Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the elements taken from Frozen are obvious, and while this version of Zorro is taken mainly from Mask and Legend, I've incorporated elements of his history from other adaptations. Even the original idea for this fic was inspired by the artwork of shishyoukai on DeviantArt, although I have created my own narrative for it; the artwork only inspired the idea of a certain sister becoming Zorro.

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: A few details here are taken from the Frozen spin-off novel Polar Nights, which has given me a few ideas for future threats that Anna and others will face; if you haven't read the novel already, I can recommend it. For the most part the goal here is still world-building, but unless anyone has anything they want to request, it should just be another chapter or so before Arendelle meets its new defender…

The Frozen Fox

Since seeing the princess at the pier, Anna had made it her priority to find out more about the young woman. If the princess was the member of the royal family who most often came into town, it made sense to get some insight into what inspired that particular approach from her in particular. Asking around the town had allowed her to confirm that the princess was often found outside the castle, making discreet visits to the common people and offering support where she could, but Anna had been interested to note that this help was very rarely something as simple as offering money.

It wasn't as though the princess didn't offer financial support to others if she felt it necessary, but she was obviously being very careful about it. There were a few stories about the royal family investing in certain industries that would offer good trading potential in future, such as food or weapons, but Anna heard the occasional tale of the princess providing more subtle forms of support to people. There were various other hotels or lodging houses around the city that would admit to having put people up for a few nights on the request of the princess if for some reason their own houses were unsuitable, and there was even a rumour that some people had been allowed to stay in the castle itself, so long as they were discreet and left as soon as they found somewhere else to stay.

Frankly, the more Anna heard about the princess, the more she was cautiously intrigued by the other woman. She knew from experience and the tales of the de la Vegas that people could put on an appearance of friendliness and still be ruthless, but something about these tales spoke of a genuine kindness that couldn't be faked. There were too many cases where people were reticent about the help they had received as though they were concerned for the reputation of the princess. More importantly, the only true secret Anna could find in the princess's past was rumours of a childhood illness to justify how it took so long for her to be introduced to the public, and that could be explained by King Runeard wanting to protect his sole heir until she was old enough that he felt he could 'trust' her to go out of the palace.

The challenge came when Anna turned her questions to asking about how the general population felt about King Runeard's policies over the last few years. For the most part, nobody Anna had spoken to had shown any sign that they had a problem with anything Runeard had done, but at the same time there hadn't been a sense that they could disagree with him. The de la Vegas had been responsible for various properties back in California, but they had always done their best to ensure that the people they were responsible for knew that they could question any of their decisions rather than just making unilateral decisions on the part of the common people. There was never anything to suggest that anyone speaking against Runeard would actually be hurt, but at the same time, every time Anna asked questions about the king, she was left with a sense that she was being watched for any sign that she was going to ask the 'wrong' question.

With that in mind, Anna had set out to track down the printing office for the local newspaper, the Village Crown. Obviously asking questions of the staff would have drawn too much attention to herself even if she knew what she was trying to find, but it had been easy enough to confirm that they kept archives of past papers. With that knowledge, Anna had spent a few nights breaking into the buildings through a back window to study the archives at her leisure for a couple of hours each night, reading over everything she could find about the kingdom's recent history.

In some ways, it was fascinating to study the published information while keeping her mother's tales of the true history of Arendelle in mind. Obviously everything here was presented in a purely positive light, as though Runeard had basically single-handedly purged the land of superstition and set the country on the path to the modern age of reason, but in practice Anna doubted that it was that simple. Even without her mother's tales of the beliefs of the Northuldran people and how they had lived in harmony with the spirits, she had seen more than once how the people who lived on the de la Vega estate took comfort from the old rituals of their ancestors. Progress wasn't a bad thing in itself, but forcing people to ignore their pasts just because someone disagreed with their beliefs didn't feel right to her. So long as those beliefs weren't hurting others, shouldn't people be free to worship and believe in whatever they wanted?

However, when studying the news, the part that had interested Anna most was the observation that both the Queen and the Princess-Consort had vanished some considerable time ago, under equally mysterious circumstances. The death/disappearance of the Queen had been swiftly overshadowed by the reports of the new dam that Runeard had constructed in Northuldra, along with the reported death and disappearance of the princesses of a neighbouring kingdom, so there hadn't been much about it in the news at the time.

When it came to looking up the history of the current princess and the disappearance of the Princess Consort, Anna was surprised to find what she could only think of as an interesting blend of too much information and too little. There were some interesting but brief articles about the disappearance of the Princess Consort a few years after Princess Elsa had been born, but it seemed as though the press had basically skimmed over the circumstances of the disappearance. There weren't even any pictures of the woman, with the whole experience being discussed only in as much detail as was needed to acknowledge that she had existed in the first place.

Anna noted with some surprise that the dates suggested the princess consort had vanished around the same time as her own mother would have left the country, but decided it wasn't worth worrying about that. Considering Runeard's reputation, he wouldn't want to draw attention to someone leaving the country in case they knew something he wouldn't want to become public, and the focus on finding the princess-consort had probably made her own mother's escape easier. As for the current princess, Anna found nothing to contradict the impression she'd already formed of Princess Elsa as a generous individual with genuine interest in the people of the kingdom, but there was surprisingly little information available about her more personal interests. It was as though Elsa devoted herself so totally to helping out where she could that she didn't have any time to spare to do something just for the sake of doing it.

She couldn't explain why, but something about that made Anna feel sad. She appreciated that her and Joachim had lived rather dedicated lives since they were old enough to seriously train for their future roles as Zorro, but they had still had a choice in that training, and the de la Vegas and her mother had always encouraged them to explore other ways to enjoy themselves. It was possible that she did some things in the castle, but from what Anna had seen there wasn't much space in the castle itself, so Elsa's activities would be limited no matter what she did.

And Runeard doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd let her out much anyway…

Anna forced that thought down and continued her research, shifting her focus from the royal family to a more general look at life in the city. If they were acknowledging the way that Runeard's actions were suppressing the Northuldran culture, there had to be some way she could find a way to contact the people who were against what he was doing…