The Legend of Zelda

Short easy answer, the “Timeline” has always been a bunch of bullshit and none of the games have ever existed in the same universe. Save for the games that are explicitly direct sequels (e.g., ToTK, Majora’s Mask, Phantom Hourglass, etc.) they are all stand-alone stories. I don’t understand why people can’t wrap their heads around the idea that stories can be retold with the same character archetypes without being directly related to each other.

Don't trust Nintendo, there is no timeline. This series is about recurring themes, not about one continuous nation and royal line.

Nobody understands the timeline. Not even Nintendo. If you want proof of that check out this video that goes over the history of Zelda timelines. That's right. Someone made a video not about the timeline itself, but about all the times Nintendo changed the timeline.

Personally, I just go with the stance that each game is a "Legend" of Zelda. Just like how real life has stories of the past that may or may not have happened either as written or even at all. Sometimes those stories even reference older stories and the legends continue on.

IMO the best way to think of this is like the Wheel Of Time series. It's an eternal struggle between archetypes that keeps happening over many millenia.

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again"

What I want to know is, if the Rito were around for the founding of Hyrule, where were they in OoT and TP?

IIRC the "timeline" was originally just a fun little thought experiment by the playerbase a la "what if all of these stories exist in the same universe instead of being separate legends" and Nintendo just rolled with it eventually ... but the actual games have always had their own contained stories that aren't actually fully compatible with each other, retcon or change things that "happened in the past" and generally shouldn't be viewed as being in the same universe, otherwise things get VERY confusing (like for example why TH Majora's Mask is present in BotW and Link can just wear it without being taken over by the evil spirit sealed within, or why you can get multiple "Goddess Swords" in BotW despite it being the unique, Hylia-made proto version of the Master Sword).

Nintendo just likes to re-use known plot elements and characters, like that every wise (old) Sheikah woman close to Zelda is automatically Impa. "Rauru" is no exception to this - the Sage of Light in Ocarina of Time for example was also called Rauru, but he was definitely a Hylian back then and definitely also NOT the King of Hyrule.

What confuses my more TBH is that Zelda is somehow Rauru's and Sonia's descendant. If they had kids already before Zelda got sent back in time, why weren't they ever mentioned? And since they're both dead at the very beginning of the game, it isn't exactly likely that they managed to have kids after the events of TotK either, so ... how?! This can't be explained by plot dissonance between games as all of it happened within TotK.

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The story is a Legend with a lot of details embellished or forgotten over the course of history. It is possible to put together an overall idea of how the history went, but you can’t trust any single game as totally accurate.

But it also states that Skyward Sword Zelda’s descendants founded Hyrule shortly after the sealing of the sacred realm. Skyward Sword Zelda wasn’t a Zonai though.

There's no indication of how much time passed there. It just says that Skyloft came down, and then there was an entire era of chaos, ending by the sealing of the sacred realm, then the founding of Hyrule kingdom, and the beginning of the era of prosperity. The graph even has an extra empty slot between the sky era ending with the return to the surface, and the era of chaos with the sealing of the sacred realm.

Hyrule Historia p. 77 says that "the world became known as Hyrule" and "the Hyliaans, descendants of Hylia, lived in Hyrule" - but the descendants of Hylia are the descendants of Skyward Sword Zelda, who is Hylia incarnated. So we're already talking a few generations there.

Then the legend of the supreme power spreads, and Rauru, the sage of light that we see in OoT, builds the Temple of Time to seal the Triforce and the Sacred Realm.

And then the descendants of the goddess Hylia, reincarnated as princess Zelda (so that's the descendants of SSZelda), established the kingdom of Hyrule, to protect the Triforce. Then after some time, we get to OoT.

The only thing that's changing here with TotK is the imrpisoning war. The one we see in TotK and the one we see in the LttP backstory (and also in Hyrule Historia) simply seems to be... not the same event at all. The TotK events are just a different war that is not the one we've known about so far. As for Rauru... the founding of the kingdom and the sealing of the sacred realm did happen in the same time period, and they have the same powers.

I’ve been wondering this too and watching lots of YouTube videos of people explaining their take. Truth is nobody knows and everyone is head canoning how TOTK fits. But I particularly like this video that describes the idea of a dragonbreak having merged the timelines back into one.

This would explain why the Tri-Force is missing. I hope there’s a third game that explains why people seem to have forgotten it’s existence.