Personality

As queen Elsa is cold and always under self-control. She wants to show the kingdom that she is a good queen but has a great fear in her heart that she may hurt people inhabiting it. She tries to joke on the coronation party and even chat with her sister Anna but she can't get out of the cold shell she closed herself and in the end she retreats and later unleashes her power in anger and fear which takes her to choose the loneliness and separation from all people. Possibly people see her just as cold as she pretends to be, thinking that her sister is much more pleasant of a companion and that Elsa will may be even not a fair queen, admitelly not interacting with court and people a lot and being cold and unaproachable.

When Elsa was small girl, she was playful but responsible older sister who deeply cared for her little sister Anna and played with her even at night. But when she accidentaly hurts Anna with her powers, she hides in her room, taught by her parents that she must conceal her power and don't show her true self to anyone, even to Anna, which is frst step to huge fear and depression of the future queen. When Anna is healed by the trolls, I believe she feels like she loses her sister. From now on, she won't be able to do what they both loved and from now on, all memories of Anna wiped out from her mind, causing departure from all she knew. Now Anna will live completely normal life, while Elsa will suffer alone, knowing that her gift for her sister became a curse.

Elsa deeply cares for everyone in the kingdom, even if she doesn't feel like a big part of it. She is afraid she can hurt someone she loves or just normal person from the castle - that leads to reserved behaviour. When she is confronted with Anna in her frozen castle, she falls in deep fear when she hears that Arendelle is under the eternal ice. She is sure she can't get it back to normal state, because she can only create winter, not making spring from it. The worst dream happened, the nightmare realized - she hurt whole kingdom, her people will suffer winter for eternity and who knows to what atrocities she is capable of, if her powers grow and set up loose.

I hate to admit it, as a fan, but Elsa, due to long life in solitude, suffers from serious mental issues. She releases her powers on sign on anything that could trigger them, so it's like endless ouroboros for her, she causes her own fear by fearing it. I learnt at university that one of fears is the fear of fear and Elsa definitely suffers for that issue. That makes her hurt Anna, cause eternal winter or make snow storms on massive scale. She had difficult childhood and even as caring and protective as she is, she had to live through the serious breakdown, to release herself from that fear. Though I strongly believe that not completely.

Elsa cries for freedom, whole life, all the time. She hates the shackles of fear and when she creates the ice castle with the "Let It Go" song, she eventually is - at last - the person she always wanted to be. Free, no boundaries, her powers flutters around her and she let it loose, she is in control now and she can do what she wants. That's the freedom she always yelled for. During the freedom scene, she throws all regal symbols that were also symbols of her shackles - she prefers to live alone and happy (in her actual state of mind, thinking that's what she needs) than to be a queen and restrain her powers and pretend before people.

When Elsa get to know that she can turn the winter into spring again, she, for the first time in her life, is trully happy. She slide on the ice and have fun with her sister. She is again the same cheerful girl she was before she hurted Anna in her childhood. But deep in her heart, I believe she always felt guilt about everything that happened to Anna and her outburst maybe freed her but also caused a lot of pain, of which she never realized and possibly never will. She put on her back a lot of burden and that could be solved only by love.

Elsa is an independent woman and had never had love interest. Not only because of her powers - I believe she could fear she may harm the possible mate - but also because she simply didn't need a man to rule. She was strong enough to handle the kingdom and that expressed even in the way she walked, with head high, her pose regal and noble. I think she is only Disney princess as strong. Which made me fall in love with her after I first saw her grown-up self. The liberation scene shows that independent, strong and admirable side as well.

Though Elsa has obviously many issue with her life and powers, she is made of love and compassion. If not, how the love for her sister could thaw Anna's frozen heart?