Why the ice queen keeps returning, from Frozen and Narnia to my own Revana.
The new icy figure teased for Frozen 3 made me think of a version of Elsa that never reached the screen. Reporting from August’s D23 presentation describes Elsa encountering an ominous female figure in another icy realm. My first thought was that this feels close to the Snow Queen Elsa could once have become. Entertainment Weekly’s D23 coverage
That is a resemblance I find interesting, rather than confirmed reuse of an abandoned concept. But it opens a promising storytelling possibility: Elsa meeting someone who offers a different answer to a question her own story has been asking. What do you do with power that frightens other people?
Producer Peter Del Vecho has described early versions of Frozen in which Elsa was a villain and Anna was unrelated to her. One version had Elsa freeze her own heart after being abandoned at the altar. Making them sisters helped the filmmakers develop Elsa around fear of her powers and of hurting someone she loved. Peter Del Vecho’s interview
That change interests me as a writer. A familiar image can hold a very different character once we understand what she is afraid of. The palace may still be made of ice, but the reason she lives there changes how we read every room.
Following that image backwards leads to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, first published in December 1844. It is an authored literary fairy tale. We should be careful about calling it the original ancient myth behind every woman associated with winter. There are several traditions to explore, with different histories and meanings. The Hans Christian Andersen Centre’s publication record
Andersen’s story begins with a malicious mirror that makes goodness and beauty appear ugly. When it shatters, fragments enter Kay’s eye and heart, changing how he sees and feels. The Snow Queen’s kisses numb him to the cold and make him forget Gerda. In her palace, she praises the frozen lake she calls her “Mirror of Reason”, while Kay becomes absorbed in arranging pieces of ice. Gerda’s journey eventually brings her to him; her tears melt the ice in his heart, and his own tears wash the fragment from his eye. Prayer and Christian imagery are woven through that rescue. Read Andersen’s story
What unsettles me here is the loss of connection. Kay can still look at the world, but his perception has been damaged. He can concentrate on a puzzle while becoming unreachable to someone who loves him. The cold gives that separation a physical form. Gerda has to reach a person who no longer properly recognises what he has lost.
C. S. Lewis gives winter a more openly political role in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Jadis, the White Witch, holds Narnia in “always winter and never Christmas”. She also turns living beings into stone. Her power repeatedly stops things that should move: seasons, bodies, ordinary life. Lewis’s novel
I read her winter as a ruler’s refusal to let the world change beyond her control. That is why the thaw feels so significant. It is the possibility of life continuing without her permission. Jadis and Elsa share a striking association with cold, yet their relationship to power is very different. Elsa fears the damage she might cause; Jadis makes others live inside the consequences of her rule.
The Huntsman: Winter’s War offers another variation through its two sisters. Ravenna, played by Charlize Theron, is the evil queen. Her younger sister Freya, played by Emily Blunt, is the Ice Queen. Ravenna’s betrayal helps harden Freya against love and awakens her icy powers. Universal’s film synopsis
Freya is also an antagonist for much of the story. She raises an army of huntsmen and forbids them to fall in love, before eventually turning against Ravenna. Her pain becomes a rule that other people must obey. The film’s plot and cast
That is the part I find most useful to think about. A character can begin by trying to protect herself and end by deciding what everyone else is allowed to feel. Understanding the wound makes her behaviour intelligible. It still leaves the harm she causes for the story to confront.
These figures also made me want to look beyond the familiar screen queens. The further I looked, the less useful it became to treat every winter woman as the same character wearing a different crown.
In Norse tradition, Skaði is associated with the mountains, hunting and skiing. The Swedish History Museum describes a giantess who becomes part of the gods’ world through her marriage to Njord. She offers a different starting point for a writer: a powerful woman at home in a demanding landscape. Calling her simply an evil ice queen would erase much of what makes her distinctive. The Swedish History Museum on Skaði
Japanese folklore gives us Yuki-onna, the snow woman. In the version Lafcadio Hearn retold in Kwaidan in 1904, she kills one woodcutter but spares another. She later becomes the younger man’s wife. When he breaks his promise of silence about their first encounter, she leaves, sparing him again for their children’s sake. Hearn says he heard this version from a farmer; it should not stand in for every Japanese telling. Here, winter holds danger, intimacy and mercy together. Hearn’s “Yuki-Onna”
Then there is Frau Holle in the Grimms’ German fairy tale. Snow falls on earth when her featherbed is shaken. She rewards the girl who works diligently and punishes the one who neglects her tasks. She is an older woman whose unsettling appearance initially frightens the heroine. This is another reminder that a woman associated with snow need not be a beautiful, distant monarch. The Grimms’ “Frau Holle”
These are useful comparisons, rather than evidence of one continuous family tree leading to Elsa. Myth, folklore and literary fairy tales offer different ways of imagining the same things we live with: cold, danger, shelter, dependence and the changing seasons.
So why does the ice queen stay with me so strongly? Why does that image sometimes interest me more than a queen of fire?
For me, ice leaves something unresolved. Fire often suggests emotion moving outward: anger, appetite, passion, a force demanding to be seen. It can also mean a hearth, generosity and protection. Neither element has only one meaning. But ice makes me wonder what has been held still, and whether the stillness is chosen.
A frozen surface can look calm while concealing depth. An ice palace can be beautiful and impossible to live in comfortably. The same wall might keep danger out and prevent anyone from coming close. Those contradictions give a character room to be frightening, lonely, impressive and understandable at once.
There is also the possibility of a thaw. Something may have survived underneath. That gives winter stories a particular kind of hope, although I would be wary of reducing every reserved woman to someone waiting for the right person to melt her. A character can keep her boundaries and still grow. Warmth does not have to mean surrender.
That brings me to Revana, in my own novel.
Her name carries a deliberate echo of Darth Revan, as I explained in A Name Before a Face. I was drawn to the questions that character raises about identity, allegiance and choosing between the definitions of good and evil offered by opposing sides. Those questions gave me something to build on.
Revana’s ice powers add another layer. Raised close to power and manipulation, she has learned to exist in a world where other people are ready to decide what she means. Her relationship with Sirelia gives me somewhere personal to explore the difference between the identity assigned to her and the choices she makes.
There is a moment in the manuscript when the air grows cold as Revana demands that her sister’s restraints be removed. The frost is threatening to the guard. For her sister, that same display of power is an act of protection. I like what that does to the familiar image: the reader has to look at whom the cold is directed towards, and why.
That is where a borrowed image becomes useful to me. Silver hair, winter magic and a feared reputation create expectations. The character’s decisions can complicate them. Her history matters, and so does her responsibility for what she does next.
Looking at Elsa, Jadis, Freya and the older winter figures gives me questions to bring back to the manuscript. What is Revana protecting? Who pays for her need for control? When does being feared help her survive, and when does it leave her trapped inside someone else’s version of her?