radioactivesupersonic:

Honestly I’ve long enjoyed the idea of Zelda as a heavy-armor, heavy-weapon warrior type build in contrast to light-armor versatile rogue Link and overwhelmingly robed magic-user Ganondorf, but, it actually occurred to me that looking at her tactics in-games, rather than her visual design, she operates like a tank.

The only reason you have peace and time to work with in Breath of the Wild is because Zelda responded to Link being direly injured by drawing Ganon’s attention and fire and then holding a defensive line the entire time. When he slips past those defenses in the form of the blood moon, she warns Link ahead of time.

Twilight Princess Zelda appears to hold out against Ganon somehow until she heals Midna at her own expense. She’s also shown fighting among her own soldiers, and her dress- like that of a lot of different Zelda designs- features armored pauldrons. 

In Wind Waker, Tetra’s piloting a huge, heavily-armed galleon compared to Link’s zippy little sailboat. Her advice to facing an opponent while unarmed is “thwart them with your defenses, disarm them, and then pound them with their own weapon” which is not an especially roguelike attitude- especially when you can sniff around and find spare weapons to fight the guard with instead. And during the second raid on Forsaken Fortress, she again, acts like a tank- baits Helmaroc away from Link’s rescue attempt and then comes back to attack Ganon.

Spirit Tracks, which is the closest we’ve come in a ‘canon’ game (not like Hyrule Warriors or Smash Brothers) to directly playable Zelda, has her piloting a Phantom body which is a heavy-armored warrior with a huge sword.

And, yeah- Breath of the Wild Zelda uses magic to hold down Ganon and dresses like a Sacred Maiden rather than a warrior, Twilight Princess Zelda has a slender, delicate thrusting sword rather than a heavy zweihander. Tetra’s a sword-and-pistol pirate. But that feels like furthering a trend of visual design where Zelda is required to be dainty and magical, against a context where that doesn’t seem to be much of her personality.

Entirely outside of “it would be nice to explore Zelda as a fighter in the context of her own narrative”, I feel like it would suit Zelda’s shown qualities a lot more to depict her as more of a paladin build, since she’s depicted as the type to try and take the world on her shoulders, and, often, hold it up, even at great personal effort. That’s a front-line tank’s mentality. Heck, even the Bow of Light in Twilight Princess is a big heavy war bow!

So, just. consider: Paladin Zelda. Managing multi-layer court dresses and full plate armor aren’t that different, right?

okay but if we’re talkin about the true classes of the triforce users, I wanna just say that link is neither a rogue nor a ranger like most people classify him as. hes far more versitile. In most games hes got some levels of magic and in nearly every zelda, hes got some sort of instrument. While zelda is a tank, link is 100% a bard. Ready to play music and stab people.