Timeline in release order

Alright! Here’s what I like to call the Ultimate Timeline. Simply put, it’s in order
This has probably been done before, but I reckon it's been a while, so I thought I’d try it out.

The idea is that the Zelda games take place in the order of their release - with a time split.
Like this:

---------------TLOZ
---------------TAOL
------------------|
--------------ALTTP
-----------------LA
------------------|
----------------OOT
---------------/----\
------------MM----TWW
-------------/--------PH
------OOA-OOS------\
-----------/------------ST
---------FS--------------|
--------FSA-------------|
---------|----------------|
-------TMC-------------|
---------|---------------/
--------TP-------------/
-----------\----------/
-------------\------/
---------------\--/
-----------------|
-----------------|
----------------SS


Now, you might ask yourselves: "Is he serious?"
Short answer: Who knows?
Long answer: Who cares? This is fun!

Now let’s flesh this baby out!
(Possible SS spoilers are blacked out)


THE ULTIMATE TIMELINE

It all starts out with Din, Nayru and Farore creating Hyrule and leaving the Triforce behind.
Somewhere down the road, the Triforce is found and ends up in the hands of the Royal Family.
Then, the backstory to TAOL happens. You know, the one where the King hides the Triforce of Courage and the first Princess Zelda is put under a sleeping spell.
Fastforward a century or two and Ganon is on the move! He attacks Hyrule Castle, steals the Triforce of Power and kidnaps Princess Zelda – but not before she splits the Triforce of Wisdom into eight shards and spreads it all over the southwest corner of Hyrule (Weird, I know. I guess she has her reasons). The stage is set for:

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
|
THE ADVENTURE OF LINK

After all the trouble that the Triforce has caused, it’s decided that it must be returned to the Sacred Realm and properly sealed up. Said and done!
A couple of centuries later, a band of thieves led by one Ganondorf (Might be Ganon reborn, might be Ganon revived, might be a different schmuck altogether) make their way into the Sacred Realm. Ganondorf lays two bloody hands on the Triforce and all hell breaks loose. Monsters pour out from the Sacred Realm - now the Dark World - to destroy, loot and kill. Towns are ravaged and the kingdom of Hyrule is greatly diminished.
During this debacle, the Seven Sages create the Master Sword, but apparently, noone is worthy of it, so it’s left unused.
In the end, they seal the gate to the Dark World, leaving Ganon with the Triforce inside. The Master Sword is sealed in a pedestal and a long wait ensues.
Maaany years and a somewhat altered Hyrule later:

A LINK TO THE PAST

After defeating Ganon, Link wishes for the Triforce to undo Ganon’s evil deeds. The Dark World turns back into the Sacred Realm, with the Triforce safely tucked away. The people who were killed or trapped in the Dark World are brought back and everyone is happy.
After partying the night away, Link goes abroad to find more excitement. On his way back, he is shipwrecked and:

LINK’S AWAKENING

What follows is a period of massive change. Thanks to severe earthquakes, shifting tectonic plates and whatnot, Hyrule gets a nice little facelift – mountains crumble, lakes dry up, new lakes pop up, new forests grow, Death Mountain turns into a volcano and so forth.
Thanks to the arrival of several other races previously unknown to the Hylians, they’re able to rebuild their civilization pretty quick. Now, they have a new set of friends!
The peoples of Hyrule live in peace and harmony for a long time. During this peace, the leader of the Seven Sages foresees the coming of a great evil and a hero who must travel through time to fight this evil. Out of boredom – or a sense of duty – the Sages build temples, craft ocarinas and deal out spiritual stones to prepare for the onslaught. To top it all off, they make the Master Sword the final key to the Sacred Realm, just to spite everyone who is not the Hero of Time (Looks like they were wrong about the MS sleeping forever after ALTTP, huh? Oh well, nobody’s perfect).
After a while, Ganondorf is reborn as a Gerudo (I like to think that it’s all the same Ganon). With him at the Gerudo throne, a war is pretty much inevitable. Link is brought to the woods and shortly thereafter, the war ends. Ten years later:

OCARINA OF TIME

Due to the ending of OOT, and the nature of the following games, a time split seems inevitable. On the one hand, we have the branch called the Child Timeline (CT) and on the other, the branch called the Adult Timeline (AT).
On the CT, the Triforce is now magically divided – Link has the Triforce of Courage, Zelda the Triforce of Wisdom and Ganondorf the Triforce of Power. None of them seems to have noticed, though (but they might notice later on, of course).
One day, Link travels deep into the woods looking for a friend and what happens? That’s right:

MAJORA’S MASK

Generations later, a different Link kills Ganondorf and the full Triforce is assembled at Hyrule Castle.
Then, Link is summoned by the Triforce and sent to the kingdoms of Holodrum and Labrynna. Next:

ORACLE OF SEASONS
|
ORACLE OF AGES

Once more, many years pass and Hyrule undergoes further changes, which, among other things, result in the departure of the Zoras (I guess the fish turned foul). The King of Hyrule feels the need to put the Triforce in a safe hiding place, but the road to the Sacred Realm is now long since forgotten (probably buried somewhere deep underground), so instead, it’s locked up in a secret room that noone except those chosen by destiny can find.
Later on, a wind sorcerer by the name of Vaati appears and begins to terrorize the neighborhood. The boy with the Four Sword shows up (Don’t ask me where he got it. He might’ve been a Picori originally, though) and locks Vaati away in the sword, which is then put in a shrine.
Long thereafter:

FOUR SWORDS

Meanwhile, on the AT, Ganon has broken out from the Sacred Realm and the people pray to the gods for help. Hyrule is flooded and:

THE WIND WAKER

Back on the CT, Ganon has been reborn again and wants to take control of Hyrule. To this end, he steals the Trident of power and the Dark Mirror, a portal to the so-called Dark World (later known as the Twilight Realm). He takes control of the DW’s inhabitants and sets things in motion for:

FOUR SWORDS ADVENTURES

Years later, the citizens of Hyrule are forced to migrate to the north as their land is rendered inhospitable by further earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. After a while, when the now unwatched seal on Ganon begins to weaken, he breaks free of the Four Sword, strips it of its power and, after failing to break it, hurls it skyward – all the way to where the Picori can find it.
Then, Ganon starts looking for the Triforce. He goes northward first, summoning an army of demons on the way. They invade the new Hyrule, but Ganon learns that the Triforce is still somewhere in the south, so he leaves – but the demons are left behind to feast on the Hylians.
This is when the Picori show up, handing the sword and the Light Force over to the Hero of Men. He uses them to save the day and the rest is history.
A few hundred years later, Vaati is reborn (Hyruleans are pretty big on reincarnation, it seems). He becomes a sorcerer again and then:

THE MINISH CAP

When the land to the south returns to a more pleasant stage, Hyrule expands and enters a new golden era. The Zoras reappear, the Gorons move back to Death Mountain and the Hylians build settlements practically everywhere. The Gerudo seem to be comfortable wherever they are, though, so they don’t show. Nevertheless, the new desert to the west is named Gerudo Desert – just for old times’ sake. The Dark Mirror, which is now called the Mirror of Twilight, is placed on top of the Arbiter’s Grounds in the desert.
Now! Ganon has been searching for the Triforce for ages, to no avail. It’s as if something, or someone, doesn’t want him to find it. However! Somehow, a member of the Royal Family, whose spirit is not quite balanced, happens to find the Triforce in the ruins of the old Castle. The Triforce then splits up and the ToP is sent straight to the old pigmaster. He just doesn’t realize this.
Then, Ganondorf (he has taken on his human persona to “blend in”) gets all mad because he can’t find the friggin’ Triforce! He kills a lot of people and gets busted for it. He is sentenced to death, but the ToP makes him invincible. So instead, he is banished to the Twilight Realm. He decides to use the Twili against Hyrule again, but this time, he’s going to be a bit more subtle about it.
Inevitably, this happens:

TWILIGHT PRINCESS

On the AT, Link and the pirates set out to explore the world. This results in:

PHANTOM HOURGLASS

Afterwards, they discover a continent that Link and Tetra decide will be the new Hyrule.
One hundred years later:

SPIRIT TRACKS

Thousands of years after all of these games, the Master Sword has lost its power again (as it had in TWW) and noone is able to stand up to evil. The Golden Goddesses swoop in, turn Zelda into a goddess and appoint her to protect the Triforce (Quite drastic, if you ask me – they must have grown pretty tired of all the drama going on in Hyrule). Zelda takes the sword and saves the day!
Being the Sage of Time, Zelda's godly form is the Goddess of Time. Using her godly powers, she heals time by uniting the two time branches and making them one. Every person who exists on both time branches, linked by the same spirit, is also united into one. The people celebrate their new goddess and name her Hylia, for she is of their people.
They all go about their lives and everything’s fine and dandy - until one beautiful morning, when Demise and his gang show up and everything goes straight to the underworld. Then (You guessed it):

SKYWARD SWORD


And here we are!

I like this but how can the CT and the AT meet up? Seems impossible.

I too like this, only thing I would say differently is that in Oracle of Ages & Seasons, the Zora are still around. River Zora AND sea Zora.

Also, on the subject of the same game and it's respective sequel, I like to think that the Sacred Realm (like you said) is no longer in existence, but is commemorated with a large building, to be slightly more precise, the building you see in the title sequences' prologue, with the Triforce hidden away inside that castle.

It would be ideal, because from the looks of it, it's a very difficult place to reach, with the forest surrounding it and whatnot. Although, this castle could easily depict Hyrule.

I would also like to know where Vaati comes in to play in the OOX series? I imagined him to be tied in with Link's Awakening, seeming as though the Wind Fish's nightmare (one of its forms) close resembles one of Vaati's forms. Namely Vaati's Wrath from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.

---------- Post added at 11:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:13 PM ----------

Oh, sorry. That last bit sort of makes no sense.

What I was trying to get at is perhaps Vaati started his evil plot by attacking the Wind Fish, hence why Vaati was in the nightmare form.

Also, they both have the power of wind.

---------- Post added at 11:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:15 PM ----------

OH and...

I really should have read the full thing before commenting...

I like to think Ganon gained the Trident of Power BEFORE the OOX sequel, because in a linked game you fight Ganon, and his weapon of choice is a trident which looks a lot like the Trident of Power... but you can't really tell, as his whole character, including his weapon and clothing is blue, due to the evil king not being fully revived, but more-or-less just a mindless rage machine.

If we're going to put them in release order, why bother with a split? It's not like any games were released in parallel. Except for OoS/A. Hey, there's an idea.

Maybe I was a bit lazy, but it just seemed too obvious that PH is a direct sequel to TWW. Don't worry, though - I will return with an even more ultimate timeline

Originally Posted by amladeus

I like this but how can the CT and the AT meet up? Seems impossible.

The Goddess did it! It's not something that has to happen, but I'm quite fond of the thought that SS sort of starts things over.

Hylian Sam: The sea Zoras depart prior to Four Swords, not the Oracle games (which, BTW, don't take place in Hyrule)
Interesting thoughts about Vaati, though! I guess it's possible that he was involved in the events of LA. Why don't you start a thread about it?
About the trident: I see it as a signature weapon of Ganon's that's not limited to one particular trident. He wielded one already in ALTTP, after all.
I really appreciate your enthusiasm!