Everyone thinks that I have it all,
But it's so empty living behind these castle walls,
If I should tumble, if I should fall,
Would anyone hear me screaming behind these castle walls?
There's no one here at all,
Behind these castle walls.
- T.I. feat. Christina Aguilera
When I think about Frozen, these lyrics really put Elsa in perspective for me. What hell is it to be hidden inside a castle within a castle? There is no one and nothing for her. “Conceal, don't feel”. Ignore your sister at the door, every day as she knocks and begs you to do something, anything, with her. Don't speak with people. I can see her gazes at her father and mother degenerating over time. At first love, and then as time passes, her emotion toward them degrades to nothing. Her parents cease being so when they begin to say not words like "I love you and I'm proud of you", but "Don't feel anything. Do not show anything. You may not show love. You may not giggle, or laugh, or cry". She appears to feel lost when they die, yet they were lost to her all along, weren't they?
And yet Anna always comes to her door and speaks, and all Elsa wants is to embrace her. Her beloved sister, whom she loves alone in the world, is behind an impassible barrier of ice. She stays behind her own castle walls, even within the castle; because she is poison to the only person she loves. I can see her now, looking out her open window as whispers of Anna's carry under her door. Her fingers going white under the pressure she clutches the windowsill with. The windowsill crackling with frost. Would anyone care if she died? Anna would be safe, Arendelle would be safe, and the King and Queen (for they have long ceased being mother and father to her) would be safe. Would anyone notice? She could jump, the palace gardener finding her broken body in the early morning. Would anyone mourn her? After all, who knows Princess Elsa of Arendelle? No one. She has no friends, certainly, and minimal contact with people. No love, besides what hides inside her and keeps her separated from Anna. Though after years and years of being locked in a room, locked behind gates, and locked behind gloves, does she even remember what that love is?
Still, she endures. On and on and on and on, glancing out of the window but never more than glancing. Held so far down by shackles of love and duty that she has nowhere to go. Not even to an early grave. Is it a wonder that she could never control her power?
When she becomes Queen Elsa, nothing changes. Bound by love, by duty, she can't move. She doesn't know Anna, though she loves her. She doesn't know anyone. Perfectly alone, all her relationships locked in ice. Then Anna comes and announces to her that she and Hans are in love at first sight, and want her blessing to be married. Love?!? Elsa ruined her entire life so that Anna would be safe. She denied herself contact with any person she loved. She concealed herself entirely; through gloves and cloaks and dresses, through an unflinching mask of politeness and ice, her hair bound up in a bun almost as tight as than her own restraints. Can you imagine the pain? Anna meets someone and spends less than a day with him, and decides that it's ‘love’. Can you imagine how that cheapens what Elsa has done for Anna? Elsa must have thought to say, "Is that all love is to you, Anna? A thing that happens between people easily, forming from the shallowest bonds?” but still manages to restrain herself, still behaves in a queenly manner. Yet Anna keeps pushing and pushing. "Why? I don't understand?" "All you know how to do is shut people out!” Elsa couldn't possibly bear the magnitude of a statement like that. It's a wonder she managed to even respond to Anna's request for a blessing, let alone keep running away after things go wrong. From the only person you have a real connection to left in the world, they're cruel words.
When their parents died, Elsa must've been weeping because Anna's parents were dead. Could you love parents who told you to never be you? To be nothing but "that perfect girl", to not even be able to properly weep in private, because the ice will let someone know? “The storm raging inside" is a benign definition for that sort of internal brokenness.
The saddest part of her ice castle is that she is truly fine being alone on the slope of a mountain for the rest of her life. How could she properly miss people? She never knew anyone anyways. Still, she never actually escapes her burdens. "A little distance"? Hah! She could never be free from her duty. It somehow proceeds to get even worse as the plot progresses; she strikes Anna in her desperation to keep Anna safe. All her fears come to pass, and at the point where Anna is frozen solid, she probably breaks whatever little functioning she has left.
Every single time she turned away from her sister's presence on the other side of her bedroom door, every single day spent alone in her room, and all her struggles to desperately kill the part of her that feels things (so that the one person she loves is actually safe), were pointless. The movie has a happy ending? No it doesn't, fuckwit.
To someone who must be so tortured, so destroyed and broken inside, how could this story ever have happy ending? There is no possible ending that one could describe as "happy". Elsa still has to rule, and manage the stress of her new kingdom, AND COUNTERACT THE EFFECTS OF A WINTER WHICH JUST DESTROYED THEIR ECONOMY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER. Not to mention the loss of a trade agreement with a prosperous nation. Wesleton might be made of annoying pricks, but the only people I see who are wealthy enough to own fucking arbalests? Wesleton. Now they’re going to have to worry about assassination attempts and kidnappings and every foreign dignitary because of Elsa’s power.
Think about this. When Elsa first thinks Anna is dead, the snowflakes settle in place in midair. That isn't a failure of her power. It is a whole new level of intensity. She is mired so deeply in despair that the entropy generated by her power freezes the storm in place over an entire fjord in place. The only other time we see an effect like this is when the original King and Queen die. The snowflakes in her room hang in place while she and Anna weep because THEY'RE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE. Elsa now doesn't even have anyone to have cursory contact with, and certainly no one human knows about her power. For Anna, Elsa functionally doesn’t exist. Elsa hasn't really existed for Anna since they were little, and Anna's parents are dead. She has no family left. By the time Frozen comes around, Elsa's power is vastly larger than it was when their parents died. In three years, it goes from encrusting a small room at it's extreme, to CAUSING AN ETERNAL WINTER TO SETTLE OVER AN ENTIRE KINGDOM. She UNCONSCIOUSLY freezes the entire port. She ACCIDENTALLY does it, and DOESN’T EVEN NOTICE. Maybe her powers grew that exponentially in three years, but considering that before her flare up at the ball we only see her frost over a few things, I doubt it. "The storm inside" has actually gotten far, far worse than it was when their parents died. It truly reveals the level of despair she’s truly sunk to.
In short, congratulations, Disney! You did a good job of adapting Hans Christian Andersen's terrifying story to be appropriate for children. Congratulations, Disney, you managed to take the picture of a human being and twist it until she might be as well be unrecognizable. Your Snow Queen is just horrifyingly broken and almost inhuman as Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen, just in a different way. You sick, genius fucks.
