Thread:HYZX/@comment-24382776-20140223181347/@comment-5483334-20140225095000

It's ok, I'm ridiculously busy too.

That is an interesting question that people have been bandying around, and I never realised till I joined the fandom.

Based on what I've seen and read, their parents' approach in dealing with Elsa's powers were uncalled for, even "abusive", but at the same time because the movie does not make it clear how exactly Elsa could control her powers their decisions seem to make sense. They had only Grand Pabbie's advice to refer to, and that was to "remove all magic, even memories of magic" from Anna's mind, hence the decision to separate the two sisters; and to prevent the people from turning against Elsa and the royal family by extension (thinking about the Duke of Weselton's reaction to magic) they had to hide her from the world by quarantining her in the room. To me, despite retrospectal failures on the parents' part to help Elsa control her powers, suspending disbelief and loking at it from the parents' POV, I think their actions are justified as they had no knowledge of other possible ways of helping her. I still maintain that they loved their daughters very much, and did not want any harm to come to them.

Of course, regarding the "fear will be your greatest enemy" portion, I think the parents certainly did not do much to help Elsa control her fears. They may have thought that Elsa's fear would go away as she grew older and (on her own) learnt to control the ice (which she never did), and so before that they would just lock her up and hope for the best. They also never helped Elsa resolve the guilt she felt after she struck Anna with the ice, which would only have been possible if the sisters were allowed to meet and talk in the first place. This only exacerbated Elsa's fear. Or her parents may have been overprotective and were hoping to hide Elsa from the fear of the outside world towards her but forgot the real cause of her fear which was the aforementioned freezing of Anna's forehead.

On a side note, it is interesting how her parents' love is not true love enough to "thaw" her ice (despite her distancing herself from her parents - "Don't touch me! I don't want to hurt you..." & "Do you have to go?" while curtseying, no physical contact), and that Elsa never considered even speaking to Anna from behind a door about her problems (though she was told to not let Anna know about her magic).

Also, on some people stating that her parents had no reason to shut the whole city down, I have a contention. Theoretically, Elsa could have completely cut herself off from the world (even for meals, haircuts, new clothes as she grew older, housekeeping), but I find this highly unlikely. Her parents as regents would not have had so much time to handle all these domestic matters, not even if the Queen was a full-time housewife. That's why they have servants. But I do not believe they would have isolated the whole city - they could have just done so to the castle. How else did Weselton do "trade" with Arendelle then? The King and Queen did after all go for events elsewhere, that fatal one could not be the first. At the most, they could close the castle off completely, but not the whole city. The argument that they needn't have shut off the whole city is invalid IMO.

Sorry if I sound disjointed at times, I just recovered from essay block tests.