The Legend of the Princess, Chapter Sixteen Illustration

[rynling]

This is an illustration of a scene from the sixteenth chapter of The Legend of the Princess created by Lightsintheskye, who just sent it to me this afternoon! This is the first illustration she drew without having read the chapter first, and she did a marvelous job. At this point neither the illustration nor the chapter itself has been posted... I should probably get to work on that.

In this chapter it's revealed out that Ganondorf has been experiencing the same visions of the past that Zelda has; but, unlike her, he's just a passive spectator and doesn't have any control over what he sees. He suspected that Zelda was triggering and sharing these visions with him, but he didn't have concrete proof until her most recent vision. He therefore seeks her out immediately after the vision has ended, and he finally sits down and has a heart-to-heart talk with her in the small courtyard garden on the north side of the library where they used to play as children.

The garden is small and poorly maintained, and it's surrounded by the walls of the castle and doesn't get a lot of sunlight. It's also where Zelda grows a number of shade-loving plants used by the Sheikah for both medicine and poison – one variety of which are the "silent princess" lilies of Breath of the Wild, which the women of the royal line have domesticated. It will later be revealed that Zelda's mother used these flowers to kill Ganondorf's mother, a fact that Ganondorf knows but Zelda does not. In any case, it's night, and it's summer, and everything is green and lovely.

While they're talking, Zelda explains how she travels through time, while Ganondorf explains how he's able to travel through space. Essentially, he does what Midna does in Twilight Princess and makes shortcuts through the Twilight Realm, which exists alongside Hyrule. To show her how it's done, he takes her there. They're therefore still in the garden, except they're in the Twilight version, where everything dark and gold and strange.

I really love the aesthetic of Twilight Princess, not because it's "realistic" or "edgy," but rather because it's so delightfully Gothic. I love the idea that the world is layered, with the present layer gradually forming over past layers. Problems arise when the past doesn't lay still, however, and I read Ganondorf as symbol of this unrest. In the games themselves, he's the angry ghost that's risen from the bloody ground of Hyrule's wars, and nowhere is that characterization emphasized more heavily than it is in Twilight Princess. Just as the Twilight Realm is the "other Hyrule," Ganondorf is the twinned other of Zelda, the dark shadow of her own power.

In the actual games, the age difference between Zelda and Ganondorf is too wide for them to communicate with each other, but in this story she has the opportunity to try to understand him. In this chapter he's talking to her in the Twilight Realm in a dark and ghostly twilit garden. Zelda calls Ganondorf out on his characteristic narcissistic and self-righteous bullshit, but she also listens to him, and he finally opens up to her. This is also the point in the story when they figure out and acknowledge that they're attracted to each other.

I adore what Lightsintheskye did with Zelda's clothing, and Ganondorf's hair and boots are very handsome. Both characters seem much more relaxed and fluidly posed than they've been in her earlier pieces. She always draws human figures with such gorgeous precision, so it's really cool to see this sense of flow, which emphasizes the less formal and more intimate tone of the scene. It's almost as if the characters are beginning to breathe on their own.

The composition of the painting is really cool, especially how it focuses on Ganondorf, who is nevertheless still just slightly off-center. The soft golden lighting that suffuses the image is also fantastic. The ambient glow is pleasing to the eye, and this effect creates a relaxed vibe while still engendering a feeling of being in another world.

The architecture and its textures are beyond wonderful, and the setting so Gothic! And haunted! And filled with mystery and dangerous romance! I also love the plants and flowers and the way they work together with the architecture to create a palpable sense of atmosphere. Not only is every single brushstroke of every single thing growing in that garden sublimely perfect, but the subtle incorporation of borrowed images in the lower-left corner gives the piece a nostalgic Victorian feel, while the Silent Princess lilies emerging from the tangle of growth in the lower-right corner is downright eerie.

When I look at this illustration, I feel almost as if I'm being absorbed into it. I want to crawl inside this painting and live there. Honestly, if I were a ghost I would totally haunt this gorgeous Gothic castle. I've been looking at this image on my phone and iPad in every spare moment I've had while helplessly shaking my head and going, "Wow....... wow."

And also that is some nice *fans face* tension between those two beautiful nerds. Heaven help me but I ship them all over again. I've been entertaining the idea of not putting any smut in this story, but now I see how foolish I was to even consider that as a possibility. Magic and mythology and history and conspiracy and political intrigue aside, Lightsintheskye has reminded me that Zelda and Ganondorf are two extremely attractive people, and it would be an offense to justice and human decency if they did not end up in bed together at least once.

In any case, I set this illustration as the desktop background of my laptop. Since I take this laptop with me everywhere I go and hook it up to all manner of projection systems, the entire world will now know my shame. Although honestly, Lightsintheskye's artwork is nothing less than transcendent perfection, so I think I'm okay with that.