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.
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. Duing 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.
In the sequel, Elsa maintains her personality from the first film and also seeks the entire truth. After learning of their parent's deaths, Elsa keeps blaming herself for her magical abilities and taking the matter to her own hands by letting her sister Anna go safe and going to the dark sea
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