Before I started watching Star Trek, I had heard about it on the Big Bang Theory. The way it was talked about, I was expecting a franchise with very airtight and complex lore. In reality, it’s kind of a muddled mess. And really, it’s better the creators don’t worry too much about continuity, why let continuity get in the way of a good story? It doesn’t make sense that half the cast of the original series had encountered Trelane before but in the end, does it really matter?
Anyway, fans of big franchises who keep track of all the lore and act as though it’s all consistent, put way more thought into continuity than the creators.
Nintendo didn’t care about lore and continuity, just in creating unique and interesting gameplay. They were genuinely surprised when people started fan theories connecting all the Zelda games together.
So they eventually whipped up a generic lore, stating there was a prophecy that Link and Zelda would always be reincarnated at some point in history when they’re needed most. Ganon too; he’s the personification and embodiment of all evil and can never be truly destroyed, only defeated for a time. He will always come back in some form or another.
Skyward Sword is canonically the first game in the franchise, showing how the prophecy started and how they ended up stuck in an infinite loop of reincarnations for all time.
An official timeline was created at one point over a decade ago, which Nintendo promoted to officially tie all the games together into a branching timeline of events. I believe they actually published an official timeline book around that time too. Although I hear it’s already contradicting some of the current lore and may no longer be considered canon by Nintendo.
It’s actually been a while since I looked into the Zelda timeline, so if anyone here is more up to speed on it, let us know!
Technically at this point, Tears of the Kingdom marks both the earliest and the latest entries in the series. Both BotW and TotK are set in futures where all of the previous Zelda games happened, all timelines converging.