How Zelda Held Ganon for 100 Years
After defeating him across multiple lifetimes, Princess Zelda finally sealed the fate of Calamity Ganon not through combat, but through sacrifice. By containing Ganon within Hyrule Castle for 100 years, Zelda gave the world the precious time it needed to regroup and prepare to stand against the monstrous threat once more. This astonishing feat was made possible by Zelda‘s own powers, divine blessings from the Goddess Hylia, and powerful magic barriers around Hyrule Castle.
Zelda‘s Sealing Power
As the mortal incarnation of the Goddess Hylia herself, Zelda has access to tremendous magical abilities passed down through her royal bloodline for generations. Most importantly, she wields the power to seal away great evils like Ganon.
Upon Ganon‘s return, Zelda awakened this ability, hoping at first that she could use it to banish him entirely. However, she quickly realized that even with Hylia‘s power now flowing through her, she could not permanently defeat Ganon alone. Instead, she changed tacks, focusing everything she had into containing Ganon in one place – Hyrule Castle – and locking him away from the outside world.
By all accounts, maintaining this seal for 100 years should not have been possible, even for one as magically gifted as Zelda. Yet she managed to power through and sustain the magic barrier through an astonishing combination of factors.
Hylia‘s Blessings
As Hylia reborn into human form, Zelda has a direct connection to the divine that she can draw on for power in her times of greatest need. This is likely what allowed her to keep fighting when all her mortal strength should have failed long ago. While Zelda‘s magic stems from Hylia originally, the goddess likely intervened more directly to support her earthly incarnation as she waged her century-long vigil against Ganon within the castle walls.
So in a very real way, Hyrule owes its salvation to the Goddess Hylia working through Zelda to secure victory against the Calamity. Truly, it was a group effort by both mortal and divine champions that sealed Ganon‘s fate!
An Impenetrable Barrier
The final key factor allowing Zelda to achieve an otherwise impossible feat was the powerful magic barrier she raised around Hyrule Castle to contain Ganon. Like her long-term sealing power, creating and sustaining such an enormous barrier for so long should not have been feasible even for one as magically attuned as Zelda.
Yet she managed through what one must assume was continued divine empowerment from Hylia. This barrier isolated Hyrule Castle and a small surrounding area from the rest of the kingdom and possibly even time itself based on strange phenomena later observed in that region.
By sectioning off Ganon‘s prison into its own magical pocket dimension of sorts, Zelda spared the wider kingdom from bearing the brunt of containing him. Like a magical pandora‘s box, Hyrule Castle became the lonely cage trapping the calamity away from the world while Zelda held vigil.
Holding back the apocalyptic fury of Calamity Ganon for 100 years is a truly astonishing achievement unlike anything in Hyrule‘s written history. By all rights, either Ganon or Zelda should have perished long before Link awakened from his healing slumber.
Yet Zelda endured through a combination of her predestined sealing magic, divine empowerment, and reality-bending barrier magic. Locked in solitary combat, she stared down the endless malice and hatred of Ganon until Link returned to finish the fight they started 100 years before.
Without Zelda‘s incredible sacrifice, Hyrule surely would have fallen completely to darkness with no hope of salvation. Instead, her vigil gave life to hope once more as the kingdom began to piece itself together after the calamity.
Truly Princess Zelda‘s long containment of Ganon displays magical, spiritual, and mental fortitude unmatched across Zelda franchise history. Let her astonishing perseverance stand as an inspiration to us all!
