I had entered the castle walls with great trepidation. I had spent the entirety of my playthrough of Breath of the Wild so far with Hyrule Castle on the horizon, waiting to be explored, but I kept waiting until I was ready.
In hindsight, I think I was worried that I’d accidentally wander straight into the final battle with Calamity Ganon and finish the game too soon, something I actually did on a later exploration, so my worries were founded.
Exploring Hyrule Castle is always one of the highlights of any Legend of Zelda game. Like the Temple of Time and Kakariko Village, it is a staple of many of the games, and something that just seems to get better with each new iteration.
Much like my final battle, I quite literally fell into Hyrule Castle Library by accident. Once I’d dealt with the Lizalfos that seemed to be waiting there for me, I stared around in wonder. A library. A giant, beautiful, decaying library. I can’t think of another Zelda game with a proper library — not a workshop or a study, but a real Beauty and the Beast-style fantasy library.
Rain poured through the partially collapsed vaulted ceiling, and lightning threw the pillars into sharp relief. Several were crumbling, but many still stood tall, casting long shadows across the floor. Breath of the Wild has many beautiful buildings and endlessly sublime scenery, but this, for me, took the cake. With its checkered tile flooring, grey stonework, and tall bookcases, this was the other temple. Everything about it makes it look like a cathedral, from its dark wooden furniture to its lecterns. When the sun finally broke through, it lit the room with shafts of light that pooled on the ground floor.
Once you’ve dealt with the other Lizalfos, you have the chance to fully explore, to poke around the stacks and shelves. There are only two books that you can read in the library proper: one on the mezzanine level, by the hole I’d initially fallen through, and the other on one of the tables in the centre of the room. They each contain a recipe, one for the Monster Cake, the other for Fruit Cake. These recipes not only restore hearts, but are useful to fulfil two sidequests along the way.
While I wish there were more books to leaf through, the other feature that defines a truly fantastic library is used liberally: the door concealed behind the bookcase. Using Magnesis, you can shift bookcases embedded into the walls out from the north, east, and west walls. The eastern bookcase takes you to the docks and a Shrine that you can activate by lighting the torches before it. The western bookcase opens onto a set of rough-hewn steps, and once you venture up those you find a little cavern.
There are some run-of-the-mill items to pick up here, but otherwise, the room’s use isn’t immediately obvious. It seems unfinished, but if it serves no purpose, why hide its entrance? The outer wall of the cavern is missing and, in its place, a section of one of the giant Sheikah Columns is visible. Was this built to be a safe room or another secret passage out of the library? Was the room a work in progress, as suggested by the presence of the Stone Smasher leaning against some boulders, or is that a mere coincidence? There’s no way of knowing what the room was intended for, but I am confident that this room had a purpose, even if it was a work in progress when the columns pushed up through the castle to aid the fight against Ganon.
The final secret room, concealed behind the northern bookcase, is the King’s Study. It’s a tiny room, with a desk, the ruins of a painting, and a Royal Guard’s Shield to collect. There is very little else in this room, and the straight-backed chair, wooden desk, and shelves are completely unadorned and fuss-free.
This is not at all what one would expect of the king’s study, least of all the King of Hyrule. There is little in the way of finery here; it is a purely practical room. There is no particular comfort, no reading chairs or sofas, no windows even. Just a desk, a small bookcase, and a large lectern like outside. There is an honesty to this room that is reflected in its most important feature: the diary of King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule.
The king’s diary is unflinchingly honest. In it, he confesses his pain over the loss of his wife, his regret at pushing his daughter towards her duty and away from him, and his deep sorrow at failing Zelda as her father and king, along with his despair that he handled everything pertaining to the prophecy wrong and doomed his people.
It is a heart-aching read, and you feel for Zelda as always, but you finally see the story from her father’s side. As the king, he had to make a choice, and he chose his people over the comfort and freedom of his daughter, a choice he questions as it couldn’t stop the Calamity in the end anyway. It was tragically all for nothing, at least from his perspective.
But you, as Link, stand there as a testament to him having done something right: he placed the final pieces of the prophecy together by putting Link and Zelda together. And one hundred years later, Link reads this diary, a concise account of where it all went wrong for Hyrule, knowing that he is mere steps from reuniting with Zelda to finally put an end to the evil and begin the restoration of Hyrule to its former glory. It’s an incredibly powerful and bittersweet moment in the game. You have felt so much for Zelda, watching her struggle as you collect memories of her, and now you see her fractured relationship with her father from his perspective.
If you choose to move on from the library and go to the sanctuary now, then the late king’s word will bookend your adventure. After all, he was the old man waiting for you outside the Shrine of Resurrection, and he guided you to begin your quest, pointing you to Impa for further guidance. If you choose to explore more, to complete more quests, you do so knowing that Zelda was cherished by her father, but that he could never tell her that and have her simultaneously preparing to use her Goddess powers. He had to keep her at arm’s length, to push her to try harder, to be better, because the fate of his people rested on the shoulders of his teenage daughter.
Re-entering the library, the red light of the Calamity drifts through the air like dust motes. Without the monsters this is a peaceful place. Time has worn it down, but there is a beauty to the places in the game that nature has begun to take back.
But this is more than just a room full of musty tomes, it represents another chapter of Hyrule’s history. It stands as one of the last reminders of the old world, of before the calamity. It is also the only place that holds Hyrule’s history written in ink on a page. The other books scattered throughout Hyrule are either diaries, recipe books, or self-help, but none contain history like these. History is verbal, it is told through stories or bardic songs. It is embroidered on quilts and painted on walls, framed on a canvas, carved into wood, but it is no longer written down. Much of Hyrule’s past has been written off as myth, and the Champions are treated as legend by all but those who knew them. Some of the outlying villages seem to be so cut off from central Hyrule that their residents don’t mention the world beyond their town limits, and have no need for the histories of a people so far away.
This library then stands as a monument to the forgotten history of Hyrule, most of which Link learns through his own memories, the memories of others, of the ballads that Kass has been taught by his mentor. The people beyond the castle walls know to fear monsters, to stick to the paths, and to place offerings before the shrines. They work the land and build families and communities, they have no real need for tomes of history. For them, campfire tales are enough.
Defeat Calamity Ganon, rescue Princess Zelda, and maybe the people of Hyrule will find a world of history and literature awaits them. But until such a time, the Hyrule Castle Library stands as a broken time capsule, harking back to an age of prosperity that is no more. The wider lands of Hyrule do not look back, they push on, survive, and thrive. Perhaps it is time for Link and Zelda to do the same.
