It's less than 100 days to Tears of the Kingdom, and we're starting to go nuts with speculation and theories. Our latest interest is the mysterious language hidden within the tiny snippets of game that we've seen in the Tears of the Kingdom trailers and teasers, which is carved into stone tablets and walls, spiralling up from Ganon's trapped corpse, and even found on Link's new melty Master Sword.
A new language wouldn't be out of the question, either. Breath of the Wild introduced the Sheikah Script, which was largely used to write things like "Dungeon" inside a dungeon (a very literal people, those Sheikah) — and, if our various Zonai theories are correct, this hieroglyphic script could be the language of the Zonai.
In fact, one person claims to have translated it already, saying that it's a poem about the sun and moon, but that translation is not confirmed, and other fans have assembled detailed spreadsheets about what each glyph could be. There are even theories that it works like hieroglyphics, with each symbol representing both a creature or concept and a letter, as you can see above.
But for today, we're not interested in the language. We're interested in this:
See that little squiggle? That's a dragon. No, really — compare it to the dragon at the top of this article. Or this dragon in the logo, which is the same colour and has that same crest on its back:
So? It's a dragon, what does that mean? Well, as we've already theorised, the colour green and the dragon are both tied to the Triforce of Courage, just as red/pigs represent Power and blue/owls represent Wisdom.
It's not a coincidence that the Zonai are tied to Courage, just as the Sheikah — a race that predominantly uses blue — are tied to Wisdom with their focus on technology. The Zonai are represented in the scarce lore we have on them as warriors, with Aztec-like architecture and a mysterious background, but unlike the Gerudo — who are more interested in exerting their power over people — the Zonai could show courage by being strong in other ways.
And, since Link is also tied to Courage, that implicitly ties him to the Zonai, too. Ganondorf is represented by the Gerudo race; Zelda, the holder of the Triforce of Wisdom, who is best pals with Impa and occasionally dresses up as Sheik, is represented by the Sheikah. Link has been semi-represented by various races before — the Kokiri, the Hylians, the Picori — but in truth, he's never truly been one of them.
The dragon in these trailers is shorthand at this point. It stands for Courage, for Link, for the Hero, for the Zonai. It is the undoing of Ganon's craving for Power, because Courage is strength used not for oneself, but for the good of others. If it's swirling out of the trapped Ganon, and being shown prominently in the trailer, we can guess that Courage is going to be a huge part of Tears of the Kingdom's story.
Except, well... that's every Zelda story, innit? Honestly, at this point, we just really want the game to come out so we don't have to pore over every pixel of the three minutes of trailer we have so far...
...then again, if you're a fan of theories, dig in!