#anyone else wanna join the 'we don't exactly hate king rhoam fan club'?

[margindoodles2407]

In Defense of King Rhoam

okay so before I start this I just want to say, before you go dissing me in the comments just hear me out. I know that some people absolutely despise Rhoam, and I'm not trying to change their minds because I completely understand why. I just thought I'd offer my perspective on his character and why I don't hate him as much as other people do.

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I will defend King Rhoam to my dying breath.

Not his actions. Of course not. The way he treated Zelda was a way no parent should ever treat his or her teenage daughter. But even though we focus so much on Zelda's pain- as rightly we should- we tend to forget about her father's.

As far as we, the players, know, Zelda was an only child. Unless she was a miracle child conceived in old age, that means that Rhoam and his wife were married probably at most two years before she was born. Therefore, if she was six when her mother died, then Rhoam and the Queen had been married probably at most eight years. They were newlyweds. And, let us also not forget that the Calamity's return was prophesied very shortly after Zelda's birth.

Imagine being the head of a huge country, home to six major races and thousands of people. Imagine that your wife has just had a baby girl and that whole country celebrates. Imagine that, on that occasion that's supposed to be so joyous, an evil so old that everything about it but its name has been all but forgotten is said to return soon.

Imagine, then, that that wife whom you love throws herself and her sacred power into the work she must fulfill, because if she doesn't, those six races and all those thousands of people could die in a heartbeat.

Imagine that, one day, she suddenly dies.

Imagine that your six-year-old daughter doesn't even cry.

(We know why Zelda doesn't cry. We can't forget that Rhoam doesn't.)

Rhoam's in grief. He mourns his wife, and as everyone knows, when you're in grief you become blind to the pain of others because yours is so intense. But he also knows that his kingdom is still in danger, and that his wife must have passed her sacred power onto their daughter.

Zelda didn't cry. But she's six years old. She doesn't know how to tell him why. So he jumps to conclusions, and assumes that she's just mature- because she's SIX, and she doesn't know how to express her emotions- and so he sends her away to start her training.

Zelda tries, and she tries, and we KNOW that she tries; we know she tries her hardest, we know that she passes out in the freezing water of the Sacred Springs because she's trying so hard and nothing's happening. But we also need to remember that, because of this, she's away from home- where Rhoam is- all the time. Rhoam only gets to see her when she's at the Castle- which isn't often- and when she's there she wants to do the things she loves and not worry about her destiny. She's sixteen. She she still doesn't tell Rhoam how she's feeling, and since he can't see her trying her hardest, he once again jumps to conclusions and assumes that that's all she does when she's gone, too.

And Rhoam is running out of time. It's been ten years, and he doesn't know how seriously the princess takes her duties, so he keeps pushing her because he also has six races and thousands of people to look after.

He has to sacrifice being a father to be a king.

And we can see the whole picture, so we're quick to judge him. And to be clear, yes, the way he treats Zelda by jumping to conclusions isn't a model of parenting that any parent should ever follow. But, unlike us, Rhoam can't see the whole picture.

Not until it's too late.

Rhoam probably dies first when the Calamity hits, and then suddenly, as a ghost, he can see his daughter. He sees her flee the guardians with her knight, he sees her slip her hand from his, he sees her sob in wretched agony as she chokes out that the terrors around them are her fault because she couldn't access her cursed power. He realizes that she did take everything seriously, that she cared so much- that she probably cared more than he did.

He loves his daughter, he always has. But he realizes that he never showed it.

He realizes that he was a terrible father, and that is why he is stayed to the earth as a poe.

Ghosts are the souls of people with unfinished business. Rhoam's was that he was a bad father- and so, by extension, a bad king. So he haunts the plateau where his devoted Sheikah bodyguards buried him, and 100 years slip by like sand in an hourglass.

Link awakes from the Shrine of Resurrection, and Rhoam decides to atone for his past mistakes. He as a ghost can't save his daughter, but Link's alive. Link can. And so he becomes like a father to this boy he knows but who doesn't remember him, guiding him along his way, providing him with direction, food, and shelter, and he tries to fix all the mistakes he made in his life.

And when Link completes the shrines and meets him in the bell tower of the Temple of Time, Rhoam provides him with the Paraglider and the story of 100 years ago. He pleads with the boy to save his daughter, to be the man he never was.

When Link agrees, Rhoam can finally pass on.

He can't tell Zelda that he's sorry. Not yet, not until her time comes and she peacefully passes over into Hylia's realms of light. But he can send her someone, someone to care for her like he never did.

He can only pray that she forgives him.

#okay dude you messed up and yeah #you were a really bad father #but I understand where you are coming from #the legend of zelda #tloz #breath of the wild #botw #king rhoam #after the great plateau and all the ways he helps you I don't have it in me to hate him #i totally understand why people do and I respect that #but it never really made me hate him #mostly i just felt sorry for him #i mean he obviously loved Zelda it's just that he was also stressed #I'm NOT excusing how he treated her of course #but I think he deserves a little less hate and a little more of people being like #anyone else wanna join the 'we don't exactly hate king rhoam fan club'?