So, given soon it’s Elsa’s birthday I thought of posting things about her these days. I first wanted to start with an assertion about her. Elsa is not an emotionally weak person.



I do this because I’ve seen many times mention how Elsa is all so powerful magically but in reality she’s a weak girl and well, that’s not true. I’ve seen this being said both as a praise for Elsa and also as to derail her. As a praise it’s often said that it’s a nice contrast to her apparent unlimited power. Now there’s not to say weak characters are bad itself, there are many wonderful chars that are weak in many aspects, however I believe calling Elsa weak is a disservice to all that the Snow Queen has shown us on her story. So let’s start to elaborate on this.

Well, first to mention the argument I’ve seen about Elsa being weak is that she was vulnerable and of course Anna has been in a large part her emotional support, then the fact that Elsa gave up once she learned that Anna had been Frozen. I do not believe this shows Elsa being weak at all. Instead of saying why this doesn’t make her weak however, first I’m gonna talk about why she is strong.

This starts since she was a little girl, as we see, she seemed to be a great older sister for Anna, being the more restrained one as well as doing everything in her power to make her little sister smile. If the small scenes aren’t evidence enough, the fact that Anna loved her so deeply for over a decade, despite feeling abandoned, confirm the fact. As we see, Elsa suffers an emotional trauma at the age of barely 8 years old, in which she almost kills her little sister with her innate abilities. Now this isn’t something light, this is something that would leave grown men devastated. So despite the fact that she planned to do everything in her power to be a great older sister she almost kills her sibling.

It is then that we see her visiting the trolls, lovely creatures who tell her her powers could be extremely dangerous and they would only grow and get more complicated, and also shows her how she’s gonna be destroyed because, well, she’s different. After this event we see her being isolated in what a lot of people have described as basically emotional abuse. Her access to people gets completely limited, she can’t even play like a normal kid, we see that, despite all this she still finds some moments of enjoyment as a normal person, but even then her life is full of stress. Her powers grow and we see them getting out of control out of nowhere even if she’s just tranquil, oblivious Anna wants to be with her, rightfully, and keeps asking Elsa who has to reject her despite the pain that she gets doing so, her parents seem as scared and clueless as to what to do as her. She grows up as a little girl who can’t even see hope in her future because even those who are supposed to help her, truly can’t.



During this time, Elsa is in the deepest loneliness there is. There’s no one who would possibly understand her. She doesn’t have any friends, her only companion was her sister who now she must avoid, reject and hurt at all cost just to protect her. She has to play the bad guy and the weird kid for the entire world. When her parents leave, we can see the sadness in her eyes, because despite being unable to touch them, they are the only people she can truly interact with, I mean sure she talked to the staff and whatnot but that’s different. And now when they die, we can see that she can’t even visit their tombs because her powers get in the way as the pain causes it to snow. Anna mentions that she’s there for her but in reality Anna can’t even comprehend her nor reach her, Elsa has to ignore her because if not she would just cause more pain to her sister. And not only that, now 18 y/o Elsa, barely an adult, having lived sheltered her whole life due a “defect” on herself, completely isolated from the world and with a magical curse-like problem is alone and the her of her family and the entire kingdom, having complete responsibility over it and of course having to worry about her sister. Talk about having the world over one’s shoulders.

Despite all this, Elsa prepares herself, does everything she had to do, for the well being of her sister, who she isn’t even sure loves her anymore, and her people who she has never even interacted with. The entire world opens for her one day and she is supposed to take a position of which thousands of people depend. Yet we see her that despite her initial problems she manages to act confident, graceful and maintain her ground. She’s cold, yeah, and awkward, but she’s not emotionally numb.

People who live in isolation like Elsa did, tend to develop a range of psychosis that can be quite dangerous even, however Elsa seems to be completely fine. She’s not angry and wanting to destroy the world or hurt others, she’s not afraid of talking or giving orders, nor she’s dead inside. Her breakdown point comes when her sister finally confronts her with as pretty absurd request (that was also because of Anna’s problems but that’s another thing) and without truly knowing anything about her. Her burst of anger would have been seen as normal on anyone if it wasn’t for her powers.



Many see Elsa running away from the party as a sing of weakness, but let’s be realistic here. The vision that the trolls showed her materialized in front of her eyes. People were looking at her with discomfort or anger and trying to chase her down. Not to mention the fact that she was already at the verge of hurting people accidentally again. Yes, we see that Elsa runs away from her problems that’s one of her flaws but on this case there wasn’t really much to do unless she became the bad guy. Running here wasn’t a bad thing to do in itself, it was in many ways logical and also a best case scenario for the well being of others.



By the time she gets into Let it go, many seem to think Elsa doesn’t even know what she wants which I find absurd. LiG is indeed a bittersweet song and Elsa is indeed walking down a lonely road, the only one that she has even known, however what’s beautiful about LiG, is that despite life hitting her like a truck, she’s not giving up. Yes, not more than ever she can’t be with her sister, she abandons all hope of a semi normal life or seeing her loved ones more than ever and she embraces it, but this doesn’t mean Elsa is lost and done. On the contrary, Elsa finally finds herself, she finally accepts reality as it is in many ways but mostly she finds a new way to be happy. It’s not what she truly wants but she learns to be free, to get away from her limitations. She’s alone (which isn’t new) but she’s free to finally find a new light in life despite everything that happened.

Once Anna arrives we see Elsa gets anxious again, of course knowing you’re actively killing thousands of people accidentally is no small thing. At this point Elsa faces a problem she truly doesn’t know how to deal with, so she does the only thing that can help that she knows, trying to not feel. Then she still doesn’t give up, she faces the guards with the best she sees at the moment, and she confronts Hans when he brings her back. Hans words don’t really take a toll on her, on the scene she barely stops and see she’s in trouble, but at that point she’s not hating herself, as we see later she doesn’t even ask for the guards or excuses herself. Later she breaks the wall, freezing everything and runs away.

Elsa doesn’t give up. She doesn’t let others thwart her freedom nor threat her life. She could’ve thought that ending her life would save everyone but she never attempts suicide or anything. She keeps trying to be free and get the best out of her life. And yes it is then that Hans tells her that she killed Anna and she finally falls and gives up.

Let’s look at the facts here though. Elsa apparently killed the person she loved the most, the one thing she devoted her entire life and all the pain she took protecting her and yet she killed her accidentally or not. She has failed not only herself but her kingdom, her family, everything. It was her responsibility that she hurt Anna in an unimaginable way, at this point Elsa is not down only because “she feels lost”, she’s not only sad and grieving, she hates herself. She absolutely sees herself as a monster now, because she has committed a truly monstrous act.



She doesn’t have any reason to live, she’d be a monster her whole life and just hurt more people, they would hunt her down anyway so that’s it, that’s a moment when Elsa finally gives up. That is not weakness. Elsa is not giving up because feels are too much. We’ve seen her gone through the deepest loneliness, the death of her most loved ones, we’ve seen her assume gigantic responsibilities, done everything in her power to protect others one way or the other and do everything she can to be happy despite all the shit life has thrown at her she’s not dark and gloomy, she’s not timid or a crybaby. Elsa has gone trough too much as to simply give her life away because “she’s weak”.

Elsa is at this point seeing her entire life and devotion as a failure, her entire existence as a curse for everyone else, she’s damned and something that only brings pain, but beyond that she has already done the worst she could there was just nothing but death down her life and there was no way back. She wanted to erase herself. This way no one would hunt her down and get hurt, she wouldn’t be a monster anymore and maybe she even thought her sister would have justice, after all it was just that the killer of Anna payed with her life. She would’ve certainly seen it to be that way if it was someone else.

At the end however we see Elsa is not afraid anymore because she has the answers, and support of Anna and new friends, but it is more than that. Elsa is really happy is really trying to live her life at fullest, both at the end and in fever, we see Elsa doing her best, for everyone else and for herself. And she still maintains her pride and hard headed nature. She’s not held back by all that shit, she’s not paranoid or barely adjusting to life, she starts living from the beginning and by fever she’s even much more accustomed at her role and doing what she truly wants. We even see her being completely confident both with Kristoff and Anna, touching them, using her magic near them and over Anna even. She is going ahead.

There’s a joke in the fandom that Elsa sees a replica of dead Anna and just cries. However we see in fever she even does that and she’s more like “oops”. She only cries when it does happen. And as we see , she has accepted Kristoff and Sven on her family too. All in all Elsa is shown to be sure of what she wants and what she can do.

So, to conclude. Elsa is someone resilient, someone who has took shit for most of her life, had felt the worst feelings out there and yet never gave up until her very existence became the “bad in the world”. Despite all she has gone trough she has always striven to find happiness, to try to do the best for everyone else, to try to improve and get the best for herself. And after everything she doesn’t dwell in the past nor gets held back of heavily affected by it. In fact she’s open to new people, she’s ready to right any wrong and make her voice heard, have fun, be happy and make others happy, and she had quite a fast recovery and acceptance of what happened.



Someone like that, who could take so much and still get to strive to live in the best way and make others lives the best they can be while accepting new family and new possibilities, can’t be called weak.

Elsa is strong.



Damn this was long.