Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love' Chapter 31 - Save the Last Dance for Me, a frozen fanfic

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"Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"

Act V

Chapter 31

"Save the Last Dance for Me"

Princess Anna was having the time of her life.

As the pleasurable afternoon wore on, Anna had hardly expected that her first visit to the Danish Southern Isles would turn out to be so much fun. Well, at least she hadn't imagined it would be for a long time, ever since that momentary insanity when she thought she was going to wed Prince Hans Westergaard.

Well, you can have him, Elsa!

Sure, she had attended some exciting events in Arendelle before, but this Garden party was full of more sights and sounds than Anna could ever have dreamed of. After seriously chowing down on all the seafood, she had recruited General Mattias to help the little Danish kids from the town of Kværndrup experience their first ride on her 'taxi service' flying reindeer troupe.

"Didn't someone say I was rubbish with kids, once upon a time? I won't name any names, Yelena." As he lifts his umpteenth foreign speaking, giggling with glee child to yet another silently resigned reindeer's back, Mattias smirks to himself, speaking to the wind. He had a feeling that self-same wind would convey his thoughts to the leader of the Northuldra who had become not only his friend, but his conscience, too.

"What was that, General?" Anna asks in a non-committal, I've-got-cotton-candy-everywhere-and-loving-it face as she was taking a breather from entertaining the gaggle of the King's granddaughters.

She and her hunky man were singing duets across the sky to melodies that Rapunzel's friend Hookhand was playing on the piano that he and his silver claw had intimidated the hired musician to relinquish earlier.

Even the Danish princes that Anna thought were so stuck up and nasty before were now, at their wives' assertive requests, attending to their little girls, getting them strapped safely to the exciting flying rangifer and equestrian rides that General Mattias was directing.

"Nothing much, Your Majesty. Just talking to my better self." The old soldier chuckles at the unstoppable force who was Anna of Arendelle, whose hands were full in every way, even in this foreign country she was visiting.

"Well, tell him I like you both." Anna smacks her lips stuck together by some sticky pink cotton candy, making Mattias laugh aloud as she offers him a bite. That's when another set of little girls come racing up to the 'Rowdy Reindeer Ride'.

Of all the Southern Isles princes spoiling their children, Kristoff was especially surprised how warm and doting a daddy that smarmy, tall, dark and handsome Prince Didrik was to his group of five young daughters, ranging from ages five to fourteen. The handlebar moustached man was personally loading each of his little girls onto the thrilling rides like a caring, good father should.

The honest Ice Harvester could not deny being impressed by the dapper prince's patient parenting skills as he took time out for each of his children without complaint.

"Maybe there's hope for me yet when it comes to rearing bouncing little babes. Eh, Muscles?" Surveying the debonair charmer's bonding with his multiple female children from afar, Eugene recognized a fellow ne'er-do-well who was 'not too bad with the ladies', either.

This 'wolf' amidst the fold leans back with crossed arms against the hedge maze row where Eugene had been standing on the sidelines all afternoon, viewing the Westergaard clan and their guests having an enjoyable outing and picnic for the King's birthday.

"Eugene! Where have you been?! We could use a low tenor over here to teach these girls how the tempo of this song goes. You've heard the Snuggly Duckling gang doing the number often. I know you know it. Please come help us practice." Rapunzel had conspired with the Southern Isles' Princess wives and had been arranging for their children to sing a special 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow' tribute for the King at the close of the fête's big finale.

"No can do, Sunshine. Remember, I don't sing." Eugene adamantly shakes his head in the negative to his pushy Prussian Princess after exchanging a macho, incredulous look with Prince Hendrick and Prince Peiter who had been sitting in amused audience to their songful children's impromptu recital. The black jacket with tails had already long been carelessly slung over his shoulder as the good-looking scalawag saunters up to his demanding, cheeky bride.

"Besides, Bruiser promised me a free check-up on my bullet ridden arm. They must've given me some kind of knockout mickey finn, because my head went all woozy after that friendly drink of - ahem – water they gave me with that a-nes-the-si-a medicine stuff. And the next thing I knew, they'd gone and stuck me with this." Eugene draws up the sleeve of his borrowed silk shirt to show his brawny arm to her.

At her slightly drunken husband displaying so much skin, Rapunzel gives an embarrassed smile to a raised brow Princess Adelaide and Prince Jurgen who had been teaching his two older twin girls singing the chorus in G major, as well as how to tie a sailor's knot to harness Sven and his saddle while they were practicing.

The Princess of Corona almost burst out in merry laughter at the funny comic caricature of her handsome guy in a less than flattering tattoo art of himself—elongated nose and all—holding his signature frying pan, with a name none too endearing etched on it as moniker.

"Not only did your questionable friends work on the wrong arm, and NOTget my nose right - yet again - they spelled my previous occupation incorrectly!" Flynn Rider indignantly complains of his maltreatment by the pair of medically inclined Snuggly Duckling boys. Along with Killer and Bruiser were a few of their more sadistic, mean and scary compadres who stuck their hands in the tattoo tent to poke a little fun at their favorite punching bag's expense.

"Hee, hee.'Rapunzel's Theif'?" Rapunzel must stifle her chuckle the closer she examines Eugene's bared upper bicep with the comedic tattoo and the title encased in a frying pan in the cartoon's hand.

"But…at least they got the perfect stubble on your handsome chiseled jaw right." The young wife tries to placate as she runs her hand across her husband's prized chin, then gently along his again maligned manly muscles.

"Ouchy!" But Eugene's high pitched feminine whine at Pascal's investigative touch causes Prince Franz, wandering over, to scoff in a hearty laugh.

"Stop acting like a little girl, man! These kids of my brothers have more guts than you! Where's your male pride?" The strapping foreign adventurer of the Danish Princes slaps Eugene on his freshly etched tattooed arm's shoulder, causing the poor shrieking man to shrink back in exploding gasps of little squeals of pain.

"I lost it, along with my smolder, a long time ago." Eugene cannot help from being sarcastically humorous as he struggles for breath to gasp this out in his wife's sympathetic arms.

"That is why you must learn my glower, Horace! Much more effective." On his way to the archery competition Ruddi and Rune had going on behind the White Garden, King Edmund makes his devastating glare as he just happens by his son's misfortune, giving Eugene some down home advice as the older gent does. Then he is called back by King Christian to see the bullseye the Danish King had just let his arrow vane fly to.

"Thanks, Dad." The thief mumbles with a silly grin at his obtuse parent who was having a grand old time at these festivities in a land he thought he'd never again visit, as the Gypsy King chews on something Southern Isles original called a 'corndog'.

"Hmph! They do this all the time to prove their manly dominance in the Yaka tribes of the Congo. Take a look at these, Cousin. And I have more where they came from!" Prince Franz had lived in the wilds of Africa enough to leave Victorian custom behind and challenge Eugene with his plethora of dark, bold tatoos of lions and gorillas and cheetah emblazoned across his masculine chest as he pulls his vest and shirt open to display his wares to Eugene.

"I did not need to see that." Deadpan and feeling bilious Eugene was not certain if his inebriated, anesthetized eyes were playing tricks on him with the demigod-like heroic depictions scrawled across Franz' amply endowed, muscular build seeming to dance and point at him with a laugh.

"What Westergaard dioesn't have the stomach for a few needles…Horace?" Princes Jurgen, Berte, Hendrick and Peiter join Franz in laughing and teasing at their new cousin in a male bonding type method of inducting Eugene Horace into the family.

Eugene closes his eyes and shakes his head, trying to clear his muddled senses of this delirium swirling all around him.

"Eugene! Please, come on! Sing for me!" Rapunzel beckons her husband yet again to join in with the girlish chorus led by Anna and Princesses Elisabeth and Lujza.

On her shoulder, Pascal sticks his long tongue out at Eugene when the woozy thief does not respond in the right mode immediately.

"Is coming to a lady's rescue not part and parcel of becoming an honored knight of this realm, Sir Eugene?" With a teasing glint in his shocking blue eyes, Prince Ivers snobbishly puts in his two cents as he passes by with a besotted Princess Marguerite hanging on his arm.

The couple had been accompanying an excited Lukas around the carnival-like festival as the sweet boy stops to assertively help his friend Anna show the other kids how to properly ride the airborne menagerie with bothe hands firmly on the reins.

But it was Attila's frying pan, full of freshly made fruit filled hot fritters still sizzling, suddenly hanging over Eugene's head that meant business. Especially when it was backed up by no-nonsense Cassandra's severe glare and real dagger eyes threatening to rain down brown sugar and hot glaze over his freshly washed coif.

So Eugene does what every honest, self-respecting man would do in such a situation.

He gives in to his bride.

"'For he's a jolly good fellow. For he's a jolly old fellow. For he's a jolly old geezer~!" Under melting point threat, Flynn was stuck between a hot frying pan wielding madwoman and a readily retractable tongued hostile lizard on his wife's pleading shoulder. But he still could not deny himself a waggish tease as Eugene joins in a pleasant tune's melody. But not without a few minor lyric revisions along the way that had the children all befuddled, Rapunzel rolling her green eyes to the heavens, and Anna laughing outright at how funny cousin Eugene could be.

"Sing it right, Fitzherbert. Or else the boys and I might have to take you for another bath." Toughie Captain Cassandra threatens Flynn in between where her flat semitone was co-opted to sing in harmony with the second set of teenagers. Half of which turn their drooling features from Anna's blond, beefy honk across the way to this naughty, could-be-wicked-and-wouldn't (every now and then), mysteriously devilish new 'uncle' with those languid, unintentionally come hither eyes.

"And so say all of us!" With an inviting smile to his suddenly wilting woman who had to lean against one of the tall hedges in the Beech Garden when her morning sickness struck once again, Eugene now finishes in perfect pitch and rhythm the sappy tune for their concert.

With a loud crescendo, the pianist in Hookhand had been thumping on the keys in protest of Flynn's maddening off time performance that was nonconforming with his stellar musical number that his talented hoofer brother Hookfoot was tap dancing to.

Eugene gives them both a toothy grin as he delivers the final notes to courteous perfection.

"Thank you, Eugene." But it was music in Rapunzel's ears, the madly in love young woman certain that her man would always eventually come around to being her Knight in shining armor.

Eventually.

"I think our twins like to hear you singing, too." Speaking up for the next generation of Fitzherbert Pznyslid's, Rapunzel melts into her husband's loving embrace as her pregnant pains lesson.

The more vocally skilled older girls Kristoff had been training and the sweet noted younger ones Anna had taken under her in-flight wing just then join together with the awkward voiced t'weens that the Prussian Princess had been artistically trying to weave together.

Suddenly, they all begin to sing cohesively, to Kristoff, Anna, and Rapunzel's relief and delight.

The choir sings in rounds that merge together quite beautifully with Eugene and Kristoff and a few game Danish Princes even adding their deeper voices to the building joyful chorus.

As happy children fly across the skies on reindeer across Egeskov Chapel's church steeple, Olaf waves his carrot nose from where he and Marshmallow were 'chillin' to sit back and listen to the child noisy festivities the little snowman was introducing his biggest brother to the wonders of.

"Great. Twins." Eugene distractedly looks down to see a pair of identical blonde haired girls about age five pull raspberry faces and squish their noses up at him quite rudely. The blasé man momentarily imagines himself having a double trouble dose of child-rearing himself dealing with lovely little ladies/twin terrors such as these in the not-too-distant future.

Though he never imagined himself a parent at all, never mind a good one, the once carefree playboy was becoming more and more ready to fully throw himself into being contented and secure in the family and home that he lacked as a child himself.

And Eugene Fitzherbert steels himself for the noisy pandemonium of joy and tears that children brought to the world, coming soon to a medical theatre near him.

With startled eyes, Kristoff joins Eugene's marvel of children to come as both men watch in wonder one braided pixie named Anna zip before them in mystified bewilderment.

WHOOSH!

She was hot on the trail of a runaway waif town child who had become more engrossed with catching Olaf's bright orange carrot nose across the garden by the church rather than flying on any reindeer.

"Kristly! I lost one of the orphans the nuns brought in!" In high spirits of the merry chase, Princess Anna calls out for her love to help roundup the energetic tiny girl hailing from the mission school she had visited earlier.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Like a bull in a China shop, Princess Anna races through the Sun Garden, Hops and Fuchsia ones and even the pristinely groomed Renaissance gardens like a madwoman. She accidentally smashes through the now defaced cardboard cutouts of the Punch and Judy puppet show that Fang had been running.

The swift legged ginger quickly overtakes the squirrelly little girly and scoops her up in a rounded pirouetted swirl before the toddler reached a sticky pink mess Olaf or a more frightening Marshmallow looming on the hill by the Dahlia Garden before the under two foot tall child got there.

"Gotcha! Reach for the sky, you little sweetie pie!" In her own rhyming sing-songy nature, Anna swings the toddler with the vivid yellow hair up high overhead into the air after the little sprightly, nameless waif had bolted from Flurru's back when her curious eyes watched Olaf cheerfully swinging his branches about in song at the fete across the drawbridge.

Her toddling inquisitive eyes had traced the snowman happily chewing on a stick of pink-dyed spun sugar cotton candy and the little orphan girl had a childish hankering to tweak his bright orange carrot nose that the pink spun sugar was dangling upon.

"Is she okay?!" A crazed with anxiety, and cautiously feeling culpable and liable for any mishap to the children put under his bride's care, a huffing and puffing Kristoff had caught up to where Anna had the runaway toddler in her arms.

The baby wordlessly yawns big in Anna's arms, making the Arendelle Princess giggle in delight.

"That meant 'Don't sweat the small stuff'. We've got this under control. Right, sweetie?" Anna translates the tiny unnamed child's exhausted yawn to her husband. She had, in her mad dash, somehow had the swift presence of mind to have grabbed a stick of cotton candy from where Ulf the pantomime was spinning it by the street vendor.

"I love you, Anna." Kristoff honestly admits with a smile that Anna shares up to her man who was beyond impressed at his bighearted woman's child-rearing skills already.

We're gonna get this right, Baby!

"Go pay the pasty-face man for this, Kristly." Into her role as a good little wife, Anna directs her faithful, out of breath mate to exchange a coin for the sweet treats she had purloined from the silent pantomime who was mimicking a call to the police direction.

"Oh, poor baby's tired. Let's sing her a lullaby while we get her back to the Sisters." Princess Lujza who was faster on her feet than would be expected by her shapely girth, having a few children of her own to chase after over the years, peers over Anna's shoulder.

She watches the effervescent young girl tuck the tiny child into her saddlebag like an Indian Mama with a thick canvas fabric wrap that Kristoff had tied around her to keep some of the little wriggle pants children close onboard. They had to keep up safety standards during the in-flight ride on the magic horses and reindeers after all.

Industrious hands-on Kristoff had devised the papoose-type sling to secure the smaller kids his Anna had been escorting upon their flying circus, just so no accidents happened.

Princess Lujza had instantly jumped on Sven to quickly land right beside an astonished Kristoff and Anna to lend her matronly assistance in the dicey matter.

"I like your ride, Bonito! (Handsome!)" The outwardly flirtatious woman pats Sven, who she had accosted, on the flank with one hand and Kristoff's reddened cheek with the other as he just returned from running around to pay Ulf the pantomime his due for the stolen cotton candy.

"Princess Anna! You are a natural with children! I bet you will have a brood of your own soon, if I'm any judge of this robust young fellow." Kristoff blinks at this boisterous royal lady's insinuation, coloring violently under Portuguese Princess Lujza's approving gaze as she looks him up and down and licks her rosy lips.

Kristoff wasn't sure she was outwardly being flirtatious with him, or simply was fond of the pink spun sugar treat he had purchased an extra one of for his sweet Anna and was holding for her.

"Now the right song to set the mood, bela menina (pretty girl)." The Portuguese woman returned her attention Anna and the fussy small child wriggling and yawning incessantly in the ginger's arms after the hungry child devours the sweet cotton candy in a few seconds flat.

"Evening is a-falling, so rest your weary head, don't cry little baby, sleep tight in your bed." The Portuguese Princess sings her own children's favorite lullaby, prompting Anna to sing along with her the comforting words with an encouraging smile.

"The stars will shine so brightly, in the sky above. Hush now little darling, bundled up with love." Musically inclined Anna quickly picks up on the lovely, flowing melody that she sings to the little wayward toddler to calm her down as she and fearless Lujza soar on Sven low to the ground and slow only a few feet above the hedges.

That's when Anna spies Yelena standing near a flickering of firefly light in time with the music floating on rhythmic winds above the ebbing waterfall near rolling hills where a stallion's silhouette could be seen in Egeskov's scenic Water Garden when their 5th Element sister accepted her true love's proposal.

You guys go on home now. Elsa's safe with Hans.

"Whoa." The ginger girl couldn't believe her own thoughts projected to the Elemental Spirits of Fire, Wind, Water and Earth - via her amazing Spirit Whisper Kristoff - concerning that particular man and her beloved sister.

But as the lullaby soothed into Anna's heart too, the generous girl could feel that, with a changed for the better Hans now, Elsa would be 'bundled up with love'.

Spiritual Yelena too hears this younger Queen of Northuldran blood speak to the depths of the Elements' spirits she, through the Spirit of Harmony was so connected to. With a slow wave and understanding nod, the native leader salutes the girl with the ginger hair who saved her country – and her sister's heart - more times than could be counted.

Onboard Sven, the withdrawn, frightened child calls back Anna's attention when the bright-eyed babe responds to Lujza and Anna's comforting song, soon opening her little arms wide up to embrace the late afternoon sky.

"I love you, Anna!" The heretofore mute baby repeats what Kristoff had said at take off as she snuggles her little face into Anna's sentimental warm chest.

"Aww…I love you, too." Anna hugs the little child with a sentimental smile down at Kristoff as they land on the ground again where he was waiting.

Anna turns back to wave one more time to the mysterious older woman and the four Spirits of the Elements just before the airborne reindeer lands. But they were suddenly all vanished when she looked back to the Water Garden's vista again.

"Hug time!" Just then, Olaf comes running up and gives the giggling tiny child her first cold-warm hug when Kristoff easily lifts the babe and Anna to the ground from Sven's back.

Prince Peiter comes over to help Lujza down too. He had with him a childless farmer and his wife, whom Peiter knew from his work in the Crown's Agriculture department. The middle-aged couple had become interested in adopting the vivacious, adorable toddler Anna's sunshine had touched and put on display, for yet one more happy ending to this phenomenal day.

Subsequently, most of the other curious children gather around Olaf, as the pleasant snowman was more than eager to hand out warm hugs to every one of them as he takes their names down to memory.

"Let's see...This will go much more smoothly if I categorize by hair color association…Hello, little girl with a tawny tan bob! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Margaret. Hello, little girl with a golden ponytail! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! Hello, medium height girl with ash brown ringlets! It's so nice to meet you, Una. Hello, big girl with a dark brown bun! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Lyn. Hello, chubby girl with ebony natural curls. I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! Hello, bouncy girl with black long hair! It's so nice to meet you, Fenja, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! Hello, smiling girl with bows in hair. It's so nice to meet you, Cicilia. Hello, pretty girl with brown pigtails! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Corrina. Hello, brown-eyed girl with ginger braids! Ooh! My favorite hairdo! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs! It's so nice to meet you, Kette…" The friendly snowman was only too happy to meet and greet one by one all twenty-two of Hans' nieces and give them an extra special hug after he introduces himself, quite repetitively, by memory game applicable.

"This may take a while." Crossing his manly arms, Kristoff drolly says as he and Anna stare in awe at their snow pea for a brain, snowy mountain for a heart, sociable snowman who did not know how to take shortcuts when it came to sharing love.

The tall mountain man hands a nodding Anna back her stick of cotton candy he'd been patiently holding like a good hubby, but not before Sven gets a nip off the top of the swirled sugary treat held between them.

As the sun begins to set, the luncheon buffet and excitement of the carnival-like fete the Snuggly Duckling boys provided, along with Kristoff and Anna and their flying circus to entertain the children begins to wind down, King Christian returns on Prince Kaleb's arm.

"I wish to thank everyone for participating in this wonderful party in honor of my birthday celebration that my many children have thrown for me here in these lovely, scenic gardens of our home. Egeskov has not seen such joy and happiness for far too many years and I thank you all for attending." King Christian presides over the end of the ceremony as many bright smiles sparkle back at him across several hectares of land. They were still ringing with so many boisterous sights and sounds of friendship and fun that were not permitted in his stoic kingdom for far too long.

"You all have my deepest gratitude for giving me such a day." King Christian gazes around the sea of descendents gathering around, his sons and their children and their wives all smiling up at him with more amiable affability passing between them than this family had seen in a lifetime here in the Southern Isles. "And now I officially declare this highly agreeable outdoor luncheon as clos—" Christian was about to formally pronounce the party over when Rapunzel's small voice pipes up from the side lines.

"Not… exactly… Your Majesty. Ummm… Before we go in for dinner, there's one more special presentation your grandchildren have put together for your birthday party celebration, Sire." With a sincere smile, Princess Rapunzel nods to Pascal who pulls on a rope tied around the flying Sven's back midair. Kristoff uses his arrows in a stunning display of his Wind Whisperer skills at his Saami longbow to precisely split apart another rope tying the net holding down to release a bevy of balloons.

Big Nose, Hilde and the Porcius sisters, along with Aged P, Gunther, Thor and Shorty had been blowing up balloons in all kinds of shapes with the Fattigskole missionary charity school children that the nuns had generously brought in to enjoy the sunny kid-friendly atmosphere when Mother Superior sent word of the unexpected festivity.

As the colorful ribbons, paper lanterns and newly invented vulcanized balloons filled with hydrogen touch the sunsetting sky, a chorus of beautiful voices begin to sing their birthday song Anna and Rapunzel had brainstormed as a salute to the old King.

King Christian never imagined such a multitude of pretty little girls, from ages two to twenty-five, would all raise their voices the smiling faces together in his honor. And that young Lukas whom Christian had been introduced to was there as well, participating as a boy soprano pitching in with the girls to sing for their before-unfriendly and unapproachable grandparent.

"For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow, the really best kind of friend! And so say all of us!" Anna's bright soprano joins Rapunzel's sweet tone leading the happy children, royal and plebian alike, all to lend their voices to the rousing song, first universally sung by all, then in the children's native Danish.

"For han er en af vor egne, for han er en af vor egne
For han er en af vor egne , en rigtig guttermand
En rigtig guttermand, en rigtig guttermand
For han er en af vor egne, for han er en af vor egne
For han er en af vor egne en rigtig guttermand!"

For the chorus' back up, mellow voiced Kristoff urges everyone from the Egeskov Royal guard to the servants and the Snuggly Duckling guys to harmonize their various tone colors. They each add to the congratulatory melody that the choir of young girls and boys from the convent school sweetly sing with the granddaughters of the Southern Isles in their Danish tongue to grandfather and King.

"Tillykke med fødselsdagen, bedstefar!" (Happy birthday, Grandfather!")

The innocent small ones saying this well-wishing salutation all together as one makes the old man scan over the spate of fresh vibrant faces of his grandchildren and his sons and daughters-in-law all genuinely wishing him well. King Christian could only smile with tears in his eyes at the wondrous legacy his Louise had left for him that he never took the time to realize the vast richness of before.

"That was truly beautiful, children. I have never had such a wonderful time before, on this day of new beginnings. I thank you all." King Christian nods to each of his family members as he squeezes Rapunzel and Anna's hands in either of his pleased, weatherworn, large ones.

"Now, after this glorious treat, I invite you all as my guests after dinner to the special ceremony reinstating my son, Prince Hans, back to his rightful place in this realm with all the privileges and prestige at his disposal again. We also will pay honor to a certain young hero -the child of someone so very close and dear to my heart - hailing from our neighbors of the continent in Prussia, for his bravery and chivalry performed this morning in saving the life of your King and the Crown Prince both. This after-dinner ceremony will certainly put the perfect justifiable close to this propitious, eventful day." Christian shares a nod with his eldest son and the assembly as he leads his visitors away from the Garden Party to move inside to the Castle.

Eldest son Prince Kaleb had done everything to his father's bidding as directed and had set up a swift knighthood assembly to award today's unexpected hero of his younger cousin with appropriate commendations for his valor, above and beyond the call of duty.

"We do have some special traditional clothes for you to wear at the ceremony later… Prince Consort Eugene. My personal valet Bates will be only too happy to assist dressing you, since your own man is…not present." Kaleb tries to make some pleasant small talk, but he was not quite blessed with that affable skill in such an awkward situation as being directed to award the son of his formerly disgraced Aunt with the most auspicious seat in the King's court, reserved only for the elite.

The official Royal Ceremony would now sanction Gypsy Prince Eugene Horace Fitzherbert Przmyslid as part of this kingdom of Denmark's realm he had nobly refused to inherit, in full recognition of his Mother, former Queen Alexis Auguste of the Southern Isles as a member of this Royal Danish house at last.

And perhaps that was just as Kaleb's regretful father intended, to show the world - and be an example to his sons - that it was never too late for him to make amends with the wrongs of his past to change for the good now.

I will abide by your decision, Sir, because you are and still deserve to be the King, and my Far (Father). Prince Kaleb muses the respectful thought, secretly truly glad inside that he neither would have to be crowned King for hopefully many years to come, now that his father seemed to have a new, and happier, lease on life.

"What's wrong with this outfit I've got on? I thought I look pretty summery chic dolled up like this! The snazzy leather vest ties the whole thing in." Vain Flynn Rider begins to freak out as high and mighty big brother Kaleb walks away after the ceremonial pronouncement. "Aw, Liebling! Do I really have to be dragged through all that pomp and circumstance?! My tattoos are still extremely sensitive to the touch and I am not looking forward to being suited up in some funky ceremonial duds to have me on display like a circus clown, showstopping as I may be!" A worked up Eugene, after tossing away an entire rich kingdom, was not so enthused about being trotted out and touted in some pomp and circumstance ceremony did not relish standing before all those ritzy foreign dignitaries and royal visitors to claim some chintzy medal award that snobs decided to pass around to each other as they had nothing else better to do with their time.

Now a hefty cash reward wouldn't go over too badly. I don't think that would be asking too much to switch a high-falutin' knighthood ceremony to a few bags of gold from this filthy rich kingdom I denied myself the pleasures of lording over. The naughty young man with nothing who had named himself Flynn Rider, who became a thief, who became a lost Prince, who became a found hero, once upon a time, still toyed with that first poor orphan boy dream of being surrounded by enormous piles of money on an island all his own.

Eugene was a bit tipsy still – or was that normal behavior for him? – as he stares greedily up at the tall spires of the grandiose Castle of Egeskov and all its vast wealth and choice land holdings that were offered him by birthright.

SMACK!

"Owwie! What was that for, Brownie?!" Setting his maltreated jaw right in his hand, the heroic man of courage and valor – soon to receive an award to be reverently knighted to the Danish court for throwing himself so selflessly over the reigning King and Crown Prince and thusly saving lives without a thought to his own—was not too high and mighty to let out a squeal.

That was result of his diminutive little wife punishing his mischievous mouth for that savvy tongue with a vicious whack to his right shoulder where the pirate Houtebeen's bullet Bruiser and Killer had inspected but had not yet located earlier, resided in him yet.

"Sorry! I forgot!" From annoyed green eyes to apologetic ones in a 180° turn, Rapunzel makes a wincing face at the result of her rash hand that caused her dear husband pain.

But then again, he was the root cause of hers… The pregnant Prussian Princess sucks in some much needed fresh air as one of the pair of little ones within her womb kick at their mommy for being so tough on their daddy.

"Oof." Rapunzel has to steady herself against Eugene's other raw shoulder, as she doubles over in expectant pain.

"See. Little Anxelin agrees with me. Hey! Watch where you're goin', Pixie! I'm about to become a very important personage around here." Eugene's gloat is cut short by an alerted Anna keenly watching those traipsing across Egeskov's pebbled path leading into the impressive front entrance before the Renaissance garden's fleur de lis box tree topiary.

"What's up with Elsa and Hans?" Ignoring Eugene, Anna glomps Rapunzel in a sisterly way as her eyes search for her family amid the noisy garden party scene that was breaking up,

Anna knew her big sister well enough by now to notice the way Elsa was stealing forlorn glances full of longing to the redheaded Prince walking several paces purposely behind her where she was rigidly marching beside their Papa.

"Anna, what do you mean? Is something wrong?" Rapunzel whispers to the young cousin conspiratorially as the pair of shining princesses lean their heads into one another's confidence.

"Something's up! I wonder what's happened – Kristly!?" Anna wonders aloud. Then a light dings off in her head when she just remembers that she had a mind reading, psychic love of a hubby at her beck and call.

Anna's hand shoots around Kristoff's thick neck so suddenly that she catches the big blond off guard as he had just finished putting away his bow and arrow to Sven, as he was responsibly getting the tired, children-weary beasts prepared for the stables to rest a while. The tall mountain man then trotted up to escort his wife into the open door castle for dinner.

"Hmmm? Elsa and Hans have a problem?" The blond Ice Harvester answers, his Spirit Whisperer prowess lightly delving into the couple's glassy demeanor at his bossy bride's demand.

"Whewww. Glad you and I have already tied the knot, Baby." After a few mentally scanned moments, Kristoff Bjorgman lets out a low whistle. He keenly feels the tumultuous vibes on the surface of their minds that passed between Elsa, her father, and her new beau, without totally invading any of their mental privacy.

Anna doesn't fight the urge to rush to Elsa's lonely side, wrapping an arm around her sister's ice cold shoulders, just as her Mama Iduna was doing the same with her calming warm presence at her father King Agnarr's side.

But as for Hans…

Anna could not in her kind heart be unsympathetic towards her former enemy, especially now that he was Elsa's dearest.

Meeting his constant eyes, Anna looks back to Hans who was left to walk through the ambiguity of his thwarted broken heart, now alone.

Although, his every loving glance that followed Elsa could never be forbidden from him by anyone on earth, save for her…

As they rejoined the dinner party from the unpleasant episode in the Ladegården, the visiting King and Queen of Corona and the three Queens of Arendelle were at least trying to be sociable with the other European dignitaries milling about Egeskov's trophy filled Entrance Hall.

But the perturbed Arendelle King was not so forthcoming beyond giving out a nod or grunt in recognition every now and then.

With his daughter's arm tucked firmly beneath his, wary King Agnarr had been monopolizing Elsa's attention from Hans purposely since they arrived in the castle. The possessive kingly father preferred to have Elsa at his side to assist him to navigate through the collective world leaders and representatives she, as Queen, had more dealings with since the gates had been opened.

After all, King Agnarr had only vague acquaintances with the other nations after being captive for the past seven years and a recluse long before that. But Elsa, with the gates wide open, had many more acquaintance with the other world leaders than he.

So Elsa, with her Mama Iduna, sighing in frustration, looking on, could do little but acquiesce to her duty as a daughter of the Royal house of Bernadotte, and respectful monarch of her nation, though her heart ached and her hands longed to claim her fiancé's arm instead. But the Ice Queen could only content her yearning with a rueful glance or two at a just as hungry for her Prince Hans.

For now, under her Papa's stringent ruling of mandatory separation, both knew their free time together was limited and oh-so-precious.

Meanwhile, whilst the now kinder and gentler Southern Isles Princes were waiting on the birthday boy hand and foot with a new affection for their parent, Anna and Rapunzel brainstorm with Princess Elisabeth and Princess Antoinetta – who secretly loved to dance with her elegant accomplished dancer husband Didrik - to propose an impromptu dance in the dust-covered Egeskov ballroom.

Why have a ballroom with no balls?!

Gracious Princess Isabelle even offers the services of her specially invited renowned opera singer, Jenny Lind "The Swedish Nightingale", whom Iduna, as a princess of Sweden and avid music lover, was enthused to finally meet.

The prolific conductor Niels Wilhelm Gade and the Danish Philharmonic orchestra would provide the rest of the music for the dinner.

So why not for a Royal Ball, too?

"What a splendid idea, little Anna! I'm ashamed to say that Egeskov has not hosted a formal ball in decades. Isn't that right, Emma, my dear?" King Christian latches right on Anna's excited notion when the uninhibited ginger girl had boldly waltzed into the Knight's Hall where the court had gathered after supper. The politely curtseying, still-lacking-that-essential-queenly-gait ginger marches right up to the Danish monarch to ask him the question her unsure Corona cousin couldn't bring herself to broach.

"Yes, Father, I believe you are correct. The last dance party we held here in Egeskov was probably at my own wedding to your Kaleb, almost thirty years ago." Princess Emma, the pragmatist Englishwoman, still finds a little romance in her hummed recall of the very tune she and her new husband had danced to then.

"Then we shall have one now, and I will ask you and Kaleb to open the ball in my stead, my dear." Proving that he still knew how to be sociable after all these long, cold years, King Christian instructs his eldest daughter-in-law to exercise her right as Lady of this House in his Louise's place. Emma would initiate the dance party that enthusiastic Anna had already dashed off to set into motion with many of the ecstatic Princess grandchildren whom she had made fast friends with.

"Oh, no, Father. I'm afraid I have put on far too many pounds to ever be fit to dance a jig again without incurring ridicule. I will have to defer that honor to a younger, lither woman." The plump and retiring, over fifty-year-old British Princess chuckles at herself and reluctant Prince Kaleb in agreement on her arm.

"Forgive us Father, but dancing is out of the question with my bad back." Eldest son Kaleb, at forty-nine years of old age and suffering persistant lower back pain, makes excuses to decline the honor.

"Don't be silly! What is this obstinate adverseness to dance in your generation, Kaleb? In our day, there was no more favored pastime for young people, eh, Christian? Age nor girth should be a barrier for a waltz at least, boy." King Friedrich contradicts, willing to speak up after seeing his daughter Rapunzel's eagerness for the activity.

His own seventy-six-year-old, plus sized body had feet that were beginning to tap when effervescent Princess Isabelle and Anna had informed the orchestra – just setting up for the after dinner performance in the parlor – of their King's approval, starts to play an inviting waltz.

"Agreed, Friedrich! Let us never claim to be 'too old or fat or weary to enjoy moving the bodies God gave us to the music He set our lives to, with someone dear." King Christian fondly remembers how his fiery Scottish redhead Louise had adored having him sweep her across the dance floor of their dust covered ballroom once upon a long time ago.

And Gussy…dear Gussy would light up the dance floor in exquisite rhythm and beat and time like a firefly with angel's wings whenever she had the chance…I remember how she taught me to waltz…

'One, two, three, Crix. One two three, dance along with me!'

"Elsie!" King Christian suddenly calls out his pet name for his favorite 'maid'.

Queen Elsa looks up from where she had been in the Knight's Hall, dutifully exchanging courtesies with the Italian, French and Spanish diplomats among other foreign envoys who had been so intent in meeting her father King Agnarr and mother Queen Iduna. They were all interested to hear a retelling of he and his wife's dramatic rescue. The aloof King of Norway consented, perhaps just to keep Elsa away from clinging to that young Westergaard's denied arm as she seemed so wont to do.

"Do pardon me, your Eminence, your Lordship. Papa, Mama." Her ears perked up, Elsa respectfully bows to each Bishop and dignitary and then her royal parents before she moves towards King Christian's beckon.

Of course, just as the septuagenarian anticipated, Hans was, like a loyal puppy, immediately at her side to lend Elsa his arm as she crosses the bustling Knight's Hall to his Father, thw King.

"Your sister Princess Anna –" Christian begins to address Elsa's large luxuriant eyes upon him, after having to process much information about Arendelle he'd gleaned from his guests, with Anna already slipping in the fact to the King of Denmark that she was gladly retiring from being fill-in Queen.

"Actually it was cousin Rapunzel's idea, too!" A giddy voiced Anna generously interjects, pinching Rapunzel's arm with a sibling-like squeeze. She rudely, yet endearingly to the aged King, garners a chastising head shake from Elsa at her impish little sister's impertinence to an older man, let alone monarch, who deserved more respect.

"– Then your cousin, through your sister, if that is permitted –" King Christian bemusedly acquiesces to Elsa's cute little sister's funny ways. "– has proposed a wonderful idea for us to hold a dance. And I, in my birthday celebratory mood, have consented wholeheartedly to it." The King of the Southern Isle felt happier than he had in ages each time more he gazed to this singular Norwegian beauty's eyes full of faith, hope, and love, particularly for his once abandoned youngest boy standing devotedly behind her.

"That does sound wonderful, Your Majesty. Anna." Elsa responds in a compassionate smile that Anna was pleased to have brought to her face again. Both Arendelle sisters then look up to the older man who no longer frightened them with that inexplicable cold aloofness not reflected anymore in the crystal clear, unclouded mirror of his eyes.

"I'm glad you approve, your Majesty. There is only one stipulation left to my participation in this impromptu affair." Christian dangles the enigmatic phrase before Elsa, with a mischievous glint in his eye at Anna over her sister's head as the trio move towards the ballroom.

"Yes?" Elsa asks, something about the way the King sentenced this statement tickling her lips to giggle.

"That you, Queen Elsa of Arendelle, be my first dance partner." The King says decidedly, taking Elsa's pale blue gloved hands in his warmly.

"Dance?" Taken off guard, reticent Elsa's first instinct was to turn to Hans at her side for his opinion on this unexpected matter, to which Hans could only offer her an encouraging nod with a smile.

"But…King Christian, I'm hardly an accomplished dancer –" The reserved young woman in Elsa denies her dancing Queen skills as she takes a restrained step backwards in reluctance.

"Queenie's just being modest, Onkel. I've seen Her Legginess strut her stuff before. Don't take 'no' for an answer. They never do." Eugene pipes up here with a wry smirk and a wink up at the King, remembering how Elsa had forced him into a dance at Anna's wedding about a month or so ago, if just to get him and his estranged wife back into one another's arms.

As Eugene was smirking at Elsa, the snide thief was almost giddy getting even until he finds himself yet again yanked away into Rapunzel's eager to dance arms, despite his constant protests still that 'I don't dance'.

"Whoa! See! I told you! Ugh, Females! Gotta love'em!" Eugene cries out as he's spun to the dance floor's periphery.

Smiling at this most amusing new nephew's innuendo, King Christian seems to speak with a touch of regretful melancholy. He was remembering his bedridden Scottish beauty's final request to him to be waltzed around their bedroom when she was first found out she was pregnant with their last child, namely Hans, in her later years.

'Deny me not, one last dance.'

It was as if you knew there would not be another ballroom for you, Louise… Christian doesn't fight back the tears freely flowing from his eyes as he smiles through them to lead Elsa in several slow, measured steps of a waltz to the sovereign's requested tune of 'The Last Rose of Summer'.

As the sweeping intro music begins, Prince Hans relinquishes his fiancée's hand to his aged parent with a smile.

Blushing Elsa was as lovely a dance partner to the emotional King as she was empathic to his heightened nostalgia. For she, the only other one ever permitted to read Queen Louise's last missive, could appreciate the undying love that the good woman held for this man, even through years of painful hardship and a cold heart's separation.

"She would be so proud to see you here with all of your sons at last." Elsa boldly whispers to King Christian as she glides gracefully, close to him in the slow rhythmic waltz together.

"Thank you for that, my Elsie. I am so very grateful that it was you who brought my Hans home." Christian smiles through his sadness at the happy thought that this dutiful young woman with soon be part of his family, too.

"Now you mustn't waste anymore of your fine waltzes on anyone but your true love, my girl. Sometimes all you have is that one last dance." With a heavy heart, Christian speaks wise words as he hopes for Hans and Elsa's love to blossom. The gray-haired King directs Elsa's gaze to land upon the strikingly handsome face of the redheaded young man watching in rapt attention her every smooth, glided move across the floor.

"I have enjoyed our dance immeasurably, Queen Elsa, but my old legs have grown too tired to finish our waltz. Perhaps I can offer you a suitable stand-in in my son, Prince Hans." The plotting older King motions for that certain younger man eagerly waiting in the wings to come towards them as the king pauses in mid-dance at the center of the ballroom.

"That is, if he doesn't disappoint to complement your elegant moves, Queen Elsa." Christian comes out of his sadness with a teasing, hopeful gleam in his eye for Hans as the svelte prince approaches. King Christian, in his detached coldness of yesteryear particularly concerning Hans, had no knowledge of this last son's upbringing in proper decorum, etiquette and essential dancing technique that every gentleman must have under his belt after puberty if he was to correctly woo women.

"Yes, Father. I can assure you that my education had not been lacking in that skill. I can even securely say I quite distinguish myself in that field." Full of confidence in his dancing ability, Hans teases right back. There was a cocky smile on his stunning features that glisten in the intermittently speckled last rays of sunlight streaming in the ballroom that made the handsome Prince all the more alluring in Elsa's smitten eyes.

"Then I leave you with this rare beauty with all my esteem, my boy." Jovial King Christian nods deferentially to his youngest child whom the old King now could see such potential and a prodigious future riding upon now. He also could see Hans' gleaming, striking red-headed resemblance to his Mother Louise, linking the King's thoughts to the past too, but now in a reminiscent happy light.

Before taking his position as her dance partner, Hans makes a flourishing gentlemanly bow to Elsa, utterly taking the breath away of the blonde Queen before he gently yet firmly takes her hand in his.

King Christian marvels at how perfectly Hans and Elsa fit together as the two begin the waltz in timed rhythm as the Danish King retires to the sidelines where Kaleb and several of his sons were waiting for him there with a padded Royal chair they had the footman quickly carry in to the ballroom for the older gent.

With a smile, Christian agrees to sit as he probably watches Hans and Elsa now lead the waltz across the ballroom's romantic setting, as several more couples of his paired off guests and sons and daughters-in law start to join in.

Though it was not Kristoff's forte, the big mountain man never shirked his duty to accommodate his peppery girl who thrived on an energetic turn around the floor. And wearing this golden yellow, classy Egeskov guardsman uniform, Kristoff looked darn good doing it, too.

"Did I ever tell you I love it when you are all yellow and buttery?" Anna says as she melts like said butter into his arms. Confident to follow her lead wherever she took him, compliant Kristoff smirks at his ginger bride as he dances along with her vibrant, albeit frenzied, dance moves around the ballroom until he was dizzy.

"Hey! Slow down, Pixie! There is an energy level speed limit on this dance floor. You've gotta give other folks a chance to catch their breath. Looking good though, my man, as you keep up with your whirling dervish, Muscles." Eugene admonishes Anna and compliments Kristoff as he and his own natural dancer, Rapunzel, make a pass on the growingly populated dance floor.

Several of the royal couples stream out to the dance floor to add their own rhythm as classical music from the polished Royal Danish Philharmonic fills the air.

"I must say, both of your girls are excellent dancers, Agnarr, Queen Iduna. You must be good teachers." King Christian smiled amicably when the Norwegian King and his Queen approach him before the dance floor. "Why don't you two go in for a waltz? You're both still young and vital for the more upbeat dances than this old man." Laughing Christian's roving eye looks Iduna up and down with approval at her secret native beauty he recalled seeing in fluid motion on this very ballroom before almost three decades ago.

Then his old blue eyes travel to her chilly husband.

Wasn't there a bit of a ruckus then? Something to do with this Norwegian Crown Prince upstart and one of my elder sons vying over this indigo-eyed maiden…?

Agnarr had trailed Elsa soon after she left him to watch her dancing with old King Christian, only to be glowering now that the elderly King had bequeathed Agnarr's daughter to Prince Hans' arms.

"Thank you for saying, King Christian." Queen Iduna answers as congenially as she could, but a perturbed Agnarr, not so fond of visiting the Danes socially, had been giving everyone, herself included, the cold shoulder all afternoon and her infinite patience was wearing thin. "But I don't believe my husband is in the mood for dancing."

"Mores the pity, Iduna. Someone so lovely should never be left a wall flower. May I at least have the pleasure? I do remember you did enjoy a fine dance to ''Bid Me Discourse' all those years ago." As his own wife Princess Frederika with her sister-in-law Emma had been busy in directing the maids and servants in calm proper seating arrangements for the older visitors out here in the garden, Prince Anders was sorely lacking a dance partner.

The insightful, scheming man had noticed how Agnarr had been sullen cold all afternoon towards his pretty wife and thought it was about time to one up the 'Ice King.'

"Why, Prince Anders! At least you remember this is my favorite waltz." Her youth again alive in the magic of melody, Iduna claps her hands together. Her feet were itching to dance to the operatic singer's inviting song and she was almost tempted to take the bait. But maturity's greater judgment prevailed.

Or did it?

"Why not?" Iduna whispers to herself more than anyone after giving a long-suffering glance to her currently immovable, sullen King who was spending more time passing out menacing icy glares at everyone in the ballroom who went by than enjoying the moment.

"I would be delighted to dance with you, Anders." Queen Iduna says to the tall, dark and handsome man whom she was once expected to marry, taking his large, gloved offered hand in her small, delicate one. As the Danish Chancellor sweeps her around the ballroom to the nostalgic song she and he danced to decades before, Iduna instantly felt like that impulsive spirited girl who reveled in taking wild risks all over again, as the years between them melt away…

As does King Agnarr's frosty manner. His already perturbed 'protective father' emotions directed at Hans with Elsa traipsing around the ballroom like lovers, goes for a wild ride of cold vengeance and incensed anger towards his romantic nemesis, Anders, as a beyond jealous husband now.

Still a young enough woman to enjoy the thrill of the chase, Iduna relishes in how urbane Anders had not lost that dark and dangerous, debonair edge as he flourishingly skirts her away from Agnarr. He stylishly deports himself in their waltz with that same polished sophistication that the calculated politician gave the teenaged Iduna the suave sense of twenty nine years ago during their turbulent courtship.

In a well-turned dance step, Prince Anders smoothly dips Iduna after a graceful spin around at the music's climax as the seasoned pair, dazzling the crowd, appeared every bit as well-matched in their waltz as any couple ever was.

Watching his old enemy take liberties with his own beloved wife with envious eyes, along with tremendous jealousy rising in his livid chest, Agnarr could not hold back any longer. The challenged Ice King glares one more time behind him at an energetic Hans for literally spinning Elsa elegantly like a ballerina doll around the room as if they were professional ice dancers in a competition.

But the Ice King tears his verglas palest blue eyes away from his daughter and her undesired beau to more imperatively stare down his disloyal bride in irritated disbelief instead with emotions that had reached the ice breaking limit.

Crossing the polished floor in a sub-zero cloud of frigidness that all the other couples around had the common sense to back away from to create a cleared path for the irate Ice King, Agnarr takes Iduna's arm rather forcibly possessive to claim his wife away from her none-too-surprised partner Prince Anders as the song just finishes.

As he separates her from Danish Prince Anders, who sustained the actual cold shoulder quite manfully, Agnarr's unconstrained cryokinetics were only slowly abated by the heat of his raw jealousy mixed with the warmth of the song on the lips of his healing Queen.

Iduna, in her coquettish chastisement of her mate, had not forgotten to be prayerfully harmonizing along with Jenny Lind the opera star all during their waltz, much to Anders' raised brow quizzical enjoyment as they danced.

Agnarr's wily Queen had been banking on her innate curative abilities she directed her Northuldran spirit to reach across the room to her husband's chilly soul. And she hoped her song would quell her love's hot anger at his rival stealing his woman away to spare this ballroom section of poor Egeskov from a sudden, unseasonable indoor ice blizzard.

Without a word, Agnarr spins Iduna around the ballroom dance floor to the Swedish Nightingale's fitting, spirited yet emotional, melody of 'Love's Eyes'. The song, quite coincidentally, was played at the Arendelle Crown Prince and his new bride's wedding, in what seems but yesterday to the currently arguing pair of royal lovebirds.

"Love's Eyes are so enchanting, Bright, smiling, soft and granting,
Pulses play at every ray, And hearts at every glance are panting.
Before the beamy eye of morn We view the clouds of night receding;
So tender glances banish scorn, For who can frown while Love is pleading?
Love's eyes are so enchanting."

No bandage can those eyes conceal, Though bards in fabled tales rehearse it;
For if we wore a mask of steel, Affection's ardent gaze would pierce it.
Love's eyes are so enchanting.'"

Through his rigid ice, the Norwegian sovereign's eyes were just as fervent as they were then upon this lovely woman with the enchanting eyes for the whole of his life, would be his one and only queen. With her glowing look of amused adoration up at him with the girlish, impish glint, Iduna knew she won this round of their sparring match called 'love'.

A warming-up Agnarr could feel his Iduna's eyes full of pure love were still only for him, despite her seeming flirtations with her old fiancé to bring the stubborn man around to realize it. He shakes his head in amazement at her subterfuge, with a small shadow of a smile gracing his still attractive features.

"You have always been able to best me, my Songbird — and that's one of the many reasons why I fell in love with you." He whispers to her, voice full of admiration.

"Just bring out the best in you, my darling, because I love you so much." Iduna smiles gratefully over Agnarr's stabilized shoulder to a saluting Prince Anders who was left in the Norwegian couple's proverbial – and physical – snow dust.

"He beat you to it again, Anders?" Princess Frederika, who had come from her duties outside to claim her husband for an enjoyable rousing dance only to find him offering his services to his old flame, raises an eyebrow to her political husband.

"No, my sweet. Just doing my public service. He's welcome to her enigmatic charms. Besides, only a fool would not recognize that those two we made for one another. Just as you and I were, my dear Frederika." Anders smiles most charmingly. "Shall we dance, Madam Chancellor?" Quite eloquently, the political leader of Denmark extends his hand in answer to his wife with his handsome profile replete with genuine sentiment for once in his calculating life.

"I thought you would never ask, Chancellor." Princess Frederika accepts her man's hand as he leads her into the dancing foray, steering quite clear of the Norwegian royal couple.

Two by two, several more of the Danish princes and their wives add to the dancing scene, as well as Job, at Rapunzel's insistence. The tall Caribbean, who had also been dressed up by some of the more modest Princesses, was the 'belle' of the ball, with every eligible granddaughter of the King wishing to take a turn with the tall, dark and mysterious foreign man.

"'Beware, then, lest some artful elf
The infant's smiles and armor borrow,
To win a throb of joy for self,
And give his victims years of sorrow
Love's eyes are so enchanting.'"

As the melancholy final verse to "Love's Eyes" continued in their waltz, Iduna's eyes were closed as she was pressed against her man's cool chest, lost in reminiscence of that special day. But the closer King Agnarr drew himself and an unwitting Iduna towards a dancing Elsa and Hans, the more his cold anger was reignited again as Agnarr applies to the words of the song.

What business has this redheaded, artful Dane in monopolizing the Queen of Norway's dance card after I have made my thoughts on the matter clear? Impertinent hellion. A suspicious Agnarr felt this his fatherly duty to intercede before his impressionable, naïve girl formed further attachment to this scamp.

Tap. Tap.

"May I cut in…Sir?" Abruptly switching partners on the dance floor, before Iduna had a chance to protest, the impetuous parent confronts the young suitor who gentlemanly bows to Elsa's father, relinquishing Elsa, much to both their disappointment.

"Your Majesty." Deflated by the King's cold glare, Hans nods to the older Queen of Arendelle, heart wrenched as he takes up dancing with Queen Iduna by rote.

"Oh, Hans. Sigh. I love him dearly, but my husband is being so impossible to you! Please don't take it personally. He would be like this to any challenger for his precious girl's affections. Just keep trying, please, he must come around." Iduna complains, when the pair danced out of earshot of the double icy monarchs of Arendelle. At least she hoped she could eventually dissuade her Agnarr's stubborn recalcitrance to face any reality that didn't suit his hard-line vision of an idyllically stagnant happy family with his children.

"The Admiral is only doing what he thinks best for his daughters. It is admirable. If I were ever blessed to have such a beautiful and accomplished daughter as Elsa, I fear I would be as possessive and protective much the same way myself." Speaking as only a truly repentant man would, Hans sympathizes with Agnarr, He smiles across the room where Elsa and her Papa were wordlessly dancing the same dance, though their hearts and minds could be no further part on the heady subject of love for her future.

"You are too gracious, dear boy." Queen Iduna admires the sage young man's erudite magnanimity that rarely time and experience could train a man's mind possessed so well. "You remind me of your mother, Queen Louise, with her discernment and soulful understanding that went beyond years." Iduna muses as she brushes a hand to Hans' sideburned cheek.

Hans innocently flushes at the older woman's tender maternal touch. "As a young girl of only sixteen myself, I met your mother only once, here in this very ballroom when you were still in her womb, little Prince." As the slow waltz continues, Iduna recalls that memory when Prince Anders' kind, soft-spoken mother in her confinement wished to come out and sit and meet her sons and their sweethearts at her eldest son, Prince Kaleb's engagement party to Princess Emma.

"She was a beautiful woman inside and out, and I know Queen Louise would be pleased with you, even without her loving hand to guide your steps. She must be there up in Heaven, I'm sure, in praise to the Lord to see you now. Any mother would be proud to have such a thoughtful, good and courageous son." At Iduna's sweet words, Hans' eyes fill with tears, though he knew not why.

The intangible emotion unexpectedly rips at his still innocent heart, forever longing for his mother's love. Coming from this mother of the one he loved, it meant so much more, giving him hope in stark contrast to her husband.

"Thank you, Queen Iduna. I will always think of you as my benefactress. I hold your boundless generosity in great worth and will never depart from my vow to remain constant and true to your daughter, no matter how long it takes." Hans squeezes back her little hands with as much warmth and caring in response to Elsa's mother's charitable encouragement to an abandoned child who yearned for a mother's love for very long time.

"Benefactress? I prefer 'Mother-in-law' far better." A beautifully smiling Iduna reassures under her breath in Hans' viridescent eyes of their eventual relationship, if the spirited woman had any say in the matter.

Which she would, just given time.

After sharing the tender moment, both their eyes gaze out to where Elsa and her stubborn father were silently crossing the dance floor, uncertain of what emotional tumult was lying ahead for them all.

Once inside Egeskov Castle, the montage of princes and princesses, their children, diplomats, ambassadors, distinguished clergyman and sisters of the cloth had all gathered through the Banquet Hall for the sure-to-be-replete five course meal.

Over the two thousand plate service of the gold gilt set of the fancy setting that once was the pride of Queen Louise for entertaining, dainty small portions of rosemary rubbed squab and herring, potatoes au gratin, lobster bisque and fresh crabcakes were served. The giant black tiger shrimp that served as roasted butterfly prawns that Denmark was famed for was the King's favorite cuisine in all flavors and fancy recipes that Egeskov's flustered downstairs cook Mrs. Patmore could come up with imaginatively for her master's birthday.

All the while, Princess Anna had been trying to discover what had occurred between her sister and Hans that could have so dispirited the previously elated couple from just this morning in the church.

What happened to make Hans and Elsa become so solemn and serious now during their trek to the big house and here at dinner time with nary a word passed between them?

Sandwiched between twins Prince Rune and Prince Berte, with Kristoff across the banquet table between the pair of Russian princesses cattily placed on either side of him - one in flutter-eyed admiration, the other in snobbish disdain - Anna could only give Elsa, up further at the front end of the table, an encouraging toothy grin.

And Elsa, lost in her own jumbled anxieties that she was attempting to drown in her indulgent warmed dessert of crème brûlée, could only weakly smile back to her concerned little sister.

That was when Czar Nicholas chooses to stand up from his seat beside Queen Iduna to make a toast.

"Let zere be a toast to King Christian and his bounteous feast on zis special day where he has gained de treasure of not one, but two new daughters with intention to join his Royal house with ours, King Agnarr." The Eastern European speaks quite eloquently in his heavily accented voice. "First, to my jewel of the Crown, Princess Eugenia and your fine son, Prince Rune's auspicious engagement of marriage. May zeir attachment bring much profit and beneficial reward to each of our powerful Kingdoms, King Christian, adjoined for many years to come." In his thick accent, the Russian Czar stands after the chocolate filled dessert to raise his filled glass to be toasted.

"To Crown Princess Eugenia and Prince Rune!" The gathering of over fifty highborn and connected party guests raise their collective glasses to the celebratory toast that the Russian monarch presented for his worshipped first child.

Princess Eugenia stands and nods regally to everyone with her self-important airs as she looks down her cute little nose to Prince Rune, his naturally ruddy face even redder in the spotlight as she places her hand upon his.

"Here! Here! May you have many children with just as rosy complexions and lust for gaudy jewelry!" King Edmund loudly chirps in with his strange toast that had his in-law Queen Arianna nervously chuckling in her seat.

"Yes, indeed! King Agnarr? I hand ze floor to you, Sir." In a particularly jolly mood now that his tummy was full of the delicious tastes and his mouth was well supplied with vodka and cocktails, along with his children's futures being secured with this proud Danish kingdom, Czar Nicholas turns to the stoic man seated across from him with the open invite.

It was the Norwegian ruler's turn to give proper salute to the Danish King at the head of the hundred foot long table in Egeskov's Great Banquet Hall where the four visiting, high-ranking monarchs gathered sat at this end of the table near their host.

"Ah… Yes… A toast…" Taken by surprise, and a bit rusty in public speaking with every eye in the room upon him expectantly, King Agnarr chokes on his glass of chilled champagne. A long, awkward pause fills the silence as everyone awaits the mysterious King of Norway's much awaited announcement of his daughter's marriage to one of the sons of this kingdom.

"Come, man, don't be shy! I know how hard it is to part with our precious daughters, but you must give us a proper sendoff for your lovely Elsa, as I did for my Rapunzel all those happy years ago! And look, her thief turned out to be a double Royal Prince in between their betrothal and wedding! Your future son-in-law already has his title back, so you're all the better." One upping his in-law King Edmund in tact, King Friedrich blurts out to his taciturn brother-in-law, causing his wife to hang her head in shame at the pair of men on either of her sides.

The gregarious Prussian monarch, after his second full shot of vodka shared with the Czar seated closeby, prompts the reticent King Agnarr to break his icy silence and speak.

Agnarr pauses to stare a long look at a trepidatious Elsa and Hans, and lastly his Queen before raising his long stemmed glass of bubbly.

"I must admit to you all that this comes somewhat of a surprise to me…" The Ice King was not very fond of crowds since his own sheltered youth. But as head of his kingdom, Agnarr had trained himself to speak his mind honestly and boldly before an audience as he gathers his discombobulated thoughts frosting between cold and heat.

With a stroke to his fine moustache, King Agnarr looks across the table one more time to where his wife then closes her eyes, praying exceedingly for her love's eloquence, benevolence and good diplomacy that he generally lacked, particularly when it came to the unpleasant subject of his daughters and young men.

"Please, raise your glasses, honored assembly, to a splendid and happy future full of joy and God's providential blessing in store for my Elsa, our beloved Queen of Arendelle –" Agnarr pauses to gaze at his platinum blonde daughter lovingly, "– and a fortuitous, successful career for your son, Prince Hans, who has gained my confidence to be appointed as my new Vise Admiral and second in command of my fleet of the Sjoforsvaret." Agnarr then tips his champagne glass with the cautiously worded toast towards a raptly listening Hans seated across from Elsa, several prominent seats forward from where he would have been as thirteenth-in-line son before.

"To Queen Elsa…and Prince Hans!" It took a great deal of King Agnarr's restraint to even utter the blessing of his dear child's name in the same breath as that upstart Dane who had so intruded in upending his illusion of another chance at interrupted family life. He still longed for the childhood bliss they missed out on, this time again with his reunited daughters and felt this time was his second chance to make things right.

"To Queen Elsa and Prince Hans!" The gathering of the European royalty and envoys of all nations showered their pleasant smiles upon the more handsome couple of the newly affiancéd presented tonight.

As King Agnarr beams down upon her proudly with hope his beloved child was not too cross with him for their quarrel earlier, Elsa blushes under all the public attention. She smiles an earnest, grateful smile of slow reconciliation up to her father for, though it was tepid on congratulations, his toast did not offhandedly reject nor publicly dismiss her choice of her betrothal to Prince Hans.

Heartened and satisfied that Elsa seemed more adjusted to their tentative trial basis, Vise Admiral Hans stands to quite dashingly give a Navy style salute to his munificent naval leader and perhaps – with a glimmer of icicle thin slim hope that this toast signified – future father-in-law...

I will prove to your father that I will remain constant through any tribulations in wait for you… I am that certain, my Snowflake, no amount of time could ever part us.

"Wonderful, gentleman! Our nations will certainly benefit in so many categories now that our children have brought us together, not only as neighbors, but as family, through their blossomed love and affection for one another." King Christian nods to each of those around the table representing the nations to which his sons had spread the again proud name of 'Westergaard.'

"Family is very important to me, now. For the Lord gave us our kith and kin to be there to stand by us when all else fails. I have been taught that love has the power to forgive any past wrong, and will come around someday with the proper warmth to light the way of Truth." The Danish King gazes directly to Elsa with a grateful nod at how she altered his broken mindset and cold heart before it was too late. "At the end of my years, these special young people and their great, absolving love for one another have made me realize what makes a man so much richer in this life - more than all the lands and kingdoms and power over nations - is the knowledge that, under our Creator's blessed generosity, we will take our family's love with us when we go. Nothing more, nothing less." Christian meets each of his sons' gazes, finally to land upon Hans who had sparkling, thankful full eyes to the icy blonde beauty across the table for finding it in her generous heart to love and forgive him.

King Christian of the Southern Isles, like his son, was wise enough to own that he owed the open path to the salvation of his frozen cold soul to Queen Elsa as well.

"To love and family." Raising his glass and heartened head up high, King Christian makes the final profound toast of the evening that spoke of everything his once mirror warped and weakened heart could now at last feel and see clearly.

Embraced in that tender palpable emotion, Elsa and Hans shyly exchange a blushing glance full of the hope and longing for their proposed love to come to fruition some day. As Anna and Kristoff raise their champagne glasses to Elsa and Hans, the pair also raises the toast in salute to one another as Queen Iduna smiles broadly at both her children who had found true love through it all.

Though her King Agnarr still looked upon his daughters' chosen men charily as he sips his own champagne, he finds himself surprisingly in fundamental agreement with Danish King Christian on the subject of family, love and forgiveness.

Now the stubborn King just had to apply it to Hans and Kristoff, with the loves of his precious daughters on the line.

This may take some time…Please be patient, boys… Iduna 's smile curls into a wry simper at her slow burning, iceberg for a brain, warm on the inside, igloo hearted, unsociable ice-man who also did not know how to take shortcuts when it came to sharing love.

After the dinner was complete, King Christian and his sons move towards Egeskov's decimated Throne room.

Although there was a big gaping blackened hole in the midst of the marble flooring in the otherwise pristine King's court where Count Rügen's grenade had imploded, a large crimson curtain had been tastefully hung. It covered the cracked out wall where rows of fancy windows once resided, because the Danish Royal court was still a place that demanded decorum and respect.

King Christian takes to his throne that the penitent man had almost bequeathed to another who refused it. The King was able to slowly walk each step up to the seat of respect he has occupied for these fifty years under his own power. Although Prince Kaleb and Prince Anders were sentinels on either side of their father kept a watchful eye that he did not stumble on his way to his throne.

So now the audience gathers in the balcony gallery, as others followed the princes into the court to take their places on the dais full of seats where an actual court trial had taken place only hours ago.

This was to be a celebration, after a trial of Redemption that had changed the life of the gallant young Prince to now be fully accepted by his own after so many empty years of derision and mockery by his brethren in the land of his birth. While another's bravery brought him here to be honored by those who should have reviled him in jealousy as the renounced Gypsy outcast of their venerated kingdom the forsaken son was meant to inherit.

"The Crown calls Hans Westergaard to come before the court!" A herald guard in all his traditional breeches and puffed sleeve finery calls upon the young man who had been disowned and disinherited from his kingdom four years ago and now was present to reclaim his birthright title as a Prince of Denmark.

With a bolstering glance from Elsa placed by King Christian to stand beside him, an elated, puffed up inside Hans strides up the center aisle of the court. There, his father was intimidatingly seated on the Danish Throne where the young outcast boy had never been permitted to enter.

Though Hans, as a curious, clever, cunning child, had snuck in once, when no one was looking and even dared to sit upon that throne. There he pretended, at least for a little while, that he was King, in his own kingdom of isolation.

Of course, that haunting, lonely memory that only he knew of was the one that Hans remembers in this important moment in his life as he nears the King's seat of power.

Shutting his eyes tightly with the regret of his insolent, ambitious past, Hans gracefully falls to his knees with all the poise and deportment of royalty as he lowers his eyes down at the King's feet.

Christian looks down on his final son's grace and reverent dignity with all the paternal pride he had withheld from Hans for far too many years.

"I, King Christian, hereby do issue the edict that, from henceforth, my son, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, should be recognized and honored with all the due respect befitting a Royal Prince of this Southern Isles kingdom of Denmark, as well as my dear son." The gray bearded King announces this ceremonial statement of recognition that would mean so much to the disowned child of this realm.

"So as you have been deemed fit, Prince Hans, for this high estate by myself and your peers to regain all of your entitled due worth as the thirteenth Royal Prince of this realm and all its holdings. And I decree, as Sovereign Monarch of this Kingdom of the Southern Isles, that you, as my heir, shall assume your primary right of ownership as Lord of Augustenborg Palace and all its lands and estate holdings thereof in the fiefdom of Sønderborg as your personal property. I trust you so to uphold as ruling manor lord the citizens there with all the profit of its rich vast farmlands and seabound naval value, as well as its auspicious castle complex. I wish for your beautiful new bride to consider your palace estate of Augustenborg as your Danish summer home, just a short distance across the Belt so you could visit me in my old age."

King Christian unexpectedly bestows an important castle with quite a bit of worth to it to a flabbergasted Hans. The King loops the badge around Hans' unsuspecting neck with the cord strung into Augustenborg Castle's royal crest emblazoned upon it for its new Lordship to proudly don.

"Father?" An emotionally affected Hans was holding back manly tears at this momentous act of his once cold and detached parent to grant him not only back the title that Hans' own rightfully punishable crimes had incurred the recourse of, but also more than his share as thirteenth in line. He had never been well endowed with a monetary fund or estate all his life though he had yearned for one, just as his other brothers were given. But disliked as he was by the King, no one ever made allowances for him with anything much.

More poignantly now, Christian was giving his fatherly trust for Hans to be responsible heir to this vast estate to the Southern Als Island's wealthy, rich farmland to the eastern coast o. Hans puffs up with pride to imagine himself as a manor tenure landowner of a nearly 1500 hectare whole section of this country now at his command as leader of it.

"Rise, Prince Hans of Augustenborg." King Christian grants Hans the title that he had been deprived of and overlooked to inherit even a small pittance of what this farm rich vast storehouse would yield, like all his other brothers were already title-holder of.

"Thank you, Father." Hans stands and quite un-decorously grasps tight his father's extended hand that was resting around the sceptre in both of his grateful slim ones. For above this incredible bequeathment of the magnificent 17th Century Rococco style Augustenborg estate, it was the returned recognition meant the world to this outcast child who now finally achieved his father's acknowledgment as his son.

In a daze, trembling Prince Hans does not return to his seat, but rather paces about the edges of the Throne Room, by the windblown curtain to get some air to steady himself and his frayed nerves for all the attention the audience was giving him.

Elsa proudly had watched the ceremony take place, observing how her love received back his title and rightful domain as she gains an encouraging, disbelieving smile from her astounded little sister.

After a few more minutes of tittering sounds in the audience in approval of the newly reclaimed thirteenth son Prince Hans being granted his own estate of Augustenborg, the herald's trumpet sounds for the second half of this auspicious Royal ceremony to continue.

Elsa instinctively alights from her first gallery seat beside a grinning Anna and her parents to silently join her heart's love in solidarity.

King Agnarr's cautious eyes watch his elder daughter, and his newly returned legs itch to give pursuit. But Queen Iduna's hand heavily presses down to his lap to keep her antsy husband in place to give Elsa and Hans some time alone, at least for a little while.

Even if that dashing young Dane had bashfully exited through the blowing curtains to hide his giddy with exhilaration bright red face, and Elsa had sneaked off after him. Agnarr had lost the chance to follow them now. Not without being disrespectful of this nation's monarch as King Christian and the Danish members of the order of chivalry who now come forward to induct an incredulous Eugene Fitzherbert into the knighthood of the Royal Danske society.

As he stands, inhaling deeply, Eugene looks to his glowing wife Rapunzel and her staggered parents at her side. He smirks his signature simper as Cassandra and her Captain father's Royal guards; Job who had made friends with Pascal on his shoulder; Maximus with that Lamby on his back peering through an opening in the red draped curtain covering the blasted out hole; and all the Snuggly Duckling guys' literally dropped jaws as King Christian of the Southern Isles beckons his nephew forward with a genuine smile.

And most importantly of all, Eugene Horace looks back to the proud gaze of the man who gave him life, seated beside him. King Edmund's tearful eyes told his son this wasn't just about an award for today's heroics, or gratitude for an inheritance passed over to uphold this ancient Royal House's current line of succession.

No, it was more about the incredible wife, pleased sister and delighted mother who held a place as Queen of their hearts, tying this family together at long last, watching with love over her dearest boys from the Great Beyond.

As Eugene's knighting assembly was going on the Throne Room, a deeply blushing, quite overwhelmed Prince Hans had escaped the King's court through the conveniently windblown open curtain of the Egeskov Castle glass window wall that ice King Agnarr had blasted down earlier this morning.

In utter disbelief of the gold emblazoned badge of Augustenborg Castle's shield bearers and all it represents around his neck, a breathless Hans leans against the side of Egeskov's castle wing outer structure.

Father has granted me a Castle and great land ownership of my own to rule? Augustenborg? With all its vital land holdings, naval coastal support point and cherished Renaissance Enlightment historical importance?

With an estate of that magnitude and profitable farmland at his disposal, he certainly had the wherewithal now as vassal in chief with the tenure of a capital manor, to marry anyone he wished. He could now support a family of his own by his own means. Just as a proper gentleman should — to be worthy to provide a comfortable home and living for any lady.

Maybe even a Queen.

It was everything Hans ever wanted.

Hans, giddy with the heady excitement after running through Egeskov's garden to work out his excitement, like a little schoolboy, closes his eyes and leans his head back to a brick wall.

"Ha ha hah hah. Heh heh heh heh."

He then lets out a little chuckle at his unexpected incredible good fortune of blessings rained upon him that the repentant man knew he hardly deserved.

But all of that would be for naught, if, as he suspected, Elsa's father would be successful in dissuading her heart from him. In the two years of this separation due to his enforced naval tour, King Agnarr certainly would try to persuade his dear child to renounce her spur of the moment pledge to a young Danish untitled, unfunded nobody.

But now that he had some holdings of his own, and was someone of notable rank again, with more than enough monetary viability to provide for a wife and family – Hans would be able to offer Queen Elsa not only his love, but also a steady income and titled land ownership so he could hold his head up high and not merely scarf off his wife.

"And what is it you could find so funny, Vise Admiral Westergaard?" Elsa's amused voice startles her tentative fiancé when she slinks through the dark curtain and out into the falling dusk to follow her sleek red chestnut stallion in his mad dash around Egeskov Castle exterior.

"?!" Ashamed of himself for anyone to see such foolhardiness, Prince Hans soon realizes who has come when Elsa descends from her ice slide above to place a tender cool finger to his lips.

"Snowflake!" Hans pauses and drops to his knees to try to regain his dignified state after his breathtaking Elsa had appeared after chasing him silently from above down the gravel and grassy paths and into the Rose Garden beyond, when he thought he was alone.

"What brought you all the way out here in the descending dark, you silly boy? When I easily could have transported you here via my ice, without all your physical effort." Elsa feels liberated by the wind as she tosses her braid back over her shoulder and lifts an eyebrow with a coquettish smirk. "Although, I did appreciate the scenic view." A bit cheeky in her approving assessment of her young man's fine physique and such fluent movement like a prized racehorse stallion, Elsa masterfully creates steps from her ice slide that dissipates in the air.

Still short of breath, perhaps even more so due to her breathtaking ethereal appearance as she descends from her shimmering ice pedestal, Hans jumps up with start, and deeply blushing cheeks, from where he had been kneeling to the grass of the beautiful Rose Garden to escort her down.

Elsa allows her caught-off-guard man to lead her along the lovely floral lined pebbled grounds. Hans takes Elsa to a circlet of stone benches that were artistically swirled around in a spherical fashion with many prize rose bushes in full bloom in the well groomed Rose Garden surrounding.

"Oh, Hans. What are we going to do now? Papa seems adamant about the separation. I know he's doing it because he cares, but…I can no longer do without you. I've tried to reason with him but he won't budge." As he sets her down to the bench, Elsa leans her blonde tresses to his warm cheek, feeling so free to speak openly of her heart's concern for him now. She nestles against Hans' tense muscular arms and chest in the fragrant garden's early dusk.

"Min kæreste, (my dearest) it pains me to see such distress on that lovely face… all for me…" The Danish Prince with the velvety voice brushes a tender warm hand across her trembling lips.

The Ice Queen turns those lips to kiss his hands, completely unafraid to be so intimately close in bare skin to skin contact to his warmth. She had once read in a fairy tale story when she was a little girl that you'll know that someone is the one, when you take their hand and never want to let go.

She was skeptical about that at the time and scoffed at such romantic foolishness, especially since she herself thought she would never hold anyone's hand, but now she knew…

It was true.

She gripped his had even tighter as she blurts out her feelings in a jumble. "Hans, darling, I'm so embarrassed to you about Papa disavowing our betrothal! I have accepted your pledge to me in all honesty and sincerity. But he wants me to go home and forget this. He wants me to forget you!" Elsa states vehemently as she displays her snowflake diamond studded engagement ring in the waning pinkish and orange streaked dusk.

She kisses the significant piece of jewelry he had given her with contented pathos.

"Then I was right to come here to acquire something special for you to ensure that will never happen. Even if intimidating Admiral Bernadotte wishes it so, my precious Snowflake." Prince Hans stresses his words as he turns his back to her on the bench.

Elsa's fervent anxiety is quelled by her sudden curiosity when she becomes aware of Hans clandestinely attempting to hide whatever he was making in his hands from her. She cocks her head in bewilderment.

The Danish Prince was quite cutely arranging something in his dexterous fingers that were slipping up in his haste for concealment.

"There is a legend that God made all the plants and flowers of the world to bring vibrant color to the barren ground of the earth at the end of the third day of Creation." Hans looks over his shoulder and begins to quietly speak to Elsa behind his back so she could not yet see what he was up to, still working on the secret on his lap.

"When He was almost finished painting the landscape with beautiful views, one tiny unnamed blossom, so small and simple and more shy than her bright and vivid sister blossoms, had waited so patiently all day for her time in the sun." In his eloquence and poetic words, Hans would have any audience captivated. Elsa, just happening to be so madly in love with him, was no exception, hanging on every word, as the Danish Prince directs his intoxicating green eyes at her while he continues to recite his sweet story.

"As the evening was falling and she was yet unnamed, this tiny flower began to worry." Hans pauses dramatically as his hands were so busy, his project still hidden behind his broad shoulders. He succeeds in causing Elsa to grow more and more curious as to what her handsome Prince was building up to with this pretty little tale he was spinning for her benefit alone.

"'Forget-me-not, o Lord!' The tiny, believed forsaken, flower cried out to be heard in a frightened whisper." The accomplished performer in Hans relates his heartrending monologue with expressive connotation in a girlish tone that makes Elsa positively giggle with delight as he alters his smooth voice for the character of the petite flower in the story.

Hans then spins around on the white marble bench where he was sitting beside Elsa to face her. Amidst the roses in the garden, Hans hands Elsa a quickly tied bouquet of braided golden ribbon made of fresh straw and goldenrod around the delicate stems of several petite blue petalled, yellow star-shaped pistil flowers.

"And God replied: 'Then that shall be your name, my little patient one – 'Forget-Me-Not'." Hans meaningfully completes the punch line of his poignant retelling of the origin of the flower passing between their hands. He meets Elsa's blushing and adoring eyes that were a stunning reflection of the azure blue shade of the small diminutive true blue forget-me-nots with the lovely spiraling curve of their inflorescence.

"Hans, they're perfect…" Elsa murmurs with a gasp, engrossed in his touching anecdote. She was a student of the 'language of flowers' enough to know that in the special romantic secret code that only lovers shared, the charming and delicate forget-me-not was the sign of faithful fidelity. It was a memento of the constancy and the epitome of unflappable true love, just as the simple name correlated to a heart that would remember its devotion throughout eternity.

"Just like the you I will never forget, my Snowflake. I will never forget how prettily your arms glistened right here in the brilliant sunset, how soft your lilting voice whispered music to the quiet of my soul. How the simple tender touch of your cool hand sent my senses into a delirium of joy just having you so close to me..." With kisses to her hands, up her arms, on her forehead, Hans pulls Elsa to his chest and embraces her with all of the true emotion he had reserved for his one and only true love.

"I have had dreams of you and I like this, awashed in the sunset of the first glow of evening, lost in one another's arms. Elsa, nothing can ever take away this moment from us, this beautiful twilight that is ours alone." Hans says with a romantic husky voice to assure his lady that at the end of all the trials, he would still be waiting for her patiently.

"In all my dreams, I've loved you so, that by now I already think I know what it'll be like to be loved by you." As if serenading her with the song of his heart, Hans whispers against Elsa's soft platinum hair, wanting to memorize her soft scent as he pulls back to catch every line of her delicate beauty he was gazing upon to the palette of his mind.

"My Prince… I've dreamt those same dreams as well, but never really thought I could attain them. Until you'd given me hope to dare to dream again. Thank you." Elsa carefullly smoothes the tender little blue flower petals in her fearless cool hands, tears forming in her eyes again as the sun sinks even lower in the rising darkness.

"Elsa. Promise me that whenever you feel sad or alone – or dare I say – missing me –" The attractive young man smirks inwardly with a devilish glint in his unwavering green eyes.

"–this time apart, long or short, my darling, please remember the story of the hopeful little blossom, as I will remember you, every waking moment, and the patience that assures a true and devoted heart will be one day richly rewarded with the blessing of our love." Prince Hans, with hope offered to his lady love, had reserved one especially lovely pale forget-me-not blue to place artistically delicate and weave into Elsa's shining platinum locks of hair cascading over her pale forehead.

"Forget-me-not, my love." Elsa revels in the total romanticism of her young man as she uses her own artistic genius to create an exact icy replica of the tiny little six petal blue flower shivering in the wind directly onto a mesmerized and awestruck Hans' navy blue jacket chest, beside his Vise Admiral stripes and new golden badge of his own royal estate's coat of arms.

The little bouquet he gave her Elsa instantly freeze-dries in her hand as Hans affixes it to her purple jacket as a corsage keepsake of their last private time alone in Egeskov.

"Nothing will change my love for you, my beautiful Snowflake. Nothing. No matter how long it takes, no matter who you may meet, please don't forget me. And know, my darling, I could never and will never forget you." Hans was secretly possessive by nature and more than a bit jealous of any other young men who may cross his Elsa's path in the unforeseen future already.

But Prince Hans hoped this symbol of his true love would remind her that his troth was eternal and true until he would be able to come home to his ice angel.

As the endless waltz to the music of their hearts in the quiet of the evening draws to a close, Hans leans into Elsa's ear to breathily whisper one last request.

"Before I must bring you back to the bosom of your family, min kæreste (my darling), please allow my greedy eyes wish to soak you up to the final flecks of the sunset's rays, my beautiful Queen." Hans takes several steps back and stands in the descending twilight, his verdant green eyes entranced with every contour of Elsa's pale face.

"Hans. You're making me blush." Modest Elsa shyly averts her bashful gaze from his enticing eyes.

Hans teasingly tantalizes as he leans against the marble fountain at the center of this impressive rose garden to adore his lady love from a more respectful distance. But this only gives Elsa time to think again.

A thoughtful Ice Queen, upon glancing down at the final sparkling of the snowflake ring adorning her left-hand finger, realized that the sun was setting and would mean the end of this wondrous rendezvous.

Elsa bites her lower lip in nervous habit, her eyes unfocused, appearing to Hans to be mesmerized by his tight white trousers, as the young man's lean frame made quite a picturesque study, if he did say so himself.

"Ahem. If you're quite finished…enjoying the view of my 'Southern Isles…'" Hans pauses for dramatic effect. His 'Southern Isles', as he so indelicately and humorously labeled the area Elsa's eyes had been seemingly entranced by for the past few minutes, were quite unashamed to be on full display of his own prominent frontage.

"Hans Westergaard! Of what are you referring to, sir? Or should tell my Papa on you, for being so naughty?" Her pale cheeks as red as can be, Elsa's downcast face is turned around instantly. She was immediately lifted from her doldrums by his odd humor and cocky brass. She was more enticed than appalled as she should have been by this roguish redheaded boy teasing her in the moonlight with a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Elsa! Dance with me!" Spontaneously impulsive, Hans claims Elsa as his dance partner for one last waltz under the dusky moon.

If just one more time…

With that last ephemeral melancholy thought in silence through the wide smile on his handsome features, Hans impetuously abandons his poised place carelessly leaning against the marble fountain to grasp both of Elsa's joined hands abruptly into his, quite out of the blue.

Without missing a beat, her dextrous young Danish Prince sways his lover into a rapturous enchanted waltz over the rosebeds and well trimmed edging strips of low box hedges in Egeskov's lovely rose garden.

Prince Hans lifts Queen Elsa to her feet as he twirls his long legged love expressly around their own fantasized dance floor, as if they were the only two in the entire world in that moment.

But then Elsa sees the ice forget-me-not frosty blossom she had constructed, melting into Hans' wonderfully warm chest. She reconstructs it and this time, the Ice Queen bestows it with a kiss. Hans grins in wonder and awe at her abilities and little captivating ways that to him, were perfect. She was perfect. He raised her hand to his lips once more, kissing her knuckles and palm in adoration.

And she is mine…

A smitten Elsa lets her sadness go to revel in these pricelessly irreplaceable moments of being twirled in her true love's arms, to create everlasting memories engulfed in the sweet green pastures of Hans' dreamy eyes.

In the secure embrace of her confident lover, Elsa allows her charming prince to lead her into this new and exciting stage of their budding relationship, now blossomed into vibrant full bloom, despite the shade that the forecasted rainy season of separation to come would no doubt bring.

But right here, right now, in their fascinating Spring of new love, Elsa and Hans' dreams for one another were strong enough to last them more than a lifetime.

The Ice Queen and her Prince's hearts sing a romantic duet to each other as both lose themselves in the fleeting moment with the fervent prayer to the Lord above to let time pass quickly, and not wither on the vine as many young couples before them were driven apart.

But Hans and Elsa both knew that the depth of their bond for one another would brighten and mature with time, and not fade. They each had lived in loneliness and struggled for love most of their lives, and so understood more than most how precious it was.

How precious dreams could be.

"'I have dreamed of you…'"

As celestial violins play in the still evening, thrills run up her spine as Elsa euphorically feels her spirit soar to Hans' unchained melody reaching those high notes for her and her alone.

The two of them had only eyes for one another, as the polished consummate dancer in Hans Westergaard urges reserved Elsa Bernadotte out of her shell to be his exquisite partner tonight to trip the light fantastic against the glimmering emerging moonlight.

As they dance an elegant waltz amidst the sweet scented roses, graceful Elsa, at his skillful lead's command, dazzles the dashingly fluid Hans. Her ice magic sends a luminescent spray of reflective snow crystals up to the full moon to lend the two of them some little refractions of the romantic radiance of moonbeams.

The lovers sway in perfect rhythm with one another to a silent three-quarter time waltz as the same song so pristinely clear reverberates in their linked hearts, together under the intoxicating dusk.

"Please, my beautiful Queen, may I hear your voice say how you care before we are forced to return from our dream? Because I've fantasized every word you'll whisper so many times, but I want to hear your own sweet voice truly ring in my ears, to carry indelibly into the blank parchment of my dreams. Then I can know that when our time finally comes, I will love being loved by you, my darling Elsa." Hans murmurs in Elsa's platinum silky hair as their stunning waltz turns into a slow dance, gathering her closer to his heart.

"Hans… I can only live now knowing what it's like being loved by you." Adoring how he looked so genuine and earnest in the soft glow of early evening, Elsa sincerely answers her admired Prince with shimmering eyes. "I love you…min elskede en." (my darling one). Then she grants an ardent kiss to Hans' beyond pleased lips, her slender arms fully thrown around his surprised neck, his desire to hear her expression of love completely satisfied.

The final scintilla of sunset gives way to the revealing moon over Hans and Elsa enjoying each other's loving embrace in one last dance beneath the moon, beside the sea. That's when the precious little ice blue forget-me-not she had placed over his warm heart that beat only for her, entirely melts away, its cool moisture weeping into his bursting chest.

But the cold never bothered Hans anyway.

As for the tender petal forget-me-not Hans had entwined in Elsa's hair before, it flutters away in the couple's last desperate snatch at windswept ecstasy as Hans lifts and twirls Elsa with one final flourish to their exquisite dance—to fall quite paradoxically at the feet of a vexed creation of cold ice.

A spying Marshmallow peers into the garden and cocks his head, delicately picking the flower up from the ground. With a happy, innocent smile on his pleasant snowy features, the puzzled Snow Beast then lets out a small confused growl after he hunkers down to catch a glimpse of this particular, presumptive Prince's face in the forming moonlight.

The miniscule flower's fragile petals in his monstrous fingers are suddenly ripped off when Marshmallow slowly comes to recognize whose arms his mistress was within.

The nearly thirty foot tall Snow Beast had been lurking around Egeskov and now was standing threateningly over the Rose Garden, by mental command of the Ice King himself, to collect his wayward child from her dalliance with that mangy cur of a Dane who had sneaked her away in the dark of night.

The vicious, resentful snow creature begins to seethe with puffs of ice emanating from him at the visage of the despicable man who had maimed and sliced off poor Marshmallow's leg four years ago that left the monstrous snowman still with a limp.

Elsa's massive ice bodyguard slits his charcoal black eyes that also would never forget, as sharp icicle spikes are instantly drawn out all across his ice muscling-up arms, down his back and to his legs as he recognizes just who this 'Prince Hans' was.

And the tiny fragile forget-me-not flower that the sensitive, colossal snow creature had attempted to preserve before is now squeezed and shredded and shattered to a frozen pulp in his colossal fingers, as the Snow Beast's threatening dark shadow looms over the unaware, embracing couple…

Songlist this melodic chapter:

'Love's Eyes' by Samuel Woodsworth 1825

'Bid Me Discourse' Henry Bishop 1820

'The Last Rose of Summer' Thomas Moore 1813

"Avaloran Lullaby" from Elena of Avalor 2016

"I Have Dreams" duet I had Helsa singing in the Rose Garden was inspired by Santino Fontana & his Cinderella costar Laura Osnes concert of a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical tribute. You've gotta look it up and hear how beautiful the pair perform this touching song that fit right into this chapter! ^_^

Hello Frozen aficionados!

Did you enjoy this second to last wrap-up ride in the Southern Isles? Hans certainly is a lucky guy to have secured not only Elsa's love, not only the forgiveness of Anna, not only been appointed Vise Admiral in King Agnarr's navy, not only the acceptance of his dozen brothers, but now his once cruel cold Father has given him a massive castle estate to be castle lord over!

Whoa. Did not see that coming! But now that our Hans-some prince has everything he's ever wanted, a castle of his own with great land and income, prestige in the Sjoforsvaret, recognition from his kin, respect from a family he'd never before known – all he needs to do is to bring the girl of his dreams home.

So, what's a little patient waiting to the kind of deep love Elsa and Hans have discovered in one another? After some romantic waltzing, Hans and his truly tender presentation of the 'forget-me-not' flowery story to his darling was really touching, wasn't it? If I wasn't already madly in love with my Wind Whisperer, I might fall for that poetically lyrical Red after this chapter…AHHHH! (the feisty Anna in me is kicking and screaming!)

Now, as for the song "I Have Dreams" that Hans and Elsa were soulfully singing to one another in the Rose Garden with violins playing by moonlight…...? The lyrics of the legendary musical songwriters Rodgers and Hammerstein's song from 'The King & I' fit in so beautifully with this final chapter's romantic climax scene for our Helsa. And Santino's velvety tenor will take your breath away. (Like Hans does to Elsa, everytime!)

'I will love being loved by you!"

FYI: In real life Jenny Lind "The Swedish Nightingale", was a lovely opera singer that Hans Christian Anderson, the writer of the original 'Snow Queen", was quite an ardent admirer of the beautiful soprano of his day. Pity she did not reciprocate the wonderful, lonesome writer's affections! ^-~

Please review your favorite part of this fun and festive, eventually romantic Birthday party afternoon in Egeskov! ^_^

There'll be a bit of an epilogue soon to come, as I left this uber-long episode as a sort-of cliffie with Marshmallow vs Hans capping the Helsa love scene to finish this Book 2 in the Southern Isles up soon! Really, truly this time!

Then, Book 3's re-debut will still be on schedule throughout this Summer moving in our romance-adventure to a brand new chapter climax at the end of it all for my birthday week off! (fingers crossed!;) I'm very excited about it, with so many new ideas swimming around.

It'll start with Hans at his naval duties and Elsa pining away for him up in Arendelle with Anna and Papa plotting in two directions concerning Elsa & Hans' long-distance relationship. We'll see which determined ginger will come out on top there…

So God be with you, my friends 'til then! And thanks for being patient, my friendly forget-me-nots!

Love,

HarukaKou