Dear Prince Hans Westergaard of the Southern Isles,

You never answered me. Familiarity or disrespect?

You're right. I should have known better. I began to believe you were more human than merely being. Are you always so exasperating? Stop calling me by my name. You are not allowed.

I am also positive that you're sick. Influenza? Poison? Flesh eating bacteria? It may be terminal. You should request for a healer, if they allow one near you in your imprisonment. And, no, you are not welcome, since you are not sure if you're thanking me in the first place.

What way do you think love will make you feel? Instead of fullness, or a flood, how do you believe it will find you? As overrated as you think it is, do you think it will affect you in any way at all? It saddens me that you think the power of love is so…ineffectual. Did you not see how it changed my life?

You are certainly imaginative, Prince Hans. Imaginative, yet perceptive. I will admit that I do spend more time than I believe I should, formulating responses to your letters. Your letters are not diplomatic nor political. They call me to a challenge each time I decide to open them. It is a word game we're playing. Half the time I want to allow myself to believe the words you send me, and the other half, I spend time thinking about the sword flying toward my neck, and the arm propelling the force behind it.

My imagination entails you repenting for your sins, arms and legs shackled underneath a cruel island sun, forced into manual labor. Sometimes, you are loading crates full of goods to be exported onto the hundreds of boats of your Southern Isles. Sometimes, you are in the fields, plowing and harvesting crops under the harsh eyes of plantation owners who believe you to be a commoner, not realizing there is such a thing as a thirteenth Prince.

Then, I imagine you, weary and alone at night in your basement, reading and writing these letters—as you say, with the moonlight hitting the edge of your desk, gripped with an unknown illness. Your eyes swim with misery as you stare at these letters or the walls around you, thinking of words to twirl into the parchment.

Sometimes, when I am feeling kindhearted, I imagine you lying in your bed pallet, with your weary mind pondering and embracing all of your flowery hopes, looking forward to the potential of a future. In my darker moments, I imagine you lying in your bed pallet and realizing how desperate and unreachable your flowery hopes are, with your soul wilting in its own despair.

Sincerely,

Queen Elsa of Arendelle

P.S. I will not.

P.P.S. Once.

Elsa,

I've disrespected you enough for a few lifetimes. Is that an agreeable statement? My answer is familiarity, but this may be due to the nature of my isolation. Your letters constitute as my only communication outside of these castle walls.

I've never been nothing if not exasperating.

No, I have no illness. I have no physical fever. Though my family would like me to die, they would be very disappointed if I left this world to something as merciful as illness.

The only sensation I've felt from love, in the beginning of my life, was the opposite of what you say. I felt empty. I felt a desperate sense of wanting to fill that emptiness. I know of the power of love, Elsa, but you forget that it does not have only one power. You found love on the side of goodness, of kindness and gentleness. There is also the love that begets greed, the love that makes people kill and turn to madness. The kind of love that taps into the darkness and breeds hate. There's that kind of love that will make you do anything for someone, even if it means to lose your morals, your values, the things you never thought you'd question. Love is a lot of things. It is supposed to be unselfish, but in my experience, it is the most selfish thing of all.

I agree with you about these letters. They are unlike anything I've ever written. They did begin as word games, to play and provoke. It may still feel this way to you, but it is no longer this way for me. As I've said before, the words I write now are akin to a stream of consciousness, like writing entries in a journal. I no longer think about how I can twist my words to confuse you or attempt to manipulate, or even if I want to manipulate or force you to question yourself. At first, it was a pastime to take my mind off of other things. Another endeavor for me to find my footing. It hits me now that you've never asked me why I was writing to you. You undoubtedly and more than likely wisely assumed that it was nothing but for my own mischievous devices, and you would have been correct. Now, I think, I'm writing because I have nothing else.

It is disquieting how you have imagined my life. Your depiction is quite accurate. A few months prior, I was under nothing but house arrest in this basement. My family came to the consensus that it would be beneficial for me to have a punishment that entailed something other than wallowing in a room and shackled to a wall. They know my pride and how crippling my ego can be. They decided on the thing that would have the highest potential to break them both. They did not explicitly take away my title as Prince, and they did not disown me with writing. However, they did keep me in shackles, labeled me as a prisoner due to my "treasonous activity, reckless conduct, and attempted double homicide", and graciously allowed me to labor for free in the farmlands that are all but disconnected from any and all communication of the outside world, on the westernmost part of the main Isle. Most in these areas don't realize, or care, there are six Princes, let alone thirteen, and most of the laborers in these lands are previously convicted felons, people like me, or people who are running away from something. This is the place for people with questionable backgrounds. Even if I claimed to be the thirteenth Prince of the Southern Isles, most if not all of the farmhands would only pity me or whip the delusions out of me. This is the place where pride and ego die under the heat and humidity of the island sun.

So, you were almost right, Elsa. I labor in the farmlands, but I am not allowed anywhere near the shipping docks. Word of the shame I've brought upon my family would be too much for my parents to bear, and my eldest brothers are in charge of the imports and exports. Their other job is to spread the good tidings of the royal family. The people of the Southern Isles are none the wiser.

I give in to my weariness as I write to you. It is hard for me to keep up a façade, these days, or to infuse my words with the bite I wanted to provoke you with over and over. There is something freeing in giving it up. It is…addictive. I want to refuse it, and yet I find myself doing it over and over. I've haven't been this honest in...well, since before I realized no one liked to listen to me.

You told me to hold onto my hope, and yet you imagine me losing it. Which is it, Elsa?

Yours,

Hans

P.S. I guess you could call me Hendrick. That's my new name, to everyone outside of the castle.

P.P.S. Which letter?