In the early history of humankind, when all societies worshipped nature, they expressed their relationships with water via beliefs in serpentine beings. Snake-like dragons... represented in multiple cultural forms — the rainbow serpents, celestial boas, ascending and descending dragons. [According to human belief] these beings were creators, totemic ancestors, guardian spirits, and lawmakers.
From the Legend of Zelda series, dragons are quite prevalent within its mythology. Whether they were friends with the Goddess Hylia or perhaps linked to the Triforce, each Dragon served a duty in safeguarding Hyrule's fields, waterways, and even cherished artifacts.
Formally, most Zelda dragons are spirits from a long unremembered past. Classified as beings from another world or the heavens, yet as we look at them throughout Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, there's a lot to theorize on their true origin.
For one, why do they even exist in the Zelda series at all, what was their purpose within the history of the Zonai, and what did Nintendo want to imply for these celestial beings? The dragons of Zelda are considerably more terrifying and mysterious than we expected, as we will see in this video. But viewer discretion is advised because there are Tears of the Kingdom story spoilers within this video.
Plus if you are a Zelda fan, please give this video a like and subscribe to my channel so that I know to continue this type of theorizing content, but without further ado, let's begin:
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
From what we witness within the Zelda series, dragons come in all forms, and plainly speaking — they are specified to be one who coins both sides of forces, good and evil.
Aquamentus is the first dragon encountered in the Legend of Zelda series and serves as the boss of the first dungeon. Plus, the deadly three-headed dragon, Gleeock, has been a boss fought later in the game. Ocarina of Time had Volvagia, a dragon-like boss within the Fire Temple. And Twilight Princess had a mini-boss who roared within the City of the Skies. All of these enemies were opponents against the Hero.
So while we would assume that many of these dragons are, of course, evil and servants of maybe the dark underworld held by Demise, or even Ganon. Dragons within Zelda are also meant to be protectors, spirits who forged alliances with the Goddess's. According to Skyward Sword:
'Long ago the Water Dragon was charged with watching over all of Faron by the goddess.'
Who has power over water for Hyrule's land...
Faron, in this case, was a servant of the Goddess Hylia, who protected the Surface in Skyward Sword.
In Breath of the Wild, they were known as the Servants of the Springs, no one has seen these dragon spirits in the current age before the rise of the Calamity, but their existence is still spread through legends and old sayings. Each dragon served the Springs of Power, Wisdom, and Courage.
With that being stated, Dragons within the Zelda series delve into duality of being both good and evil, 'duality, or binary composition, is fundamental... to water serpent beings express many conceptual dualities - these include foundational polarities of order and disorder.'
Dragons in Zelda do the same within their mythology, while dragons in one instance can sustain and portray order in Hyrule, they are also capable of pandemonium, threatening and destabilizing social and material arrangements, inducing tipping points that can lead to what many call the collapse to the world, hence why Zelda's dragons are capable of flooding an environment like in Skyward Sword.
Or causing chaos among the Rito people one of Valoo's rampages causes a boulder to crash down the mountain, breaking the bridge leading to Dragon Roost Cavern and plugging the nearby spring in Windwaker...
And in real-world mythology, [Dragons] can lurk within the individual psyche and represent the seething inner sea of instincts and emotions, or they can reflect tensions and fluid capacities for disorder at a societal level, such as the chaos represented by war or revolution (après moi le déluge - translated as, After us, the flood') It is generally regarded as a nihilistic expression of indifference to whatever happens after one is gone.
So at a cosmic level, [dragons] can represent apocalyptic events — [such as] the Great Flood, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and even tsunamis. A restless serpent being is said to lie beneath Japan which causes earthquakes and tsunamis. On every scale, [dragons] represent the capacities of the non-human domain to overwhelm social and material order with the wild fluidity of chaos.
It is considered, or even theorized, that Dragons hold the same amount of power similar to moral superiors and even followed them as servents, hence the former examples I explained before in the Zelda series, but that's obviously and understatement. Dragons are far from what we imagined when we come to Tears of the Kingdom, not only are they servants but enemies, and not only are they enemies, but somehow coming from an unknown source, and not as immortal as we would like to believe.
Be that as it may, this is the good, the bad, and the ugly, dragons are far from being short of all these multi-faceted concepts within it's mythology for Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, their forces within Hyrule's concept of death to rebirth are prevalent within these chapters in Zelda, so that leads us to discuss:
The Deity Account
'It is said that my ancestors—the first of Hyrule's royal family were born from a union with gods who had descended from the heavens.'
— Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom
Dragons, in all form or manner, come from a lot of ancient idealogies, one being that they had something to do with creation. And in Zelda, this isn't any different - the Dragons are somewhat if are involved with creation to Hyrule. And no, not the ones we see throughout Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild (although there might be some implications that they are) but that's not the point. The argument is that the dragons in Zelda are similar to deities and had a part to play in some style.
A similar model characterizes classical Maya creation stories, in which serpents or saurian creatures were the forms upon which the world rested, between the underworld and the heavens. Dragons throughout mythology somehow have the ability to transport between the heavens of the afterlife to the realms of mortality, some claiming them as Gods themselves, or merely servants to the Creator.
The Old Testament scholar John Day notes that this resonates with Mesopotamian stories in which deities envisaged 'journeying between Heaven and Earth on celestial staircases' perhaps relating to Jacob's dream in which angels traveled between two dimensions - a ladder to Heaven and the realm of a Creator.
According to Zelda's Encyclopedia, they are just cryptically defined as spirits, having an astral form different from physical matter.
'In the time of Skyward Sword, three spirit dragons watched over the Surface: the water dragon Faron, the dragon, Eldin, and the thunder dragon, Lanayru. Each possessed the power of the land they were in, such as the ability to flood entire forests and set off volcanoes.'
— Zelda Encyclopedia, pg. 22
While their true form is technically invisible, they can reveal themselves and communicate by living within or taking on material forms. Skyward Sword's dragons are defined as spirits who watch and guard the land. In Windwaker, the Dragon named Valoo is just simply defined as a Fire spirit who awaited the reincarnation of the hero, Link.
And this makes sense to human belief, Spirits, which are supernatural and incorporeal or immaterial beings, are said to transverse through spaces from not just the underworld or heavens, but into earthly reality. Dragons in some sense, could be mediators of not just Hyrule, but the Sacred Realm which held the power of the Triforce. Of course, we are just merely theorizing through human mythology, but it does hold some merit to this speculation in some manner.
While Zelda might mention their simplistic term as just spirits, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom imply otherwise, these beings are not just spirits, but connected to many other things beyond their mere definition. They were formally worshipped in lost cultures such as the Zonai, so why exactly were they venerated in this position? Is there anything more than simply the basic characterization that we are overlooking? Well, this is the case, and its from:
The Zonai Connection
This depiction certainly suggests that the Zonai descended from the heavens... These murals tell a similar story, and if they are accurate, then the gods mentioned were the Zonai!
— Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom
The Zonai were a revered race within the kingdom of Hyrule, legends state that they possessed godlike powers and had a prosperous civilization in the sky. Much is little to be stated about them other than the obvious, the Zonai are no longer gracing this world with their presence, and those that we have seen, are just mere remnants to their race.
'When your Zonai ancestors first descended upon these lands long, long ago, they must have seemed to be gods... It is unfortunate that the noble Zonai no longer grace this world with their presence.
— Ganondorf, Tears of the Kingdom
But why are we bringing up the Zonai? Well, it's because they are the closest link to the origin of the Dragons. According to Creating a Champion, the lost tribe revered a water dragon & their stone artwork represented the Triforce through the perspective of a prehistoric tribe; they used dragons to represent courage, owls to represent wisdom, and boars to represent power.
Something that I realized for a while when playing Breath of the Wild and now Tears of the Kingdom is that the Zonai not just relates to but derives from Mesoamerican civilizations, beliefs, and their ancient technology.
Most prominent proof comes from the architecture of their temples, for instance, the Aztec and the Zonai have the same Plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl (ket - zol - kooahtl) - interpreted either as 'Plumed or Feathered Serpent'. The name of an important Mesoamerican deity who was worshiped throughout the region in one form or another for 1,200 years.
The Ouroboros is prominently shown on the doors in the Sky's Temple of Time from Tears of the Kingdom. Nowhere is humanity's hope for renewal more precisely encapsulated than in the image of the ouroboros: the circular serpent that, with its tail in its mouth, represents an eternal flow of death and rebirth in which there is constant renewal... in representing infinite cycles of life, water serpent beings are linked to ideas about immortality.
The Zonai connection to Dragons seeps within their culture, so why exactly are they connected and revered in such a way? Well again, if we can theorize that the Zonai are related to Mesoamerican cultures is that in a way dragons in their culture were given unto them as gods and could become one through process of ritual. Very similar to what we see in Tears of the Kingdom, but let's back up on some thoughts to analyze.
For one, we know that at one point, according to Ganon, Zelda, and many Hylians who recorded the kingdom of Hyrule, they truly did consider the Zonai to be gods who inhabited the skies. Perhaps in Breath of the Wild the Zonai did revere a water dragon, or many, many of whom were already revered, due to:
Draconification
There are stories about the secret stones and a forbidden act called draconification."To swallow a secret stone is to become an immortal dragon, one blessed with eternal life — to become an immortal dragon is to lose oneself." That is why it is forbidden...
— Mineru, Tears of the Kingdom
An outlawed deed for the Zonai, one thing we can already understand is that this act was done before, and perhaps many times for it to be forbidden. It makes me wonder if this process was something ritualistic until they fully realize they themselves are no longer Zonai anymore. Mythology throughout ancient cultures believed in a similar ritual as well, the Egyptian Book of the Dead contains an incantation in which, by transforming into a serpent, a person becomes immortal.
Plus, it's said to have made its way to into early Indic regions from the Bronze Age societies in Central Asia (2300 - 1700 BCE), they created a plant-based intoxicating or hallucinogenic Vedic ritual drink, believed to confer immortality and enlightenment, called Soma.
Sacred Hindu texts make a direct link with serpent wisdom: 'the gushing stream of strained Soma is akin to the serpent creeping out of his slough... We have drunk soma and become immortal...'
— Water Beings, Veronica Strang pg. 35
Draconification is no different, from the ancient texts, to the implications that more committed this act, Dragons are not what they seem throughout Breath of the Wild, and now Tears of the Kingdom. With Zelda proving this rite could be completed, we now have to look at previous Dragons who lurk Hyrule, Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra.
To start, Zelda and Ganon's Dragon forms are similar to their physical attributes (like hair, and ear destinctions) Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra have goat like ears similar to the Zonai characters we see in Totk (Mineru & Rauru) also the dragons have white hair, just like Rauru, and plus their Zonai armour in Totk looked to be worn by them.
Either way, the costume being a zonai relic and sharing such a resemblance to Farosh is, in my mind, a confirmation that the three dragons were indeed Zonai. Plus, it's possible given some of the architecture in the Faron region that the dragons predate the Zonai and Farosh were worshipped by some Zonai, due to forgetting the origin, but I think its highly unlikely, these dragons did a deed to protect the springs who would further a lineage of Hyruleans containing the Triforce.
Or perhaps they were Oracles of the Zonai tribe, due to their connections to the springs of Power, Wisdom, and Courage, they could have swallowed their secret stones in order to become dragons. Dragons who protected each of these divine springs. And perhaps were revered by the Zonai for their sacrifice.
Who knows? [A Culture's] beliefs and values are co-constituted by how they engage materially with their environments, and by the extent to which human agency supersedes that of the non-human domain... As this implies, key narrative tropes accompanied [dragons] in their recurrent imagery, literature from the ancient world also contained creation stories, and [ongoing] quests for immortality.
— Water Beings, Veronica Strang pg. 10
The Zonai's draconification could merely be a folly to their population and culture, but a folly that led to threads of time being their ally. The dragons are a perhaps spirits from a long time past, and with that origin, it might be horrifying to some, losing's one's self to transformation. But for others, it is a sacrifice, a duty beyond the reach mortality could handle, and perhaps cultures ever dragons in such a different light then one would like to think so.
But with that we are going to wrap up, again, if you haven't subscribe for more theory content like this, I really love doing these, and I also want to hear your thoughts on dragons within the Zelda series, who are the Dragons in Breath of the Wild? What do we think of Draconification? Comment those thoughts down below, I read all of my comments, so thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next video.
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