Arendelle: The Kingdom in Frozen Explained

In Frozen (2013), the kingdom starts out with its castle gates closed. After young Elsa accidentally hits Anna with ice, the trolls heal Anna and erase her memory of the magic, and the king and queen keep the sisters apart behind those gates. When their parents are lost at sea, the sisters are left alone in the closed off castle.

The gates reopen for Elsa's coronation, which is the day everything goes wrong. Anna quickly gets engaged to Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, Elsa refuses to bless the match, and her powers burst out in front of the court. She flees to the North Mountain and, without meaning to, leaves the realm locked in an endless winter.

The kingdom then becomes the thing the story fights to save. Anna follows Elsa with Kristoff, Sven and Olaf, Hans reveals he wants the throne, and Anna's sacrifice finally thaws her and lets Elsa learn that love controls her powers. Elsa ends the winter, Hans is sent home in disgrace, Kristoff becomes the royal ice deliverer, and Elsa promises never to close the gates again. The film also won the Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. For the whole cast, see the Frozen cast page, or read about Elsa, Anna and Hans individually.

Frozen Fever (2015), the short directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, shows the kingdom at its most ordinary and cheerful: a town preparing a birthday party. It played in theaters before Cinderella on March 13, 2015, and runs about 8 minutes.

Elsa plans a surprise party for Anna with help from Kristoff, Sven and Olaf, but she catches a cold and tries to hide it. Every sneeze makes small living snow creatures called Snowgies, who cause trouble and damage the decorations. After Elsa nearly falls from a clock tower and Anna pulls her to safety, she admits she is ill and goes home to rest, and the party carries on at the castle.

The short ends on a callback, with Elsa's last sneeze sending a giant snowball toward Hans, who is cleaning stables far away. The Snowgies then settle at Elsa's old ice palace, where Marshmallow lives. It sets up nothing further, so it works as a gentle visit home, and it is a good pick for younger viewers who want a short stop between the two features.

Olaf's Frozen Adventure (2017), directed by Stevie Wermers-Skelton and Kevin Deters, is the film that shows the kingdom as a crowd of households rather than a single castle. It opened in US theaters on November 22, 2017, ahead of Coco, and runs about 22 minutes.

The story begins when the first holiday season after the gates reopened wraps up and the guests drift home to their own family customs. Anna and Elsa realize they have none to call their own, so Olaf borrows Kristoff's sleigh and Sven and goes door to door, collecting keepsakes that cover Christmas, Hanukkah and Winter Solstice customs. A piece of coal from Oaken's sauna sets the sleigh on fire, the sleigh races down a mountainside, and the collection is lost. Wolves and a thieving hawk leave Olaf with nothing, not even his fruitcake.

The emotional turn comes when the sisters find him sulking by a tree. Their tradition, they explain, has been him all along, since Anna has slid cards and dolls of Olaf under Elsa's door for years. Elsa then grows an ice Christmas tree hung with lanterns, and Olaf crowns it with a tiny sculpture of himself. The short sets up nothing further, and it is the best one to put on when you want the feel of a cozy holiday special.

In Frozen II (2019), the kingdom is peaceful at first, then forced to evacuate. Some years after Elsa became queen, she hears a mysterious voice and follows it, and her use of her powers wakes the elemental spirits of nature. The troll leader Pabbie tells the sisters they must learn what happened in the past, and the group heads north to the Enchanted Forest, a place sealed off by a wall of mist.

Most of the film happens outside the kingdom's borders, but the royal family's history is the real subject. The sisters learn that their mother, Iduna, came from the Northuldra people and once saved their father. In Ahtohallan, Elsa discovers that her grandfather built the dam to weaken the Northuldra and killed their leader. Anna then wakes the earth giants to destroy the dam, which sends a flood toward the kingdom, and Elsa thaws and stops it.

The ending changes who rules. Kristoff proposes to Anna, and Elsa gives the crown to Anna and takes up her place as protector of the Enchanted Forest. After the credits, Olaf retells the story of the film to Marshmallow and the Snowgies at the ice palace. The film grossed more than $1.4 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, and you can compare it with the first film on the Frozen box office page. For the kingdom's past in order, see the Frozen timeline.

In my opinion, the kingdom works because it is a character as much as a setting, and its mood tracks the sisters. In the first film it is shut away, just as Elsa is. In the second it has to reckon with a buried wrong, just as Anna and Elsa do. The shorts then show the same place when it is calm, which makes the dramatic films hit harder.

That being said, the most interesting change is in who the place belongs to. Frozen (2013) ends with Elsa promising to keep the gates open, which makes it a community and not a fortress. Frozen II goes a step further, since the realm is saved from a flood caused by its own royal history, and Elsa hands the crown to Anna and chooses the forest. It could be argued that this is the more grown up ending, because the kingdom is no longer defined by one queen's secret.

Perhaps the neatest comparison is a family home that gets renovated across a series of films: the walls stay, but the rooms change meaning. If you are choosing where to start, watch Frozen (2013) first to meet the place, then Frozen II to see what it was built on. For the order of all five titles, use the Frozen movies in order guide, and if you want to see where I would place each film, read Frozen movies ranked. If you are watching with children, check the official ratings on where to watch Frozen: both main films are rated PG in the US.