Elsa (Frozen)

Queen Elsa of Arendelle, also known as the Snow Queen, is the deuteragonist of the Frozen animated film.

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. Throughout most of her young life, Elsa feared that her powers were monstrous. She thusly isolated herself from the world as a means of protecting her family and kingdom. Elsa's anxieties would eventually trigger a curse that plunged Arendelle into an eternal winter, prompting Anna to embark on a quest to save Elsa from herself.

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.

Before her coronation, Elsa's casual outfits have consisted of a dress with a long-sleeved vest over blouse and bodice favoring a blue-black color scheme. Ever since the accident with Anna at age eight, Elsa wears white gloves to contain her powers. As she grew older, she started wearing darker clothes with purple colors thrown in.

For the coronation, Elsa wears a teal dress with a sweetheart bodice with bronze trim and dark teal, maroon and purple rosemaling on the skirt and bodice, a black long-sleeved turtleneck blouse with red and teal crystal-shaped prints on it, a magenta cape, a gold tiara, dark brown flats with gold outlines and teal stockings (which disappear after her transformation) underneath, and her hair woven in a French braided crown twist bun held together with a blue ribbon. For her gloves, she wears longer, cyan gloves with teal prints on, that go with her outfit. Her eyelids have a dusting of purple eye shadow and she wears magenta lipstick.

In her Snow Queen state, Elsa wears her hair in a loose French braid that is swept over her left shoulder, tied with a hair band with a crystal-like snowflake on it. It is woven with snowflake incrustations, and wisps of her bangs slicked back on top of her head with a smaller piece resting down on her forehead. Her hair appears to be thick, although this may be so because she has much more hair (roughly 400,000 strands) than the average human (100,000 strands). She wears a crystal-blue off-the-shoulder dress made out of ice with a right knee-high slit, a crystallized bodice, and translucent powder blue sleeves. She also wears ice-made kitten heels and a long transparent floor-sweeping cape of sheer ice decorated with large snowflakes attached to the back of her bodice. Elsa still wears the same makeup as at the coronation, however, due to the change in lighting, the magenta lipstick becomes a dark pink, and her lavender eye shadow becomes a shiny purplish-pink.

In Frozen Fever, Elsa wears her hair in her signature French braid (tied with a hair band with a pink flower on it in place of a snowflake) woven with small pink flowers and a larger pink flower on the right side of her head. She wears an emerald green off-the-shoulder dress made out of ice with a right knee-high slit, just like her Snow Queen dress. Unlike her ice dress, her Frozen Fever dress has a sweetheart bodice which is covered in teal ice crystals that are patterned to resemble leaves and light green translucent short sleeves. Her sleeves and top of her bodice are decorated with pink flowers. She wears dark emerald green ice kitten heels and a long transparent floor-sweeping dark emerald green cape of sheer ice decorated with flower and leaf designs with pink flowers stuck on is attached to the back of her bodice. Her eye shadow is now a light pink and she wears dark pink lipstick.

In Olaf's Frozen Adventure, Elsa wears a midnight blue off-the-shoulder sleeved gown - displaying a return to her use of dark colors - that incorporates her signature Snow Queen style. The dress has a velvet texture though it has a large fur collar with small stones inside, and a small V-shaped cut at the center that exposes a purple undershirt. Fitting her regal status, Elsa's outfit features a transparent blue cape; however, this one is slightly less transparent than the previous capes. She wears dark blue ice kitten heels, similar to her first Snow Queen outfit. On the chest, cape, and rims of the outfit are diamond-shaped crystals scattered across, with some forming the lower half of her Snowflake emblem on the neckline and a larger pattern on the back of the cape. She wears a small winter berry wreath-pin in her hair.

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 death 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 true 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 her 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 assassinate her and Elsa realizes she has no choice 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 guilt 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.

Abilities
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 attacked 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, the sheer force 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 death, 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 vulnerable 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.

Trivia

 * Elsa is the only playable character in Disney INFINITY who cannot execute close combat.
 * In all the songs she sings, her powers are present too.
 * "For the First Time in Forever" - Freezing a jewelry box and candle-stick.
 * "Let It Go" - Creating her ice palace and Olaf.
 * "For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)" - Accidentally freezing Anna's heart.
 * "Making Today a Perfect Day" - Changing the look of her and Anna's dresses and creating the Snowgies every time she sneezed.
 * Elsa is 21 years old by the time of her coronation, according to Jennifer Lee,[7] the Junior Novelization, and the age difference between her and Anna is approximately 3.5 years (Anna is 18 years old during the coronation).
 * According to Jennifer Lee and Disney, Elsa was born on the Winter Solstice. Given that the film takes place in July, Elsa would have turned 22 by winter. The map briefly shown in Frozen Fever suggests that the short took place in 1840, ergo Frozen took place during July of 1839 (hence Oaken's statement, "A real howler in July, yes?") Since Elsa was 21 years old during Frozen, then her birth year must have been 1817. And since she was born on the Winter Solstice, then she was born on the 22nd of December, 1817, since that is when the winter solstice occurred on that year in Norway. Her birthday is not celebrated on the Winter Solstice every year, necessarily, as that date differs. But she was born on the day that the Winter Solstice happened for that specific year. This birthday post by Disney was shared on the 22nd of December, 2015.[9]
 * Also, Frozen Fever confirms Anna's birthday to be a year after the film, and the potential year it takes place (1840), indicating that Elsa should have turned 23 that December, and been 22 during the events of Frozen Fever.
 * Elsa's name (a variant of Elizabeth) is Germanic for "noble". It could also be a reference to Eliza, the heroine of another one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, The Wild Swans.
 * Walt Disney had plans to adapt The Snow Queen in the 1940's, but after the character of the Snow Queen proved to be too hard to bring down to earth, the project was shelved.
 * Elsa was alluded to in the Sofia the First episode "Winter's Gift" by Winter when she talks about a princess who makes ice. She is also directly mentioned by Olaf in "The Secret Library: Olaf and the Tale of Miss Nettle".
 * Elsa strongly resembles her mother during her coronation, as she wore her hair in the same style, and she wore a dress that was a black-and-teal version of the dress her mother wore.
 * Elsa is very fond of chocolate, a trait she shares with Anna.
 * Contrary to how most adaptations (particularly the 1995 and 2012 versions) portray her, this version of the Snow Queen is not a villain, since the Snow Queen in the original fairy tale, though still the main antagonist, was not intended to be evil. Also, the fairy tale involved an evil troll (implied to represent Satan) building a mirror which he will use to make anything appear evil in the eyes of the beholders, only to accidentally smash it in the process, and one of the shards ending up hitting Kai (much like Elsa's frost shards hit Anna in the film). The Queen was based on a woman Hans Christian Andersen personally hated for being shrewd and distant.
 * Elsa may have been partially based on Kai from the original "Snow Queen" fairy tale, who after ends up being kidnapped by the title Queen after he is unexpectedly stabbed by two of the broken shards of a magic mirror created by an evil troll which he was supposed to use to corrupt people and becoming cold and resentful, therefore prompting Gerda to try and rescue him, combined with the Snow Queen herself. In some adaptations, Kai and Gerda are actually blood-related siblings with quite a genuinely strong and close brother-sister relationship; as do Elsa and Anna. Moreover, much like Anna, Kai was hit by two shards: one in the head (eye in some versions) and one in the heart, so in fact, both sisters share attributes of Kai and Gerda combined.
 * Elsa, Deidre from the Once Upon a Time series novel Winter's Child, and the Snow Queen from the 2005 anime of the same name are the only three incarnations of the character to be portrayed as heroic characters.
 * Based on the lyrics of the deleted songs "Life's Too Short" and "Spring Pageant", originally, Elsa's decision to flee the kingdom was because of an ancient prophecy claiming that Arendelle could one day be destroyed by an evil queen with a literal heart of ice, and since Elsa, who can control ice and snow, who was the queen in question, did not want to associate herself with this prophecy, ends up running away on her coronation day after revealing her powers, only to end up fulfilling it instead due to her being hostile and vindictive to anyone who knows about it.
 * Another early draft made note of Elsa being the "heir" and Anna the "spare". ("More Than Just the Spare")
 * Frozen writer Jennifer Lee once made a tweet jokingly suggesting that Elsa and Wreck-It Ralph would make a good couple during the 2013 D23 Expo. As a nod to that, in Disney INFINITY, if Ralph and Elsa are introduced to one another, Ralph will tell Elsa that she's "really pretty", and Elsa will reply "And you have a warm heart."
 * In the Disney universe, Elsa and Anna artistically and thematically coincide with an aspect of nature, as did Rapunzel: Elsa (the cold moon) which stands alone and half in darkness, and Anna (the warm sun) which spreads over everyone (hence her optimism and positive outlook, enabling her to make friends easily). This can also be noted, for in the beginning of the film, Anna explains how the sky is awake when there was a bright moon, therefore she is. Even though the two are different, they complete each other, hence the film's ending of sisterly love saving the day instead of romantic love.
 * The scene where Anna and Elsa get into an argument during Elsa's coronation party due to Anna's attempt to propose to Hans causing her to accidentally expose her ice powers to the public as a result of Anna pulling off one of her gloves and running away appears to be very analogous to the scene in the original Snow Queen fairy tale where Kai is enchanted by the Devil's mirror (with Hans as a stand-in) and becoming very jaded with Gerda resulting in him becoming more resentful with her and subsequently being found and kidnapped by the title Snow Queen. Since Elsa is also Kai, this would essentially mean that the Snow Queen kidnapped herself.
 * "Let It Go" is very unique for a Disney Princess for a general I Want song for them represents the Princess wanting a new life, or meeting new people, sometimes seeing new places. Elsa's song "Let It Go" is about her wanting to just to able to be herself and never have to worry about others (as she does not want to hurt them).
 * During the song "Let It Go", Elsa discards the three accessories worn during her coronation that she views as restraints: her gloves (what holds her magic back), her cape (her authority over others), and her tiara (her queenly title), which the latter is ultimately found by Marshmallow at the end of the film.
 * Elsa, along with Daisy Duck and Meg, is one of few Disney heroines to sport eye shadow.
 * It is also stated in the book A Sister More Like Me that Elsa loves geometry. This is shown when she uses her knowledge of geometry to create her ice palace, and describing her snow designs as 'fractals'; an advanced geometry concept for the time period.
 * Elsa originally wore her hair with a braid as a child, symbolizing her carefree and innocent personality. While growing up, Elsa wears her hair in a bun, showing her confinement and isolation. When she embraces her powers again after running away, she wears her hair with a braid again.
 * According to Jennifer Lee, even though the reason for Elsa's ice magic is never explained except for a mention that she was simply born with it, it has been hinted that the source of her magic may have been caused by a 1000-year alignment between Saturn and other distant planets like Uranus, Neptune, dwarf planets like Pluto, etc.; much like how Rapunzel got her blonde hair from the Sun's light.[10]
 * Idina Menzel had previously auditioned for the role of Rapunzel in Tangled. Although she did not get the part, a Disney casting director recorded her voice, and it got her the part of Elsa two years later. Coincidentally, Kristen Bell, who voices Anna, also auditioned for the role of Rapunzel.
 * In the trailer (especially in the Japanese version), there are some scenes that did not appear in the movie that was meant to give audiences the illusion that Elsa was the villain. For example, the scene where she fires her magic from the top of the mountain at the camera does not appear in the film, in order to make it look like Elsa was cursing the kingdom, and the scene where Anna is in a monstrous blizzard yelling to Kristoff, "That's no blizzard, that's my sister!" pointing at Elsa, who is using her magic in order to make it seem like she was trying to harm Anna. These two scenes actually come from test animation of the scene where Anna and Kristoff jump off the cliff to escape Marshmallow, in which Anna was depicted as scared to jump off the cliff, and Marshmallow was actively trying to kill Anna and Kristoff instead of simply trying to scare them off.
 * Originally when Anna wanted to marry Hans, Elsa scolds her and says "I may not be our mother, but I am still the queen", to which Anna responds "You're a mean queen!" This line was removed, as it would've defeated the purpose of Elsa's inner vulnerability, as she was not afraid of pulling rank on others.
 * While Anna's clothes remain brightly colored even into adulthood, Elsa's clothes noticeably become darker, duller, and more restraining as she gradually becomes an adult (possibly to exploit her isolation from her subjects and especially Anna), but starts wearing lighter-colored clothing after singing "Let It Go".
 * In the beginning, Elsa wears gloves to hide her powers, but when she embraces her powers, she removes them. This is indicative of the symbolism of "the gloves coming off" - a person shows their true colors when they aren't wearing gloves.
 * According to the book Across the Sea, one of Elsa's recurring sources of amusement is Anna's condescending imitations of the Duke of Weselton.
 * In Zootopia, a little elephant girl wearing an outfit resembling Elsa's 'Snow Queen' gown can be seen wandering around in Tundratown.
 * In fact, there are several Frozen references in the film.
 * Elsa weighed seven pounds when she was born.
 * During renovations of the Walt Disney Animation Studios building, beginning in 2014, Elsa was one of the character silhouettes featured on the wall mural.
 * Elsa might suffer from a combination of post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This is seen when Anna tries to convince her that they can be as close as they were when they were kids. Although Elsa was tempted by the idea, she becomes frightened after having a flashback of the night she'd accidentally hurt her sister with her powers. Elsa also goes to great lengths to try to not hurt anyone else with her powers, as she does not yet know how to strike other people in the head without knocking them unconscious, or strike them in the chest without freezing their hearts.