Elsa (Frozen)

“In Arendelle's fair kingdom, a ruler did appear
Born with a secret power so great, alone, she stayed in fear
Although the was hidden, one day she let it go
And all the land was covered in eternal ice and snow”

―Frozen trailer's narration

Queen Elsa of Arendelle (also known as the Snow Queen) is the deuteragonist of Disney's 2013 animated feature film, Frozen. Born with the power of ice and snow, Elsa is the firstborn daughter of King Agnarr and Queen Iduna, older sister of Princess Anna, and the contemporary ruler of Arendelle. Though her powers were beautiful, Elsa feared that her lack of control made her a monster. Her anxieties would eventually trigger a curse that plunged Arendelle into an eternal winter, prompting the fearless Anna to embark on a quest to save Elsa from herself.

Elsa is loosely based on the titular character of "The Snow Queen", a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, and to a much lesser extent, Kai from the same story. While the character from the original fairy tale was neutral and, to some degree, villainous, Elsa was rewritten as a tragic heroine.

Background :

Official Description -

From the outside, Elsa looks poised, regal, and reserved, but in reality, she lives in fear as she wrestles with a mighty secret — she was born with the power to create ice and snow. It's a beautiful ability, but also extremely dangerous. Haunted by the moment her magic nearly killed her younger sister Anna, Elsa has isolated herself, spending every waking minute trying to suppress her growing powers. Her mounting emotions trigger the magic, accidentally setting off an eternal winter that she can't stop. She fears she's becoming a monster and that no one, not even her sister, can help her.

Personality :

As the queen regnant of the kingdom of Arendelle, Elsa appears calm, reserved, regal and - unlike her sister - graceful and poised. Beneath this cool and collected appearance, however, Elsa is quite turbulent; in truth, the Snow Queen was, for a majority of her young life, troubled by her abilities, a feeling which stems from a traumatic incident as a child. When she was younger, she had cared strongly for Anna and, despite being the more mature and cautious of the two sisters, Elsa was still quite playful and used her magic to have fun and goof off.

However, after witnessing her magic cause her sister harm, Elsa lived in fear and trauma for a great amount of her life as she became too terrified to let her powers overdevelop. She consequently chose isolation from everyone she cared for, including Anna, out of the presumption that her isolation would protect them from her power. This would eventually result in years of loneliness, misery, bitterness, and grief. Regret would gradually take its toll on her as well when tragedies struck throughout her life from the accident with her sister to the of her parents, leaving them both to mourn and grieve alone.

Elsa's damaging experience through the crucial stages from childhood to adulthood caused her personality to shift. She became reclusive, insecure, emotionally unstable, anxious, and depressed. For Elsa, her powers and nature grew more restrained as the years passed, slowly molding her into the cold-hearted queen others saw her to be. When given the chance to rest and relent, however, Elsa's truly warm, kind, fun loving, and innocently mischievous personality came about - but only briefly, and with restriction, as seen on the night of her coronation.

Elsa also has an altruistic disposition that contributes to the compassion towards her people. Throughout the entirety of the film, the Snow Queen's actions are driven by the desire to protect her kingdom, and more intimately, Anna. Unfortunately, that comes with a price, as Elsa's upbringing would lead her to believe that, for the safety of her loved ones, and for the sake of remaining true to who she is as a gifted person, she is a living disaster that must be removed from society. Even with Anna's persistence to help end the curse, Elsa's method of solving the problem - enforced isolation - would remain prevalent. Her determination to solve her problems through singularity is Elsa's greatest flaw, driven by her anxiety and traumatic childhood experiences.

Though a benevolent and giving person, Elsa suffers from emotional instability due to years of keeping her emotions bottled up. When her strong emotions are triggered, Elsa often loses control over her emotions which can create dangerous situations for herself and others around her. An example of this is when Anna informed her that she had unknowingly plunged Arendelle into an "eternal winter", she began panicking as she realized she had brought harm upon her kingdom, which made her lose control of both her emotions and powers, resulting in ice bursting from her chest and striking Anna in the heart. But perhaps the prime example of this was when the Duke of Weselton's guards attempted to her and Elsa realizes she has to fight back, and, unable to control her fury, goes from self-defense to fighting back more aggressively, nearly pushing a man off the edge of her ice palace and pinning another to the wall with icicles.

During "Let It Go", however, Elsa reveals a liberated side to her personality. Without stress, responsibilities, or the fear of hurting others, the queen is strong and unafraid, yet with an air of elegance still surrounding her. Based on this fact, she has confidence in her abilities and accepts them as a part of her, no longer worried or daunted by her restraints. In the segment, which was entirely about letting go of her fear of using her powers and embracing herself, Elsa decides to abandon what she was made to be so that she can be free to be herself. While expressing this, Elsa proves that she is notably creative and strong in geometry (her ice palace is made entirely out of geometric figures), and a daring young woman willing to reject her own fate as Arendelle's queen for the choice of her own personal freedom as well as to protect the people in Arendelle from her powers.

Following her return to power as Arendelle's reigning monarch, Elsa's original personality, not dominate since childhood, makes a return. With a warm, welcoming aura, Elsa rules her kingdom with a genuine smile and spends most of her spare time using her abilities for the pleasure of herself, her sister, and the entire kingdom. As seen in Frozen Fever, this aspect of Elsa's personality has not only remained, but strengthened, as the short heavily showcased Elsa's lighter side as fun-loving, and extremely devoted to her sister, yet retained her sense of elegance, vibrancy, and compassion. In spite of this, Elsa continues to feel guilty for the past, which manifested itself into a personal mission to ensure that Anna is content at all times; in Frozen Fever, she went to great lengths to give Anna a memorable birthday and dedicated to ensuring that even the slightest detail was perfect. During their first holiday season as a united family, Elsa came to realize that she and Anna had no family traditions to share with one another, which she openly blamed herself for.

Physical appearance -

At 21 years of age, Elsa has a tall and slender build, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, thin pink lips, a small nose, long platinum blonde hair, and very pale skin with a light dusting of freckles (a trait she shares with her sister Anna, though less prominent). During her coronation, she bore a striking resemblance to her mother, only with platinum blonde hair, unlike her mother who is a brunette.

Powers and abilities

“Listen to me, Elsa. Your power will only grow. There is beauty in it... But also great danger! You must learn to control it. Fear will be your enemy.”

―Pabbie.

Elsa possesses the magical ability to conjure and manipulate ice and snow. With her abilities (that she was apparently born with), Elsa can manifest and shape various structures made of ice and snow, or cold phenomena from snow flurries to blizzards. Most of her powers are unleashed via her hands and controlled by her emotions. If she is happy and at peace, she can control them better, but if she is angry, afraid or stressed, she will lose control and cause great harm to those around her. Near the end of Frozen, she has complete control over her powers.

Elsa was able to turn the entire castle's ballroom into a winter wonderland. She is capable of creating enchanted snowmen (both large and small), ice structures such as her ice palace, deadly blizzards, and more. She can move ice structures at will. It also appears that her control extends to almost all forms of winter weather, as she was able to create a snow cloud for Olaf, and manipulate wind streams to some degree. Interestingly, it would seem that nearly her entire body is capable of conjuring ice and snow, as seen when she flees across the fjord - the water immediately starts to freeze the moment her foot touches it.

Her powers are most prominently featured during "Let It Go" in which Elsa frees herself from the fear of using her powers and stress she held, and embraces such powers to the fullest of her ability for the first time. In the sequence, she created her ice palace, a stairway for entrance, Olaf, as well as her flowing ice gown. She even points out that her powers provide her immunity from the effects of cold weather.

It is also shown that, despite not having any formal training, she is capable of using her magical abilities for battle. When the Duke's thugs attacked her, she was able to hold them both off on her own and eventually manage to gain the upper hand.

It is also interesting that when Elsa is truly frightened or feels threatened, her powers will act on their own accord in order to protect her. When confronted by the Duke of Weselton on the night that her powers were revealed, Elsa made an attempt to avoid conflict, but her powers were unleashed upon the Duke and his men as the feeling of being threatened grew, nearly killing him. When she was attached by the Duke's men, a bolt was shot at her from a crossbow. Almost instantly, a wall of ice formed as a shield to intercept the bolt before it would otherwise lodge itself in Elsa's head. So it is possible that her powers have a will of their own to some extent, where they respond to Elsa's emotions. This could explain why she was able to create Olaf, Marshmallow and the Snowgies. Theoretically, in having a mind of its own, it would make sense if the ice powers split part of its sentience off into these external shells created by Elsa, each of whom represents a certain aspect of Elsa's personality. It also appears that her powers depend on which emotion she feels; if she is in sorrow, all the snow particles in the air stand still as if in a state of suspended animation, while anger creates a similar effect to fear but with an offensive direction instead of chaotic versatility.

The only way thought to conceal her powers is initially by wearing gloves on her hands, which appeared to negate her icy touch on other objects. However, this is nothing but a psychological mindset that helps to keep her anxiety and any icy outbursts under control all her life. Because it is her father, one of the few people she trusted, that claims that wearing them will stop her abilities, Elsa believes it to be true, so by wearing gloves she thinks truly stop her powers, as a result of said belief, they do. This is supported by the fact she is able to freeze through the hand shackles in Arendelle's prison cell, in her desperation to get away, proving that covering her hands does not actually stop her power, but rather, sheer of will and belief.

It is shown that if she casts her magic on a living being directly, the victim will not only freeze to , but slowly transform into an ice statue, and the process only hastens if they are in cold conditions. While the curse can be removed if the magic affects the mind, the heart is the most and if this is the case, the victim can only be cured by an "act of true love". While Elsa had thought she cannot undo the frosty effects she creates, it is revealed that she is capable of removing such curses through her love for others, as it is the warmest emotion of all. When the person gets affected by her magic, the said person will also undergo physical changes; first, some of their hair will turn white as snow before it spreads completely; second, the person will start to feel cold and as it progresses, the person will get colder and soon become weak to walk nevertheless move; and finally, the person will notice ice emerging from their hands than the person will become enraptured in ice. When the curse is removed, the person's physical attributes will revert back as they were before the curse, as happened with Anna's hair, which returned to its original color (without any white locks), when she accomplished her act of true love towards Elsa, sacrificing her own life for the latter.

One interesting thing to note is that when the animators were creating her character, and coming up with ways for her to use her abilities, they came up with a Signature Snowflake for her. This snowflake can be seen multiple times throughout the film on almost everything she creates. Such instances are when she slams her foot into the ground to create the floor of her ice palace in "Let It Go", the pattern on the doors that led to the balcony of her ice palace, and it is the snowflake shown within the "O" in the in-movie logo.

In Frozen Fever, she can use her powers to create precise effects other than manifesting ice and snow, as she made several color changes to her and Anna's dresses, using flowers that were in the room at the time and integrated them into their gowns using crystalline ice. She was also shown to create ice sculptures out of thin air and reshape them in any way she wanted. She can also create a multitude of miniature snowmen whenever she sneezes throughout the short film while she was suffering from flu as Anna saw her condition and can make a giant snowball when she blows the horn to celebrate Anna's 19th birthday.

Where is Elsa when she becomes naked and how does it happen?