I know there are some Zelda Fans in the family. As I was reading through a newly acquired book, Hyrule Historia, I was made aware of the fact that there is a very specific timeline to these games. They are not all the same Link, or Zelda, but they have a chronological order and history that run very closely together. The picture below is a quick illustration, but much more, interesting information, can be found here:
http://zeldawiki.org/Zelda_Timeline
Fascinating eh?