Adair Devine, a man all but forgotten to history except as his title: the legendary Hero of Ideals, of the fabled twin founders of Unova.Adair’s tale begins with the bones of an ancient kingdom: before Unova, there was Isshu, the first inhabitants of the Unova region. A great ancient civilization, which at its height was brought to ruin by foreign machinations. (I will not bore you with her long and storied history, nor the full tale of her downfall—it is not the story we tell here today.) With her king assassinated and her guardian (the mighty Isshurem) laid low, Isshu fell to control of Kalos… for a time.The era of Isshu’s fall was a turbulent one, and those versed in history might note that some 3000 years ago when it fell lines up with another event: the end of the Great War of Kalos, marked by the firing of the Ultimate Weapon. Kalos had sought to bring the resource-rich land of Isshu beneath its banner in hopes of recovering its losses from the war. But stretched thin as they were, Kalos could not maintain a strong grip over such a distant nation; over the years, other lands would come to stake their claim on Isshu soil. This is where the tale of the Twin Heroes truly begins: children of a culture struggling to survive, trapped in a land that couldn’t even say who its colonizers were.Suffice to say, young Adair’s childhood was not a particularly kind one. Though the remainder of Isshu’s people found some shelter in the isolated northern reaches of their land, it was by no means an easy life. They often faced demands by the countries that claimed their home, expected to serve as citizens of nations which refused to treat them as such. Still, they managed to get by, and passed along their culture and stories to each new generation. “The Great Dragon, Isshurem, will surely return someday,” they said. “The Guardian will return, and Isshu will be reborn.”Adair had stopped believing in such stories by the time he became a teenager. Isshurem was surely dead—or else it had all but given up on its former people. That was, until he and his brother came face-to-face with it.It was injured, weakened. (After so many generations, why? How could it still be in such a state?) It called itself Kyurem—old Isshu for “Guardian of Nothing,” for the kingdom it once watched over was now long gone. The brothers, at a loss, could think of no other answer but to nurse it back to health. In secrecy, they brought the dragon to the Dragonspiral Tower, a sacred site forbidden to the public. There, over their teenage years, they built a bond with Kyurem, even connecting their souls as heroes of the mighty dragon.Idealistic young Adair would be the one to spark the flames of revolution. Barely old enough to call himself a man, Adair dared to envision a world in which he and his people no longer had to suffer. A world where the great kingdom of old could be build anew.Adair proved to be a fearsome general on the field of battle, while his brother was a masterful tactician. Together, along with a band of comrades, they would manage to build a force that would reclaim the nation as their own—the new kingdom of Unova.(To detail the history of the revolution in full would take us all day, and so once again we must forego some of this tale in the interest of our purpose—but do know that there is much, much more to know about our hero outside of this simple tale.Now, to pin the war to come afterwards wholly on the twins would be untrue. Some might say they were doomed from the start; at the end of the day, neither brother was well-versed in the knowledge necessary to lead a nation. They were building from a broken foundation. Pressure from different factions within their new kingdom would mount, driving a wedge between the brothers. Where were they to go from here?The split, as it would come to be known, was truly what solidified the conflict into a war. If even the great dragon of unity could not take a side, then it was clear that there was only one answer. It would have to be war. And yes—they did come dangerously close to destroying the kingdom which they had so painstakingly built. It was only when both brothers had nearly crossed the threshold of death’s door that they were able to come to a truce. After this, Unova was able to return to an uneasy peace. While the brothers would still act as leaders to their kingdom, in recognition of their own failures, much of the responsibility of ruling was instead handed to their dear friend and advisor, a man by the name of Ephreith Harmonia.Up until now, the version of this story told in legend has mostly held true—it is only when we come to the story of the supposed second war do the threads begin to come unraveled. After all, remember: history is written by the men who survive it.Adair, having lost the use of one of his arms to Reshiram’s flames, elected to spend what time he had left alongside his loved ones, working to make amends to the people of Unova by rebuilding what he had helped to destroy. He hoped to redefine what Zekrom meant to his people after the war. Not as a harbinger of war, but as a symbol of hope—of rebirth.Unbeknownst to him or his brother, however, the War of Truth and Ideals had warped Ephreith’s heart. Unova was broken—a nation build on a cracked foundation. So long as the twins—and their dragons—were around, there was no chance for the kingdom to survive past its infancy. And so, Ephreith Harmonia began his machinations.Through careful manipulation, he would convince Adair’s nephew of truly heinous things. That the world was full of hatred and lies—that his duty as the heir to the Hero of Truth, as the next of Reshiram’s chosen, would be to purge the world in its flames. This was what became known as the Second War of Truth and Ideals—although to call it a war is an immense exaggeration. Urging Adair’s son to intervene (though, unbeknownst to Ephreith, the boy was not Zekrom’s chosen successor, but his younger sister), the battle that followed burned as quickly as it did violently. It was only thanks to Adair’s rapid intervention that the damage was not more widespread.Adair had no choice but to act quickly. If he wanted to get to the bottom of what caused this, he had no choice but to take advantage of what little goodwill he had managed to rebuild. And so, he lied. To stop the calls for his son and nephew’s heads, he claimed that the conflict was the fault of the dragons—not the boys. That they were young, their minds were weak, and they could not withstand the urge the dragons instilled in them to feud. (A lie which broke his heart, for Zekrom was as much a child to him as his own, but one that he would not have made were it not necessary.)Desperate to prevent further bloodshed, Adair sought Ephreith’s help. The solution: to seal the dragons away, where they could no longer bring harm to—or be harmed by—the rest of the world. Though his lie angered his brother, neither twin had any choice but to follow through. Adair could only hold onto his hope that it would be reverseable—that when the anger died down, he and his family could release Zekrom and leave Unova behind.But things never seem to work out as we plan them, do they? When the dragons were sealed away within the Dakr and Light stones, so were the twins. So it seemed that their souls were so tightly bound to one another that to lock one away meant to do the same to their Hero. And so they would sleep, together, until a new Hero came to break the seals…

Born from half of the original dragon, Zekrom was created to side with the Hero of Ideals; from the moment they came into being, they were connected to their Hero by a single soul, forming an unseverable link between them. His pain, his joy, and his goals became their own, and from that day onward, Zekrom would stand by the Hero of Ideals with undying loyalty.The first years of their life were spent in the midst of battle, as their birth sparked the beginning of the War of Truth and Ideals. Against them fought their Hero’s brother, alongside their own twin, Reshiram, who battled for the side of Truth.For all the stories of their fearsome demeanor, the truth is that Zekrom is a gentle soul. Their progenitor, the great Isshurem, was a keeper of balance. Their very soul was that of the earth beneath their feet—a current that ran beneath the surface of the world that they call the Dragon Force. The Dragon Force thrives when the land is at peace, and so too did Isshurem—as do its successors.He is their father, first and foremost. He saw that they were a new soul, carrying only the barest scraps of their previous incarnation’s memory. Still, they were a dragon. Even in spite of his insistence, they were born of the urge to protect him. Despite his insistence otherwise, they would fight by his side.This strange dynamic was largely what defined Zekrom’s early life. To the world at large, they were a monster: Harbinger of war. Slaughterer of armies. The lightning with which their Hero smote those who stood in his way. To Adair, they were merely a victim of his own mistakes. The last remnant he had of a dear, dear friend.They flourished after the war. Adair named them Elpis, hope. He taught them that they were more than the war in which they were born. His family, too, were their own.“It has taken me my whole life to learn that words can bring about even greater change than a blade. Still, sometimes it is necessary to fight for your ideals. I just hope you learn the difference between those times sooner than I did.”When those five years were up, however, another fight broke out. They’d sworn to protect their Hero’s family—their family—from harm, so when his son took up his sword against his cousin, Zekrom had no choice but to face Reshiram in battle again.The second war, though drastically shorter than the first, was devastating. In a matter of days, the twin dragons had come close to reducing their Heroes’ kingdom to ash. Their previous reputation as monsters didn’t help matters any, and in a desperate attempt to protect his family from harm, their Hero went along with the people’s fears - he chose to blame the whole incident on, not the boys, but the dragons.To satisfy the people of Unova, Reshiram and Zekrom were to be permanently sealed in their inactive forms, the Dragon Stones, so they could never wreak havoc on the region again. However, their Hero still had something up his sleeve - he altered the seals containing the dragons in secret, allowing them to be broken in only one specific circumstance: when their chosen Heroes were present, the dragons would be reawakened. This way, when the time was right, he and his brother would be able to free the innocent dragons.Unfortunately, he made one fatal error, and while he succeeded in allowing for Zekrom to be freed in the presence of their Hero, he trapped himself inside the Dark Stone as well. Presumed dead, the twins faded into legend, and the Dragon Stones’ whereabouts were almost entirely forgotten.It wasn’t until centuries later that the Dragons were released again, first Zekrom by N, the leader of Team Plasma, and then Reshiram, by a trainer fighting back against Team Plasma. While Zekrom didn’t necessarily believe in Team Plasma’s ideals, they were desperate for freedom; they followed N’s plans to separate humans and pokémon until Reshiram appeared to face them.They threw the battle. Fearing more destruction, they let the Hero of Truth win - and while the outcome was better for their Hero in the end, they felt like they’d just used him to get their freedom. They chose to accompany him when he left to travel the world, hoping to make up for their ‘mistake’.For two years, the traveled alongside N. They discovered, at one point, that the seal placed upon the Dark Stone still afflicted them; should they revert to their Dark Stone state, they would be stuck like again unless N was present. They rarely strayed far from their Hero, until he returned to Unova in search of the Hero of Truth who they’d battled against.When they returned to their home region, N and Zekrom caught wind of the New Team Plasma’s schemes. Though they were too late to prevent Ghetsis’ plan from coming together, they managed to make their entrance just in time to save the trainer who’d chosen to stand against the organization.Ghetsis, it seemed, had prepared for them; not more than moments after their entrance, Zekrom was forced back into the Dark Stone and fused with Kyurem, the remnant of the Twin Heroes’ original dragon.For a brief time, Zekrom was as good as dead.During the fusion, Zekrom did not exist; their conciousness was melded with Kyurem's - they were nothing more than a flood of memories and feelings, broken thoughts and urges and fear. They had no control - it was all Kyurem, only with the knowledge of their experiences. Even afterwards, the instance was a complete blur to them. They remember a great conflict of thougts, memories clashing, and so much terror and panic that they - that Kyurem - couldn't think straight. But what happened while they were fused? Nothing.They came out of the fusion in a sorry state; for months afterwards they struggled to keep themself going, trying to sort out the mess of memories they'd recieved from Kyurem, doing everything they could to cope with the trauma of what they'd gone through. The final twist of the knife came when N left them - they were now alone in all of this, with no one to turn to. They retreated to Dragonspiral Tower, the (former) home of the Original Dragon.That was when they realized Adair was back. At the time, it felt like adding insult to injury - seeing the face of the man they'd considered a father, who'd gone and betrayed them, on top of everything they'd already gone through? But they and Adair shared a soul; their pain and fear echoed in Adair - just as his guilt did in them. They were afraid to trust him again, especially after all that had happened, but with no one else to turn to...Slowly, Zekrom opened up to Adair. With his help, they began to recover. In time, they seemed to return to their old self - though with some new fears - and move on with their life. They reconciled with Kyurem, (at least, as much as possible with his generally cold demeanor), befriended a few of the ex-Plasma Grunts in Driftveil, and, in time, they've been able to make themself at home in modern-day Unova.