Talk:Ingrid/@comment-70.161.216.21-20160810150953

 Once Upon A Time Snow Queen Theory

 I was pretty disappointed by the very obvious marketing ploy that OUAT pulled this season with bringing in  Frozen, but with the introduction of another Snow Queen character, it could get VERY interesting.

 PART ONE: The Snow Queen



 The Snow Queen is lying about being Elsa’s aunt. She bears resemblance to Elsa but not to Elsa’s mother. Instead, the Snow Queen is really THE Snow Queen, the one who kidnapped Kai and froze his heart in the original fairy tale. She insinuates to Elsa that it was Anna who put Elsa in the urn, and her behavior suggests that she has similar experience–that the Queen, her “sister,” is the one who put the Snow Queen in the Urn. I was not convinced by this story about the two of them being sisters, but I do believe that it was the Queen who put the Snow Queen in the urn.

 In order for this to work, we need to understand the Snow Queen’s power. It is much like Elsa’s, but with one important element that Elsa may or may not possess: the ability to cross between worlds. We know from the August/Tamara plot line that occasionally magic does appear in our world. The Snow Queen could be like that, appearing rarely in our world to kidnap children and collect them (much like Regina collects hearts). The reason for this is unknown even in the original story. This becomes important later on.

 As we all know, there is one person in the Enchanted Forest who was always  especially interested in world-crossing magic: Rumplestiltskin. He of course ties things together.

 PART TWO: The King and Queen of Arendelle

 The King and Queen of Arendelle are Kai and Gerda



 It is true that Kai and Gerda were common people in the original tale, but this doesn’t might that they might have BECOME royalty later on. After Gerda saves Kai, they return home–this home is in our world. Because the Snow Queen has the ability to move between worlds, much like Peter Pan or Ariel, she kidnapped Kai and took him to her world (which may be in the Enchanted Forest but doesn’t have to be). They were no longer children when they returned home and it is implied that they went through great changes because of their ordeal. It is possible that they could not adjust to life as they knew it and sought to find a land where they could make a fresh start. Somehow, maybe through the latent magic that remained in Kai after he was unfrozen, they crossed worlds and entered the Enchanted Forest. They immediately attracted the attention of Rumplestiltskin because of their apparent world-traveling abilities (which they could not explain). In exchange for a promise that if they ever learned the secret to their world-crossing that they would tell him or deliver the means to him, he set them up in their own kingdom: Arendelle. We’ve seen him make royalty before; it probably wouldn’t be too hard.

 PART THREE: Elsa’s Magic



 This leads to another point: Elsa’s magic. It is canonically established that Elsa was born with her magic, and clearly neither her mother or father possessed it. OUAT and the movie suggest that they knew something about it or had experienced something like it before, though. This would be because they had seen the power of the Snow Queen before (and of COURSE it would terrify them after what they went through). But how would Elsa have inherited magic like the Snow Queen’s? The shard of ice in Kai’s heart that Gerda had melted. Even though Gerda was able to set Kai free, she could not completely get rid of the ice magic within him. There was not enough for Kai to use it himself, but there was enough to be passed on to his child–but only one of his children. It was also enough for them to cross between worlds just once. But if their child inherited the world-crossing magic of the Snow Queen, they had a bargain to fulfill with Rumplestiltskin.

 PART FOUR: A Threat and a Bargain



<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);"> I suspect that Kai and Gerda’s decision to hide Elsa was not about Elsa’s threat to others, but about the threat of Rumplestilktskin and the Snow Queen to Elsa (the Snow Queen had not been destroyed, after all). They began seeing signs that the Snow Queen was in their world trying to find Elsa to take her as revenge for losing Kai so many years ago. Kai was especially concerned, having been the victim of the Snow Queen himself, that the Snow Queen would come for his daughter. It is also likely that he feared that Elsa’s magic would make her become as heartless and dangerous as the Snow Queen. Gerda was more concerned with the bargain that they had made–that if they ever learned the secret to their long-ago world-crossing, they would deliver the means to Rumplestiltskin. She realized, though, that if Elsa did possess the Snow Queen’s power, then maybe the original Snow Queen would be an acceptable fulfillment of the bargain. Kai and Gerda sought to contain the Snow Queen in the urn in order to deliver her to Rumplestiltskin. At some point in Elsa’s childhood (after she had accidentally hurt Anna), Gerda became determined to finish the Snow Queen off. She insisted that Kai stay and try to help Elsa learn to control her magic while she looked for a solution to the Snow Queen problem. She was worried that Kai would be susceptible to the Snow Queen’s magic, so she went herself and managed to contain the Snow Queen in the urn. She hid the urn in the mountains, perhaps as a temporary location until it could be safely delivered to Rumplestiltskin.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);">  PART FIVE: Emma

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);min-height:18px;">

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);"> The one part I haven’t covered yet it how the Snow Queen knows Emma. We learned in the most recent episode (“Rocky Road”) that the Snow Queen recognized Emma but Emma did not recognize her. There was also a certain fondness in her tone that implies that the Snow Queen looks back on her memories of Emma with fondness, regret, or some similar emotion.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);"> Remember how in Part One I suggested that the Snow Queen collects children much like Regina collects hearts? I think Emma was one of the children that the Snow Queen tried to collect. It has been said already that perhaps the Snow Queen was one of Emma’s foster parents. I don’t reject this–it may have been one way that the Snow Queen tried to get close to children to take them away. We know next to nothing about Emma’s childhood. It is possible that she had so many foster parents that she doesn’t remember them all, or that she was so small when the Snow Queen had her that Emma wouldn’t remember.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);"> I theorize that the Snow Queen tried to take Emma in the same way that she tried to take Kai, but that Emma’s magical birthright prevented her from succeeding. It is important to note that the original story is very unclear about why the Snow Queen would take a child. She never actually hurts Kai–in fact, her freezing his heart helped keep him alive. It is possible that the Snow Queen is benevolent (or in any case, not evil). Fairy tale scholars have multiple theories about this, but the Snow Queen as an ethereal but not malevolent being is one of them. The Snow Queen in OUAT definitely sounds bitter and misunderstood, so it may be that she is angry that her existence has been so maligned by the people whose lives she has touched (Gerda’s and Kai’s for instance). She may genuinely think that she is helping Elsa by trying to keep her from getting hurt by those who misunderstand them, but she is so twisted at this point that she is very dangerous (and she likely never thought about thing the same way as everyone else, either). She may have truly cared about Kai, and she may have cared about Emma the same way, but she was foiled both times.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);"> CONCLUSION

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:15px;line-height:normal;font-family:Times;color:rgb(126,13,4);"> I know that this is extremely optimistic. This mostly comes from someone who loved the original Snow Queen story and was pretty disappoint with the way they interpreted it in  Frozen. This is my way of hoping that Horowitz & Co. take advantage of the opportunity to pay their respects to Andersen’s work. It would be even cooler if they could include the neat characters that they cut out in  Frozen, like the Roma robber girl, but I know that’s asking too much. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this and enjoy season 4 of  Once Upon a Time.