Elsa the Snow Queen



Queen Elsa of Arendelle is the deuteragonist of the 2013 Disney animated feature Frozen. She is the older sister of Princess Anna and was next in line for Arendelle's throne, until her powers over ice and snow led her to become the famous Snow Queen, ruler of winter. She is voiced by Idina Menzel. Along with Anna, Elsa is set to become the 13th official member of the Disney Princess line-up.

Elsa is loosely based on the title character of "The Snow Queen", a short story by Hans Christian Andersen. While the character from the original fairy tale was neutral, Elsa was rewritten as a protagonist in the Disney film adaption.

Voice
Broadway actress Idina Menzel, best known for performing Elphaba from Wicked, was cast to voice Elsa. Director Chris Buck believed that Menzel's vocals would help in the portrayal of the character, saying, "Idina has a sense of vulnerability in her voice. She plays a very strong character, but someone who lives in fear—so we needed someone who could portray both sides of the character, and Idina was just amazing." In an interview with Menzel, she acknowledged the similarities between Elsa and Elphaba. She mentioned they were both very powerful and misunderstood individuals, and she herself could relate to the characters, having hidden her singing talent from her peers at school. "I didn't want to alienate anyone," she explained. "If everyone was singing along in the car to a Madonna song, I didn't join in because when we're younger we're afraid of sticking out or showing off, when in fact we should own those things that make us really unique."

Characterization
Following the casting of Idina Menzel, Elsa's characterization underwent several alterations. According to Menzel, she was originally scripted as a one-dimensional antagonist but was gradually revised as a more vulnerable, multifaceted figure. Menzel further described her character as "extremely complicated and misunderstood".

Director Jennifer Lee stated that Elsa is largely driven by fear throughout the film. Producers identified the scene in which Elsa sings "Let it Go" as a pivotal point in the character's development, as the scene depicts her choice to "let go" of her fear of using her powers and be herself. Character design supervisor Bill Schwab said, "Before 'Let it Go', Elsa is really buttoned up, her hair is up—everything is perfect. During the song, she gives herself permission to be who she is and everything changes—her hair is more wild, her gown is magical. She's finally free—even if she is all alone."

Lead writer Paul Briggs explained that Anna's support is what Elsa needs most when her secret is exposed. "The strength of the family bond is what makes this story so powerful because it's her sibling who's willing to look beyond her powers and stand between her and the world if that's what it takes."

Official Disney Bio

 * 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 acts calm, reserved and regal, and unlike her sister, is experienced in grace and poise. But beneath this elegant appearance, Elsa is quite complex; in truth, Elsa is troubled with her abilities, a trait that stems from an incident as a child. When she was younger, she had cared strongly for Anna and, although acting as the more mature of the two, was quite playful. However, ever since her magic nearly caused her sister's death, Elsa had lived in fear for a great amount of her life, too nervous to let her powers overdevelop. As a result, Elsa desired isolation from everyone she cared about, including Anna, out of fear that she could hurt them, and chose to keep things to herself rather than communicate.

From said concern, Elsa is sensitive towards other people and their well-being, as Elsa always felt she had to be far away from people as much as possible in order to keep them safe. As such, she felt that she could not truly rule a kingdom because of this flaw, although she tried her best to repress her abilities for the sake of the kingdom. Often, although Elsa shows that despite her willingness to sacrifice her own happiness for everyone else's, she herself feels pressured from the restraints she is forced into, most evidently on her coronation day. Despite her moral reasoning, she came off as aloof and cold towards anyone who wished to see, and so was forced to cut interaction with Anna believing she could not control her powerful emotions when Anna was around to spur them. Because Anna had to lose the memories of Elsa's magic in order to survive Elsa's curse, Anna failed to understand why Elsa's isolation was so dire and simply believed Elsa was uncaring. However, Elsa truly loves Anna and always wished to be with her whenever Anna asked, a chance Elsa greatly regretted refusing. She also believes that she thinks she does not belong in Arendelle as she sees herself only as a force of destruction, implying that Elsa is self-denigrating towards herself in an extreme case, as she constantly blames herself to be the sole cause for most of her life's misfortunes despite others stating she is not, to the point that she labels herself as a living storm and distances herself from everything in general.

Although she had avoided Anna for most of her life, Elsa was willing to share some words with her, even sneakily tricking the Duke of Weselton into dancing with Anna, showing more of her mischievous and playful side.

Despite her fear, Elsa shows to truly care about her family and her kingdom as more than just a position quite selflessly, as she was evidently frightened when she realizes that she had created a winter over her kingdom when she had tried so desperately to avoid them from her danger. But due to the influence of her magic, Elsa does not like to confront things she had caused, for she has always believed she can only create winter, not remove it.

However, during "Let it Go", Elsa reveals a liberated side to her personality. Without stress or fear of hurting others, Elsa is strong and unafraid, yet with an air of elegance still surrounding her. Armed with a sense of freedom, she is confident in her abilities, letting them roam free with grace and beauty, all the while no longer worried or daunted by her restraints. It is also apparent that Elsa had tried her best to suppress her abilities for her parents' sake in order not to hurt others and to be a good ruler for Arendelle when her time came. This is indicated in the segment, which was entirely about letting go of her fears and being herself, when she stated that she was done being the perfect princess that others had wanted out of her, including her parents, and being free to be herself. During this time, Elsa proves herself to be a daring young woman willing to remain far from what she was destined to be, and rejects her own fate as Arendelle's queen for the choice of her own freedom.

However, Elsa's strongest part of herself is her love for her sister, a trait that gives Elsa the ultimate motivation to save Anna. Although she feels responsible for the chaos she has caused, the bond Elsa shares with Anna is stronger than she knows, as the feeling itself is her reminder that she is not truly alone when there is someone else who cares for her as well. With love, Elsa finds a stronger grip over her abilities in order to save those she cares about. From this, Elsa confronts her fear, and learns how to use her powers for good instead of imbalance, and in doing so, gains the will to control it.

As she conquers her fear, Elsa's personality becomes warm and playful once again, as she happily attends ice skating with Anna and the others, and even helps Anna to ice skate without fear of freezing her as well as creating a snow cloud to help Olaf remain during summer.

Physical Appearance
Elsa is a strikingly beautiful young woman with a tall, slender figure, platinum blonde hair that reaches a few inches above her elbows, blue eyes, and pale skin with a light dusting of freckles (a trait she shares with her sister Anna). She has the face of her mother, as during her coronation, she bore a striking resemblance to the Queen, albeit with a different hair color. In her pre-Snow Queen state, she wore a teal dress with a sweetheart bodice with bronze lacing, black sleeves and magenta cape, and her hair was kept back in a French braided crown twist bun. Ever since the accident with Anna at age 8, Elsa wore white gloves to contain her powers, but at her coronation, she wore longer, light teal gloves that go with her outfit.

In her Snow Queen state, Elsa wears her hair in a left side braid woven with snowflake incrustation, and swisps of her bangs slicked back on top of her head. She wears a crystal-blue, off-the-shoulder dress made out of ice with a crystallized bodice, powder blue sleeves and ice shoes. At the back of her bodice is a long, transparent cape of sheer ice draped down from her sleeves and decorated with big snowflakes.

Powers and abilities
Elsa is most iconic being the Snow Queen, and as such, she has complete and total control over the element of ice and snow (also known as cryokinesis and frigokinesis). With her abilities (that she was apparently born with), Elsa can conjure up and shape various things from snow flurries to blizzards. Most of her powers are unleashed via her hands, and controlled by her emotions. If she's happy and at peace, her powers would be under her complete control, but if she's stressed or fearful, she will lose control and cause great harm to those around her. Near the end of Frozen, it appears that she has gained more control over her powers.

Some of what her powers can do are seen throughout the film. In the beginning, she was able to turn the castle's ball room into a winter wonderland. She is also able to create enchanted snowmen (both large and small), ice structures such as her ice castle, deadly blizzards as mentioned above, and more. She's also been seen being able to move ice structures at will. It also appears that she can can control transitional forms of snow, as she was not only able to create solid forms such as ice, but gaseous forms as well; for instance, she created a snow cloud for Olaf at the end of the film. Interestingly, it would seem that nearly her entire being can conjure ice and snow, as seen when she stepped onto the river water at the coronation fjord, immediately freezing it the moment her foot touched the liquid.

Her powers are most prominently featured during "Let it Go" in which Elsa frees herself from the fear and stress she held, allowing her abilities to run wild. In the sequence she created her ice castle, a stairway for entrance, Olaf, as well as her ice gown. During the song she even points out that her powers protect her from the effects of cold.

It is also shown that despite not having any formal training, she is capable of being a fierce fighter with her magic. At one point in the story when her ice castle is raided, the Duke's thugs attacked her and she was able to hold them both off on her own.

It's also interesting to note that in times when Elsa is truly frightened, her powers might act on their own in order to protect her. As mentioned before when she was initially attacked, an arrow was shot at her from a cross bow. Elsa's powers reacted to this instantly, forming a wall of ice in front of her to block the incoming arrow. So it's possible her ice powers may have a will of their own to some extent, where they respond to whatever Elsa feels. This possibility could explain why she was able to create Olaf and Marshmallow. 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 represent 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 time has stopped, 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 was by wearing gloves on her hands, which appeared to negate her icy touch on other objects. However, it's possible this is nothing but a psychological mindset that helped to keep her anxiety and any icy outbursts under control all her life. Because it was her father, one of the few people she trusted, that claimed that wearing them would stop her abilities, Elsa believed it to be true, so by wearing gloves she thought truly stopped her powers, as a result of said belief, they did. This is supported by the fact she was 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 force of will and belief.

It is shown that if she casts her magic on a living being, 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 that she is capable of removing such curses through her love for others, as it is the warmest feeling of all.

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 through out 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 castle, the pattern on the doors that led to the balcony of her ice castle, and it is the snowflake shown within the films logo.