The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom got its official title reveal today, and while that means we don't have to call it Breath of the Wild 2 anymore, it's set fans of the series' deep lore digging to figure out what the name means.
One theory suggests that the 'kingdom' mentioned in the title isn't Hyrule - it's the Zonai. If you just play Zelda games and don't spend your time trawling forums for lore discussions, there's a decent chance you don't know who the Zonai are, and that's okay, because there's not actually that much to say.
Breath of the Wild has a map region labeled as the Zonai Ruins. Similar architecture to those ruins appears throughout the game. As explained in various art books, the developers intended these ruins to suggest the existence of an ancient civilization which rose and fell long before Hyrule came along. The barbarian armor set, which describes an "ancient warlike tribe" is also supposed to be connected to the Zonai.
The Zonai have become something of a meme among Zelda lore enthusiasts. Since the group is so vaguely defined in Breath of the Wild, it's easy to map them onto just about any of the game's story mysteries, but the new trailer for Tears of the Kingdom makes it pretty easy to suggest the game's going deeper on this ancient civilization.
The new trailer is filled with visual references to Zonai architecture, and the Ouroboros-style symbol which forms the game's logo look exactly like the Zonai dragon statues in Breath of the Wild. The wall carvings which make up the beginning of the trailer also suggest a Zonai connection. As Reddit user PartEmbarrassed5406 puts it, "this trailer really screams Zonai to me."
Curiously, Nintendo suggested a year ago that it was holding back the title reveal for fear of spoiling too much. The initial reaction to the name Tears of the Kingdom was one of confusion, but now that fans are starting to make the Zonai connection, the idea's starting to come together.
If the Tears of the Kingdom refers to the Zonai, that could mean that the game will deal with whatever event caused them to disappear from the face of Hyrule. The Zonai Ouroboros also appears on the big door Link opens as he starts to explore the sky areas in the trailer, suggesting that the Zonai may have fled Hyrule to build a new kingdom in the clouds.
The Tears of the Kingdom title somehow appeared a week ago, mysteriously registered as the name of a new subreddit.
