Mirror of Twilight

The Mirror of Twilight is a quest item from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The mirror was created by Din, Nayru, and Farore when they banished the Dark Interlopers to the Twilight Realm. It serves as a link between the Twilight Realm and Hyrule, allowing beings to travel between the two worlds as pleased. It is housed in the Arbiter's Grounds, where it was used to banish criminals to the Twilight Realm after being found guilty of crimes against Hyrule or the Hyrulean Royal Family. The former Gerudo King of Thieves-turned-King of Evil Ganondorf Dragmire was banished to the Twilight Realm in this manner after a failed execution for his crimes against the Hyrulean Royal Family. After Zant invaded Hyrule a century later, he shattered the Mirror to prevent Link and Midna from following him back into the Twilight Realm.

During their quest to defeat Zant, Link and Midna fight their way through the Arbiter's Grounds to find the mirror. However, after clearing the ancient prison of enemies and reaching the Mirror Chamber atop the Arbiter's Grounds, they find that the mirror has been shattered. Midna explains that since Zant usurped the Throne of the Twilight Realm and is not of royal lineage, the mirror could not be destroyed completely. Link and Midna then travel across Hyrule and beyond to find the lost shards of the mirror that Zant had secreted away to avoid anyone finding them again. After many trials, they successfully manage to restore the mirror. They use it to travel to the Twilight Realm and defeat Zant. After they discover the truth about Zant's connection to Ganondorf, they travel back to Hyrule to confront and defeat Ganondorf. After peace has been restored, Midna destroys the mirror to prevent an ordeal like Zant's invasion from ever happening again.

History
Over the course of the story of Twilight Princess, the game's hero, Link, learns of an ancient prison far across the Gerudo Desert that is known to house a "cursed mirror" that had previously been used to banish inmates of the prison to a realm of shadows from which they were never seen again. Midna, a resident of the Twilight Realm spoken of in the stories of the mirror, reveals that this is the Mirror of Twilight, which is the only known link between Hyrule and the Twilight Realm left behind by the Golden Goddesses Din, Nayru and Farore after they banished the ancestors of the Twili to the Twilight Realm near the end of the Hyrulean Civil War. Midna makes clear that if they are to reach the Twilight Realm and dethrone the Usurper King of Twilight, Zant (who had by this point invaded Hyrule), they would have to find the mirror and use it to journey to the realm of shadows.

Link and Midna, with the help of Fyer, eventually reach the borders of the Gerudo Desert and begin a long trek across the desert in search of the abandoned prison spoken of in the stories of the Mirror of Twilight, the Arbiter's Grounds. After crossing the desert and eradicating an encampment of Bulblins lying in front of the Arbiter's Grounds, the pair enter the haunted prison in search of the mirror. They brave the treacherous quicksand pits and undead enemies inhabiting the prison before finding an ancient device known as the Spinner and using it to defeat the fossilized remains of a Stallord, an ancient beast reanimated by Zant. After defeating the monstrosity, Link and Midna are granted access to the Mirror Chamber atop the Arbiter's Grounds. Using the Spinner, the pair raise the enormous boulder the mirror projects onto as well as the mirror's stand itself out of the sands, only to discover the mirror to be shattered, with a single fragment remaining. The Ancient Sages appear before the pair and relate the tale of a failed execution they themselves conducted in the chamber they now stood in a century earlier, in which the King of Evil known as Ganondorf, the former Gerudo King of Thieves, was to be executed for his acts of treason against the Royal Family of Hyrule. This execution is then shown to have failed in a flashback shown by the Ancient Sages, in which the Triforce of Power was revealed to sleep within Ganondorf and awakened, giving him the power to break free and murder the Sage of Water who had struck him with the Execution Sword used by the Sages. Left with no choice to keep the Dark Lord from escaping, the Sages activated the Mirror of Twilight and sent Ganondorf into the Twilight Realm. Back in the present, the Sages reveal that Zant shattered the mirror to prevent anyone from following him back to the Twilight Realm and spirited three of the four shards of the mirror to three separate locations around Hyrule: one in the snowy mountain heights, one in an ancient grove, and one in the heavens. They reveal that since Zant is a usurper of the Twilight Realm's throne and is not of royal lineage, he did not have the power to completely destroy the mirror as only the Twilight Realm's true ruler could do so, and instruct Link and Midna to find these three shards and restore the mirror if they wish to defeat Zant.

After traversing Hyrule and beyond, Link and Midna recover the three lost Mirror Shards and return them to their proper place in the Mirror Chamber atop the Arbiter's Grounds, where the three shards recombine with the fourth shard still left in the mirror's stand to restore the Mirror of Twilight as it had previously been. The mirror is then activated, and it projects its portal to the Twilight Realm onto the large boulder in front of it, opening the gateway between the two worlds. The Ancient Sages reappear and beg Midna for her forgiveness, resulting in her revelation as the true Twilight Princess and ruler of the Twilight Realm. The pair then travel to the Palace of Twilight using the mirror and cleanse it of Zant's influence, freeing the Twilight Realm of his tyranny, but not before learning the truth of Zant's relation to Ganondorf, who was responsible for giving Zant his sorcerer's powers and helping Zant overthrow Midna in order to escape the confines of the Twilight Realm and return to Hyrule. Link and Midna then travel back to Hyrule and defeat the Dark Lord Ganondorf, saving both Hyrule's Princess Zelda and the land itself from Ganondorf's evil. After the Dark Lord's defeat, Midna is restored to her true form as the Twilight Princess and returns home to the Twilight Realm to govern the Twili race, but not before exercising her authority as the ruler of the Twilight Realm to utterly shatter the Mirror of Twilight using one of her tears in order to prevent similar tragic events from happening again and in effect sealing off the only known road between the two worlds.



Composition of the Mirror
The Mirror of Twilight sits atop the Arbiter's Grounds in a private chamber of its own known as the Mirror Chamber. When activated, it projects the image etched into the mirror's surface onto the slab of rock it faces, forming stairs for a being to step up onto if they voluntarily wish to enter the Twilight Realm. The Mirror of Twilight appears to be composed of two components within the game:
 * The Mirror of Twilight itself; which acts as a sort of "projector" that emits an extraordinary light that forms the portal that links the Twilight Realm and Hyrule to each other.
 * The large black Stone where the portal forms; the mirror shines onto this enormous black slab of stone to form the portal to the Twilight Realm. It was this very slab of rock that Ganondorf was chained to during his failed execution conducted by the Ancient Sages.

Mirror Shard
A Mirror Shard is a fragment of the shattered Mirror of Twilight, shattered by Zant to prevent Link and the Twilight Princess Midna from following him to the Twilight Realm. Altogether, there are four shards of the mirror resting in four locations:
 * The Mirror Chamber atop the Arbiter's Grounds; this shard still rests in the mirror's stand and is there when Link and Midna first learn of the mirror's shattered state.
 * The Snowpeak Ruins at the summit of Snowpeak; this shard was sent all the way to the top of Snowpeak Mountain, where it was found in the snow by a yeti named Yeto, who gifted it to his wife Yeta who then fell ill as a result of the Mirror Shard's influence.
 * The Temple of Time in the Sacred Grove; this shard was sent back through the flows of time into the ancient Temple of Time as it had stood in the days of the ancient Hero of Time, where it was placed under the guard of a gigantic arachnid who tapped into the Mirror Shard's power and lurked at the temple's heart.
 * The City in the Sky located in the heavens; this shard was blasted into the heavens, all the way to the ancient City in the Sky, the home of the fabled Oocca race. A fierce dragon took possession of the shard and tapped into its power to wreak havoc on the city and its inhabitants.

Immunities to the Mirror's Limitations
Despite the mirror's destruction at the hands of Midna, there may be other ways of traveling between the two worlds, as Midna mentions several times that she and Link may meet again. There is plentiful evidence supporting the idea of other methods of travel between the two worlds, one of the most obvious pieces being that Zant is able to travel between the two worlds without the benefit of the Mirror. There is speculation that the Triforce may somehow be related to travel between the two worlds, as Zant's power was borrowed from the Triforce of Power, supplied by Ganondorf. Also, only those characters bearing one of the three Triforce pieces could reside in the Twilight Realm without becoming a spirit. In addition, there is also speculation that the sitting ruler of the Twilight Realm has the authority or ability to travel between the two worlds as pleased without the aid of the mirror, this being one of the special powers bestowed upon the Twilight Realm's ruler. As Eiji Aonuma has stated that if voices for Midna to return grow loud enough that she may make another appearance, this could be what makes another appearance by her possible. Another fact that makes another appearance by Midna possible as well is the fact that the Mirror of Twilight was destroyed in only one of the two timelines, meaning an appearance by her in the Adult Timeline prior to the Great Flood is also possible.

Spirit Temple Mirror


In Ocarina of Time, there is a large round mirror found in the Spirit Temple that grants Link access to the chamber of the temple's boss, Twinrova. There are some similiarities between the two as far as appearance. They also both have important roles in the stories of the two games. This mirror is also housed in the place theorized to have eventually become the Arbiter's Grounds.

According to speculation, some fans believe the Spirit Temple was the original home of the Mirror of Twilight following the end of the Hyrulean Civil War and that it was kept there until the Gerudo fell out of grace with the Hyrulean Royal Family. After Ganondorf's unsuccessful attack on Hyrule Castle a second time following the end of Ocarina of Time and his subsequent capture, the Gerudo as a race became outlaws to the kingdom of Hyrule and were forced to disappear due to their standing with the Hyrulean government. This is supported by what appears to be the ruins of a fortress seen near the entrance to the Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess, about where the Gerudo Fortress should have been, which appear to have been destroyed either by invasion, time or both. This would account for their race's disappearance by the time of Twilight Princess as well as the Arbiter's Grounds' identical location and similar appearance to the Spirit Temple. As a result, their Spirit Temple is theorized to have been seized and renovated to hold enemies and prisoners of the Royal Family of Hyrule, and the Mirror of Twilight was rediscovered during the seizure and renovation of the temple. This is supported by Eiji Aonuma's statement that Ganondorf's execution took place several years following the end of Ocarina of Time, and the Arbiter's Grounds were shown to have been completed at the time of Ganondorf's execution. After the temple's renovation and renaming as the Arbiter's Grounds, the Mirror of Twilight was put to use banishing those prisoners not sentenced to death by the King of Hyrule to the Twilight Realm, where the Dark Interlopers had been banished more than a decade in the past.

Considering this mirror's role in Link's quest to rid the Spirit Temple of the ancient Gerudo witches known collectively as Twinrova, its similar appearance and the temple's many similarities to the Arbiter's Grounds, the Mirror of Twilight may very well have appeared even sooner in the series than previously thought.

Dark Mirror
The Mirror of Twilight may have some relation to the Dark Mirror shown in The Legend of Zelda: Four Sword Adventures. The Dark Mirror is a round mirror that is very similar in appearance to the Mirror of Twilight and was also noted to have been used to banish a dark tribe, its origins almost identical to that of the Mirror of Twilight. Also, in a cutscene from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a tribe of Dark Links are banished by the Ancient Sages using the Mirror of Twilight to the Twilight Realm. In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures Ganon uses the Dark Mirror to create Dark Link. Therefore, it makes a connection. This is not in any way proven, but it remains a noteworthy possibility given the two mirrors' similar appearances and almost identical backgrounds. The fact that the Mirror of Twilight had to have existed in both timelines (Adult and Child) only makes this possibility even stronger and also gives another instance Midna or the Twili could reappear in the series, in the other timeline.

Trivia

 * Just like with the mirror in Link's basement, the shard of the Mirror of Twilight found on top of Arbiter's Grounds does reflect Link's image, but when in wolf form, the Mirror only reflects Link. Midna's reflection is bizzarely not seen in the Mirror, though she is still riding wolf Link. The theory for this is possibly due to the fact that Midna, like other Twili, does not belong in the Light Realm and thus cannot reflect in the mirror.