The Zelda the timeline is a difficult beast to get your head around. There are different themes with Link at different stages of his heroism, things that are canon and non-canon and always the promise that the next game could come and change everything (we’re looking at you, Tears of the Kingdom).
For the most part, the timeline excludes most Zelda spin-off sources (TV shows, manga, graphic novels, and the like), though that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting facts to be gleaned from these formats. Take the following images from ‘The Perfect Zelda Fan Book’, a Japanese guide to A Link to the Past that also features manga shorts for the first three games in the series.
The guide was recently scanned by Melora for the Zelda fan site History of Hyrule. This is the first time the pages have been made available online in high quality, and the manga contained within gives us a glimpse of Link and a very human-looking fairy companion, long before Ocarina of Time Navi appeared. Check out the third image in the following tweet for a closer look.
This fairy companion (potentially Emheralda from another LTTP graphic novels) can be seen in two of the three manga found at the end of the guide, which you can view for free at Internet archive. Neither Zelda II: The Adventure of Link nor Link to the Past see the titular hero team up with a fairy sidekick (this should have been saved until OOT), but these short stories show that such an idea was definitely floating around at the time — even if it was in an unofficial capacity.
We also recommend checking out the entire fanbook in the archives. If you long for the return of informative game manuals, then nothing will make you more nostalgic (and after playing Tunic last year, the comparisons are even clearer)!
