He had planned it all so well.
At first she had just been practice. Her flustered, "You're gorgeous," another tick in his favor. He could do this; he would do this. Blushing red heads tumbling into boats and chatting to his horse were proof of his skill, not a distraction. He had a plan. A plan that certainly wouldn't be hurt by a fluttery princess who looked far too excited at being caught underneath him. If only her sister could be as easy to win over.
After all, that was the plan.
Ambition isn't evil. It is a vital personality trait if you are the youngest of thirteen sons. It isn't innately treacherous or scheming or backstabbing. No, ambition is a hope that has been sharpened into a perfectly-tuned compass needle seeking out the best, the fastest way forward. Without its guiding light you were doomed to a life of nothing, less than nothing, hoping and begging for handouts, just trying to get by. No wonder so many youngest sons entered the priesthood or the army. Anything but to stay and be ignored or, worse, pitied.
It was sometime while his brothers were pretending he was invisible that he heard the story for the first time, of the youngest of ten sons who came and won the young Queen's hand. With nothing but charm and a handsome face his father had beat out countless suitors to become King of the Southern Isles. If that wasn't enough, Hans being the youngest of thirteen was proof of just how well his father had succeeded in capturing the Queen's heart.
That story had lit something in Hans, the first prod of ambition whispering in his twelve-year-old mind that there were more possibilities than people were telling him. So he had listened and learned and adapted. He watched his father, began to break apart the shining image of perfection he gave off to see how it was made. The King was a man worth emulating. Hans learned first to see behind the mirror, and then how to hide behind it himself. He couldn't remember the last time he responded to something as just Hans, not the charming prince: a mirror reflecting whatever people wanted to see.
It made charming Anna easy. A few well-chosen words and a well-timed smile erased her frown of annoyance at being knocked off her feet. Even nearly falling into the fjord worked to his advantage judging from the way she'd clung to him. After all, Hans told himself as he watched her run off, it was always good to have a contingency plan.
A contingency plan seemed increasingly necessary the longer he observed the Queen. From Anna's "yeesh" at the thought of her sister being knocked over to the Queen's regal yet disdainful gaze during the coronation, his target appeared less than approachable.
The ball convinced him of the hopelessness of his cause. It only took a few minutes of watching the Queen politely but firmly deflect every potential suitor for Hans to realize the plan needed to be altered. If he couldn't have the Queen, he would just have to take a detour to the thrown. Ambition whispered in his ear, "When you're at the bottom take any way up." It sent an image of a fumbling red head to the front of his mind.
Anna's clumsiness provided him with the perfect in. Nothing like a good old fashioned rescue to make up for nearly knocking her into the fjord earlier. Really, the ambition mused as Hans caught Anna moments before she hit the floor, you couldn't have planned it better yourself.
Hans knew it would be simple; he hadn't expected it to be delightful. He had forgotten how sweet it was to have someone truly listen to every word he said. Even as he shrugged off his brothers' callous behavior, determined to show a strong front the sympathy didn't leave her eyes, eyes that danced and glowed with all the intensity of a flame. His eyes kept going to the left corner of her mouth and the adorable way it curled up higher than the other when she smiled. Thank goodness for the chocolate fondue, it gave him such a wonderful excuse to brush a finger there.
Just like that he couldn't stop touching her, a hand on hers, an arm around her waist to lift her high or pull her close. And with each brush she grew more familiar. Hans hadn't expected a princess to be this open and free - ironic considering her cloistered existence.
Sliding in stocking feet around the hallways, his hand gripped in hers, he suddenly understood what might lead someone to have thirteen children.
He would have asked eventually, but when she looked up at him – her face full of hope to say how she wished the gates weren't closing tonight - he knew he didn't have time to waste. Hans didn't need the push from his ambition to ask something crazy. His own desires had never lined up with it more.
He hadn't realized the easy part was done. When he reflected later he realized it was stupid not to consider that getting Elsa to accept her sister's engagement would be as challenging as winning the Queen's own hand. Shortsighted of him not to consider the personality behind a monarch who planned to push everyone out just hours after being crowned. She might have the poised, regal act down pat, but someone had forgotten to teach her to consider the opinions of her subjects.
Hans hadn't realized how much he depended on women melting after one hit of charm. A simple smile usually was enough to at least unbalance the most uptight. Talk about an ice queen. Yet even as Elsa dismissed them both with barely a glance his way he felt respect for her more than anything. He wondered how much she guessed. It was really a shame their interests conflicted and that her sister was such an accepting, eager girl.
"Then leave." The Queen told them.
No, no absolutely not. Why not just ruin everything. Leave? Abandon a whole country reeking of desperation for a steady hand and vibrant royal presence? For what? So he could return home a laughing stock after having gotten a finger's-length away from making all his boasts come true?
He should have anticipated this. No one who clung that hard to solitude would welcome an intruder easily. Still he didn't need to make her love him, just let him in. Maybe he should have trusted Anna more when she told him how hard it was to get her sister to open up…
And now Anna was yelling, "What are you so afraid of?"
Hans had several thoughts about what Elsa was so afraid of, social climbing princes.
But apparently he had used up all his predicting skills on realizing Anna was just desperate enough to say yes, because over a hundred lances of ice were shooting from the ground away from Elsa's ungloved hand. Well, that changed things.
He could feel his face stretched into a mask of shock and terror that matched that of everyone around him - everyone but Anna. She looked more saddened and guilty than scared, her earlier anger nowhere to be seen.
Elsa on the other hand was showing the first true emotion he had seen all day. Her royal façade had fractured, revealing terror sharper than any he could imitate. This was no perfectly controlled witch wreaking organized havoc in vengeance. This was a mistake, something hidden that had escaped in the single instant she had allowed her guard down. Hans had never been grateful to be normal before. He might hide too, but whatever he hid was surely far less fearsome.
The crowd was beginning to process what they just had seen and anger was leaking into their murmurs. But Elsa's fear was stronger than the horror spreading across the faces that filled the ballroom and it sent her flying out the door.
Half the ballroom ran after her. The sympathy that had consumed him when Elsa first lashed out was slowly compressed by the ever present plan. Even as he raced after Anna racing after Elsa, a part of his mind was twisting and turning this new piece of information, weaving it in to make the plan stronger.
(It wasn't until he nearly fell flat on his back tearing down ice covered stairs that the little voice of reason in his head bothered to point out: why he was chasing her chasing a raging ice monster? Okay, so the ice monster was the newly crowned queen of Arendelle and Anna was his ticket to an ambitious leap to power but was that really worth having his brain speared by a flying icicle? Apparently, yes.)
So he was there to pull Anna back from the rapidly freezing fjord. He was the one to make the painfully obvious comment about said frozen fjord. But he was also the one who led her back to the palace, to the crowds of stunned and panicked peasants. The ambition must have known what it was doing: because he ran after her, he was the one she turned to, the one she trusted. She jumped on a horse and handed him a kingdom.
And his brothers had thought that this would be hard.