Patricia Summersett, who is best known in gaming for voicing Princess Zelda in a variety of The Legend of Zelda games, has clarified her comments from 2023 about Zelda and Link being “in a relationship.”
She told IGN that she has “all sorts of personal theories” about the nature of the relationship between Zelda and Link, but she believes there is “something beautiful” about things being left ambiguous.
“If there are romantic undertones, it’s left in an unrequited state. There’s obviously a deep friendship and a protectorship between the two of them. It’s a gorgeous relationship and it continues to evolve and be left open in so many iterations of this,” she explained.
What this means for Summersett as an actor who represents Zelda at fan conventions is that people come up to her with various interpretations of “what they think Link and Zelda are.” Some people take the romantic route and others celebrate Zelda and Link as special characters. “It can mean kind of anything, and I love that it lives in that space,” she said.
In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it appears Zelda and Link live together in a house with one bed. Summersett laughed and said, “Hopefully it’s a very comfortable bed.”
She also touched on her “unrequited” comment, saying she didn’t mean anything specific.
“I have to be careful with that word unrequited. That might be one interpretation of what their particular kind of relationship is–and relationship meaning that they could be friends, they could be warrior buddies, they could be a princess and a soldier, they could be a lovership, or people who are destined to be together even in a non-romantic way, but for their life they’re going to have this lifelong friendship,” she said. “It could be anything. And even for those who do put an obvious romantic tinge onto it, it would still be really on the nose to suddenly have Link and Zelda, because they have this deep relationship, having to get together in a romantic sense. Because that’s not the way life works. I think that I prefer that it’s not so on the nose as that, personally.”
Also in the interview, Summersett addressed the theories that Nintendo came to her and asked her to clarify her comments–that isn’t true. “No, nobody’s ever said anything to me,” she said.
Instead, Summersett said she wanted to clarify her comments about Zelda and Link because people took it as fact that she confirmed they are in a relationship–but that is not the case and not what she was trying to say.
“It’s really tricky when you’re trying to do these kinds of interviews and people take something completely out of context for the sake of clickbait. I was being used for clickbait and I’m like, ‘This is precisely not what I said,'” she said.
Her original comments were taken out of context, she said, and she said that was “pretty angering to be honest.”
“I tried to deal with it as best I could, but it’s hard when things blow up online. That’s been an interesting thing to navigate in the last few years, just being a simple voice actor trying to stay in my lane and be open to anybody who might come to me to celebrate the series, representing a character but not representing the company,” she said.
Summersett voiced Zelda in Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Age of Imprisonment, and Tears of the Kingdom.
