When the new Legend of Zelda was revealed at this year’s E3, people were excited that the character shown may have been a female link. Aonuma joked around saying that the character wasn’t necessarily Link and wasn’t necessarily male, and everyone exploded. Unfortunately, it turns out that’s all it was, a joke. The character was Link, and Nintendo wasn’t planning to give us a female link any time soon.
But it’s not that they didn’t consider a female Link before. They have concept art for the character and everything. The character was called Linkle… yes… really… and was framed as a “little sister” style companion to Link. Note, this doesn’t mean that she is actually related to Link, more like that’s the relationship the two characters have to each other. She wields a crossbow and is dressed in the similar green hero garb, just like Link is.
Unfortunately, Linkle was shown off in Hyrule Warriors ’ art book under the title “previously unseen rejected characters” so we probably won’t be seeing her any time soon.
Source: Kotaku