Zelda

Zelda is a woman in Ultima VII who serves as an administrative assistant to Nelson, the head of the Lycaeum at the time.

Description
Zelda was a stern woman with a cool demeanor, and appeared to take her duties within the Lycaeum very seriously. She was in charge of the organization of events within the institution, the maintenance of the building's reading areas, and the processing and oversight of new collections. She was also responsible for assisting patrons of the library - although she seemed to take to this task with less enthusiasm than her other responsibilities. She would grudgingly describe the Lycaeum's latest acquisition -- an annotated copy of what appeared to be the Avatar's personal diary -- but only after the hero promised to cease bothering her.

Beneath her cold exterior, however, Zelda harbored a deep admiration for her superior's twin brother, Brion, the head of the nearby Observatory. Such sentiments had attracted the interest of the local barkeep and gossip, Phearcy, and he would press the Avatar to investigate the relationship between the two. If asked about her thoughts on the astronomer, Zelda would confide to the hero that she was smitten with the man, and would ask the Avatar to relay her feelings to him, offering the hero a white potion in payment. Sadly, however, Brion did not requite Zelda's affections, although the hero could discover that his twin, Nelson, had developed feelings for his beautiful assistant, himself. Should the Avatar intervene on Nelson's behalf, Zelda could be convinced to accept his courtship, and the two academics would be on the verge of beginning a romantic relationship by the end of the Avatar's adventures.

It is not known if the two scholars continued to pursue one another in the year that followed, as Nelson never mentioned Zelda during his imprisonment in the Guardian's Blackrock Dome - but any romance between the two was doomed to be a short one, as Nelson was killed before the Avatar could free him from the Red Titan's prison.

Trivia

 * Zelda's portrait is based upon Susanne Dieck, a friend of Richard Garriott's.
 * In earlier drafts of the Ultima VII's plot, Zelda's reward for playing matchmaker between her and Brion was supposed to have been a yellow healing potion, or four gems with some form of X-ray functionality.