The King of Thieves, of Evil, and even of Darkness — Ganondorf has many nicknames. While they don’t exactly paint him in a good light, they do describe him accurately; he is evil and makes plans in the dark so that he can one day obtain the Triforce and take over Hyrule. However, the Ganondorf we’ve seen is often dressed in armor like he’s ready for battle and perhaps less of the likes of a king.
What might the Dark Lord look like if he was dressed in fine fabrics and carefully decorated armor to show his true status?
Lehvu is the artist behind this Ganondorf who somehow looks more regal than perhaps ever before with a map of stars in the background. He looks equally casual and powerful in his pose, resting his arms on the very same sword the Sages in Twilight Princess used for his execution. The serious look on his face and his clean armor, decorated with precious stones, tell you that you don’t want to mess with this guy.
The stars could symbolize his power over the world (let’s not forget that Zant saw Ganondorf as a god, after all) but if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that the stars around Ganondorf’s head are paired with Roman numerals and moon phases. Lehvu explains on their website that the moon phases are meant to represent the Gerudo King’s rebirth. That’s a clever way to tell the viewer that, even though we’ve only seen Ganondorf appear in a few Zelda games so far, we can most likely count on him returning one day. Demise did promise at the end of Skyward Sword that his hatred would go on for an eternity, after all.
If, or rather when, Ganondorf makes his return to the Zelda games, I hope we will see another side of him. Not necessarily a less evil side of him, but something to make us understand him better. Hopefully it’s only a matter of time before the Gerudo King is reborn once more and reintroduced to us players, and when he is, I hope we will see him as a proper king before he puts on his dark armor to attempt to end the Hero once more.
