Erik and Francis

The Duke of Weselton's Thugs are the tertiary antagonists in the 2013 animated film Frozen. They are a pair of bodyguards hired by the scheming Duke of Weselton to protect and serve him at all costs.

Role in the film
The guards first appear along with the Duke entering Arendelle from the docks and nearing the castle gates. As they move towards them, the Duke expresses excitement as he greatly looks forward to unlocking its secrets and exploiting its riches, however he accidentally says this out loud to his guards. At the coronation ball when Elsa accidentally reveals her winter powers, the Duke deems her magic dangerous, and orders his men to capture her the moment she flees, though he and his goons were nearly killed by an accidental blast caused by the queen, resulting in the Duke calling her out as a monster. Elsa escapes from the scene into the mountains, but accidentally casts a powerful curse over Arendelle, putting it into an eternal winter. Princess Anna departs to go after the queen, and leaves Hans in charge. However, when her horse returns with the princess missing, Hans believes that the princess is in danger, and asks volunteers to journey to Queen Elsa's castle with him to find her. The Duke volunteers his bodyguards, and secretly orders them to eliminate Elsa should they find her so they could put an end to the winter.

Once the soldiers arrive at the castle, they are quickly met with opposition from Elsa's guard Marshmallow. The guards try to shoot arrows through him, which causes no harm to the monster but annoys him into attacking head on with the group. As the monster fights, the Duke's thugs sneak past him and into Elsa's castle. Once inside, they spot the Snow Queen, who tries to escape from them to the second floor. Ignoring Hans' orders to bring no harm to Elsa, they attempt to kill the queen when they have her cornered. However, Elsa fights back when she uses her abilities to battle the two by holding one of the bodyguards back against the wall with ice spikes with a smaller one threatening to pierce the guard through the neck, and pushing the other guard with a block of ice against the balcony leaning towards the chasm below the castle. As Elsa is about to kill them, Hans intervenes and calms Elsa down. But as Elsa lowers her guard, the pinned guard attempts to shoot her with his crossbow, only for Hans to disrupt his aim and cause the arrow to shoot through the chandelier, causing it to fall to the ground and render Elsa unconscious. The guards were not seen after returning Elsa to Arendelle, likely suspended as punishment for disobeying Hans' commands.

When Elsa finally removes the curse from Arendelle, the guards can be seen again along with the Duke being escorted back onto the ship for attempted murder of the Queen. As another comeuppance, the Duke is cut off from trading with Arendelle as he and his thugs are sent back to Weselton.

Trivia

 * One of the thugs bares a resemblance to the Captain of the Guards from the 2010 film Tangled.