of Courage or whatnot?
  Not entirely. The legend might be unclear, which leaves room for doubt. In all other cases, when a game refers to the "Triforce," it means the united Triforce. But this doesn't necessarily always hold. You have to consider all the possibilities.

• I think the fact that Zelda wasn't woken with the united Triforce between OoT and LoZ sort of kills your theory. I don't find it likely that Zelda was somehow "forgotten about" or neglected.
  You may be right. But as usual, there are ways to get around this difficulty. As mentioned in the article, there may have been a good reason why the Triforce couldn't be used right away. And as mentioned previously, the scroll may have been written any time after ALttP. Perhaps Zelda was really locked away well, and nobody could figure out how to get the door open. The difficulty of this point lies in how well you want to justify the theory that OoT Zelda is the sleeping Zelda.