There were many things that Tears of the Kingdom “did right” upon its release. Regarding its story, one of its best acts was bringing Zelda to the past and having her interact with Hyrule’s first king and queen. As players would find out, the first king of Hyrule, Rauru, would have a huge role in the story, including saving Link from Ganondorf’s curse and helping him understand his new abilities. Polygon translated an interview with the game’s director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and the game’s producer, Eiji Aonuma, where the two commented on what it was like to make Rauru and the “two sides” of his character via the time periods gamers met him in. Fujibayashi started with:
“What I wanted to do was create kind of two different sides of Rauru. You can call it an A-side and B-side. So the A-side is the Rauru of the past, and the B-side is what you see in the present. The A-side Rauru, the one in the past, is what you see through the story unfold[ing] through the Dragon Tears and also through the eyes of Zelda, and you see how Rauru interacts with Zelda, and his feelings, his thoughts towards Zelda. And then there’s the B-side where, with all of that past, with all of that story, with that relationship with Zelda, we show how Rauru interacts with Link in the present world.”
That kind of duality is rare, and the team knew it. In fact, they played into that with Tears of the Kingdom because both versions of Rauru knew the past or future because of who they were talking with at the time. The one with Zelda knew the future, and the one with Link remembered his tragic past, which played heavily into his scenes:
“He interacts with Zelda knowing that this is the night, that Zelda had so many expectations for him, and what he expects out of himself. And we thought that mixing those two Rauru together would be kind of a shame, to mix those together and create one character, and so that’s why we intentionally separated [that] out so that there’s only the past Rauru [who] only meets with Zelda, and there’s a modern Rauru.”
While it’s true that Rauru met a sad end, he can rest easy knowing that his efforts bought Zelda enough time to do what she needed to do so that Link could be saved in the present and Ganondorf could forever be defeated. Without him? None of it would be possible.
