She's Also Pretty Hot

She's also pretty hot

I feel like we don't appreciate enough how unique Purah's dynamic with Link is among his present allies. Like, just about everyone else who knows the capital-w Who of who he is, to some degree, is reverent toward him.

Paya spent like a third of her BotW diary gushing about how he's everything she imagined he'd be and more.

Sidon sang his praises so loudly and so often that a portion of the fanbase saw him getting engaged six years later as a betrayal.

Riju, Tulin and Josha, while not overtly affectionate as the previous two, seem to regard him like a cool upperclassman whose approval they value.

Impa, Robbie, Zelda, Teba and TotK Paya, while all regarding him as closer to an equal, are still incredibly respectful toward him, still taking his status very seriously.

And then there's Purah. She very clearly has faith in him and his ability as a swordsman, but when he walks through her door for the first time in a hundred years, when the last time she saw him he was practically a cadaver being immersed in glowing blue goo, her first thought is "I'm gonna prank him, it's gonna be hilarious."

If he says he expected her to upgrade the Sheikah Slate for free, she passive-aggressively dictates in to her notes right in front of him that he's being entitled. If he asks her where she thinks he should head next, she asks him "What, did you forget? Not that that's out of character for you..." She tells him what's in her diary, where it is, and tells him not to read it... And has another prank ready for him when he inevitably does. And in her TotK journals, when she alludes to him "invading her privacy" by reading them, she still leaves the clues as to where she's hiding the next volume, almost like reverse-psychology letting him read her diaries is a game to her.

She has a pet name, for him, and nobody else. Symin, Impa, Robbie, Josha and, I believe, Paya, all get referred to by their proper names, and she calls Zelda either by her name or a proper title ("The Princess/Your Highness.") But Link? When she's in the right mood, he's "Linky." When you first play Breath of the Wild, and see her authorial voice in her diary get less mature as her age reverses, you might think it's just because of her toddler body influencing her brain, but then Age of Calamity comes along and confirms "Nah, she was calling him that when she was an adult too." And then Tears of the Kingdom comes back and adds "And she keeps it up even as a weary and exhausted settlement leader in her re-adulted body."

She's the only friend of his who I can imagine doing the "What's that on your shirt? Made ya look!" prank to him.

They read, to me, like Roz and Frasier, or Goku and Bulma. A pair of friends who are completely unguarded around each other, where the canon author didn't see fit to pair them together, but at the same time, it wouldn't be that surprising to see a version of the story where they were.