#but i actually think that zant's anger toward the world of light is justified

[midzelink]

The Fate of Zant

The Usurper King’s is a story with which we are all intimately familiar; angry at the injustice of his people’s banishment and estranged by those who refused his rule, he flees the Palace of Twilight in a fit of anger one day, where he looks to the sky and finds his salvation in the form of Ganondorf, whom he believes to be a god.  With his newfound power, he banishes the true ruler of the Twili and usurps her throne, transforming his own people into dark and malformed Shadow Beasts - and with them at his side he invades the World of Light, storming Hyrule Castle and scattering the land’s Light Spirits in all but one fell swoop.  He commits countless atrocities, reducing Kakariko Village to a mere village of three, murdering the Zora Queen as a sheer display of power, and possibly even killing the King of Hyrule himself - but when all is said and done, he meets his demise at the hands of Hyrule’s hero and the very princess he had cursed, exploding in an agonizing but powerful display of the Fused Shadow’s might.

However, there is one scene in particular that always struck me as out-of-place in this overall narrative.  It comes when Ganondorf finally meets his own demise at the hands of Link, and he stands alone on a hill, Master Sword struck center in the scar he received over a century ago.  He gives us his last words - “The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!” he spits menacingly - but before he perishes, we cut to another scene, and are greeted with this:

It’s Zant, another evil man who recently perished himself, and he ostensibly looks down upon Ganondorf, before cracking his neck in a very morose, very fatal way.  We cut back to Ganondorf, and only then do his eyes go white, and the wind blows over the field, signalling that finally, it’s over.

For a long time, I had assumed that this scene was meant to be symbolic: that Ganondorf, having had such a strong connection with Zant, was only able to perish because Zant, too, was already dead.  But now - an incredible thirteen years later - I have come to believe that this isn’t the case, or, at the very least, there’s a chance it might not be, and I’d like to take a moment to talk about that here.

(Credit for this one 100% goes out to @therealflurrin​​, who also gave me permission to make this write-up.  Their conversations are always an excellent source of primo TP content.)

Something that is important to understand about the relationship between Zant and Ganondorf is that it is one of co-dependence; Zant, angry but utterly powerless to do what he thinks needs to be done, is found by the bearer of the Triforce of Power in a moment of outrage and weakness.  Ganondorf, reduced to mere a giant mass of malice and darkness in the Twilight Realm, tells Zant: “I shall house my power in you… If there is anything you desire, then I shall desire it, too.”  From Zant’s perspective, it’s not hard to believe why he believed this to a blessing from a god; in a great moment of need, a powerful entity appeared before him, offering him seemingly unlimited power.  But we know that Ganondorf is no god; that he only approaches Zant for reasons that are entirely self-serving, as a twisted and misshapen light dweller trapped in the realm of shadows.  He allows Zant to house him and his power with the ultimate goal of being “reborn” and returning to Hyrule, tricks the Twili into believing him to be a “god” so that he will carry out his will unquestioningly - but ultimately, Ganondorf needed Zant just as much (if not far more) than Zant ever needed him.

We know from the very scene where Ganondorf’s death unfolds just how deep this co-dependency runs.  It is my belief that the two formed a sort of “soul bond” following their initial encounter, intertwining their fates so that neither could perish while the other still lived; although Zant is not entirely aware of Ganondorf’s true nature, he is at least somewhat aware of this bond:

 “As long as my master, Ganon, survives, he will resurrect me without cease!”

These are his very last words before Midna strikes him down, in a move that ultimately seems to be very final, indeed.  But now we must return to the death of his supposed “master,” and the implications Zant’s appearance has in that moment.  Ganondorf is on death’s doorstep for the second time; the first, at the hands of the Great Sages, it was the Triforce of Power that saved him - and now, here, he sees Zant in his final breaths, a beacon of hope in a great moment of need.  But the scene plays out how we expect: Zant is already dead, and with nothing yet tethering him to life, Ganondorf meets his end, this time, for good.

Except there’s one teensy, tiny problem here, and I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this: Zant and Ganondorf’s relationship is one of co-dependency, as you’ll remember, their souls bound to one another in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to Zelda and Midna’s after the former gave up her own light in order to save the latter.  If this were untrue, then we would not see Zant in the moments leading up to Ganondorf’s death; furthermore, if Zant were somehow already dead despite this co-dependency, then Ganondorf would simply keel over sometime shortly thereafter following Link’s decisive blow with the Master Sword.

Instead, there is a pivotal moment where Ganondorf’s fate is evidently sealed, and it’s the moment where we see Zant snap his neck - a display, which, frankly, was probably far too gruesome for a 10-year-old me playing through the game for the first time.  It is immediately following this scene where Ganondorf reels back, releasing one final, raspy grunt as his life leaves his eyes, and Hyrule again knows peace.  If Zant had died X amount of time before this ultimate battle, it seems very peculiar that Ganondorf would have such a sudden and visceral reaction to it, as if it had happened elsewhere, simultaneously.

So, let’s scrutinize this scene under the lens of their co-dependency; let’s say that, despite the destruction of his body, Zant was able to survive his final blow in some way, as his master still lived on.  Following this, and going back to the initial scene, we can arrive at two simple conclusions:

That Zant was alive up until the very moment that Ganondorf perished, and

in that final, critical moment, he chose to sever their bond.

The question, then, is…why?  Why would the Usurper King, who had once thought the Gerudo King his god, choose to sever the only thing keeping him alive?  It’s true that Zant was undoubtedly a deeply troubled and hateful man; he was angry at the world of light and its inhabitants, whom he saw as oppressors, perhaps even rightly so - and he was angry at the Twilight Realm’s own “useless, do-nothing royal family that had resigned itself to [a] miserable half-existence.”  But Ganondorf’s spirit is one of pure malice, and it had invaded the world on the other side of the mirror long, long before the story of Twilight Princess begins.  One cannot help but wonder exactly what kind of effect such evil might have had on the realm and its denizens, though it is not hard to imagine the harborer of Demise’s Curse slowly and carefully plotting from the shadows, decades spent as whispers in the ears of the unknowing Twili until, finally, one suitable enough to become his vessel appeared - one who was vulnerable and angry enough to listen to those whispers, and would submit to anyone and anything if it meant obtaining the power to do what they thought was right.

Perhaps, then, Zant’s story is not one of an evil, bloodthirsty tyrant who met his rightful end at the hands of Link and Midna; perhaps his is a tragedy, the story of a man who fell victim to the malice residing within Ganondorf, only worsened the moment he became the Gerudo King’s vessel.  Perhaps - lost in fugue state in the Twilight Realm, formless and lost, but still otherwise alive - it took the apparent death of a particular someone at the hands of his “god” in order to finally snap him back to his senses.

(Zant could have simply killed Midna when he usurped her throne, yet he didn’t.  I personally think the two are related, but I can talk more about that in a different at a different time, as it is far more headcanon than analysis.)

Ultimately, nothing Zant could do could ever wash his hands of the blood that stained them, no matter how much Ganondorf might have in part been responsible - but in this one, critical moment, Zant, who had done such wrong and hurt so many, chose to do the right thing, even though that meant saving Hyrule, a world which he had so despised.  Maybe he, too, perished when he severed his bond with Ganondorf - one final, noble act - or maybe he didn’t.  Maybe, just maybe, on the other side of the mirror, there is yet another story waiting to unfold, one of a man who had done such wrong and hurt so many, willing to do anything and everything necessary to prove that he, too, is capable of change…

#zant #ganondorf #twilight princess #loz #legend of zelda #this didn't seem like the right post to talk about this #but i actually think that zant's anger toward the world of light is justified #the man deserves redemption #i think midna and zant are like...cousins #but like i said i can talk more about that later #tp!ganondorf #text #headcanons #analysis #mywriteups* #myposts*