** October, 1837 - Kingdom of Arendelle, Royal Council Chambers **
Elsa sat stiffly erect in the chair that had once been her father's. She was presiding over her first meeting of the Royal Council of Advisors. It had been going on for some hours now, and they were no closer to making any decisions than when they started. Her jaw ached from the tight clenching of her teeth as she maintained rigid control over her emotions. She could not afford to slip in front of these men. She knew that some of them were not her allies.
She finally interrupted the bickering that was going on over some procedural matter . "Gentlemen!" They ignored her. "Gentlemen!" A little louder, with a rap of her knuckles on the table for emphasis. "Please!"
The argument died down and they looked at her. "Our apologies, Your Majesty." Admiral Naismith nodded at her.
"I realize that I have not attended these meetings before," This was not QUITE true, but she had no intention of revealing that to the group. "But I would like to suggest a small change in format."
"Change, Your Majesty?" Naismith, again.
"Yes, Admiral. We have been at this for some time, and very little seems to have been resolved. You are all very busy men, and your time is too valuable to waste. Therefore, I propose the following: We will meet once a month for three hours, with a strict agenda. Each of you will forward a report concerning the status of your area of responsibility to me and the other Council members one week before the meeting. The report will include any request for action that is required of me or the Council as a whole. We will then vote on the requests at the meeting, after a short discussion." She looked around at all of them. "I believe this will allow us to complete our business with dispatch and efficiency."
She had delivered this little speech in a quiet voice, but no one at the table doubted it was a command phrased as a polite request. Her father had not neglected her training in deportment and elocution.
Bishop Henrik Norgaard was the first to speak. "Ahem, I believe you may be right, Your Majesty. I believe I speak for the rest when I say your suggestion will in fact speed things up and reduce some acrimony." He didn't speak for all the rest, but no one was going to contradict him.
"Very well, then. We will meet again in one month. Thank you for your loyalty to Arendelle, and I know we will work well together going forward." She suspected otherwise, but politeness never hurt. "We are adjourned."
Elsa rose and the men around the table hastily rose also to bow in respect as she left the room. She got further down the hall this time before breaking into a run. Once she got to her room, though, the result was the same. Sobs, ice, and snow. "I will never survive this. Papa, how could you leave me? You said I'd be fine...I'm not fine!"
Back in the council room, the members gathered up their papers and left in ones and twos, more than one of them grumbling about the abrupt end to the council meeting. Bishop Norgaard caught Admiral Naismith's eye, and beckoned him back to the table as the last of the others left.
"I'm worried about her, Mikael. Is she all right?" he asked in a low voice.
"All right? No, and she won't be, not for a while yet. She's still grieving, Henrik, and she is alone as no monarch in recent memory has been before her." Naismith replied.
He looked thoughtfully at the Bishop. Naismith was now carrying two secrets he could not share; his Queen had recently summoned him and sought his help in preparing a dungeon to confine her if her magic could not be controlled. He had agreed with great reluctance, but he had to admire her single-minded focus on protecting the kingdom with no regard for herself.
He could reassure his friend on one thing, at least. "But the girl has steel in her soul. Her only concern is for her sister, and Arendelle. No matter what it costs her personally. We'll just have to do what we can to protect her."
Bishop Norgaard nodded, and the two men left to attend to their duties.
Walking across the causeway leading from the castle to the town, Anders Reinertsen was seething. "How DARE she! Dictating to us like we were little children!" Bjorn Thorstad looked at him in alarm, checking hastily to be sure no one was in earshot. "Has she no respect for the valuable advice she receives from us. How are we to properly advise her if we do not meet regularly? Once a month for three hours, that's ridiculous."
"She dares because she is the Queen, and it is the monarch's prerogative to run Council meetings as they see fit." He tried to calm Reinertsen down. "Are you trying to get charged with treason? What's gotten into you?"
"She is not yet of age! She cannot dictate!" Reinertsen was not mollified by his colleague's attempts to talk sense into him. "The Council has control until her coronation!"
"Hmm...not quite, and you'd remember it if you were thinking rationally. She can't make arbitrary decisions, no, but the council needs 5 votes out of the 7 of us to override one of them. If she comes up with something wild, I suspect the five votes would be there, but I don't see that happening. Except for her ... reclusiveness, she seems to be fairly levelheaded for someone so young."
"So now you're one of her lickspittles like Naismith?" Reinertsen demanded.
"Hardly. But there is more than one way to kill a cat than drowning it in cream. Being a recalcitrant jackass is not going to get you where you want to go." Thorstad looked around. They were now in the town marketplace, and the normal afternoon crowd was bustling about. "This is no place for this kind of discussion. Why don't you join me for dinner tomorrow night? We can talk about better ways to ... influence the kingdom. In private."
** Present Day - March, 1841 - Eight months after the Coronation of Queen Elsa **
"Okay, Your Royal Taskmistress Meanypants! So what exactly do you want me to do to become more Elsa-like?" Anna persisted in teasing her sister about 'Operation Make Anna Serious About Governing', as she referred to it.
Elsa simply rolled her eyes and blew out a breath that ruffled her fly-away bangs. "Anna, this isn't about me, or you, it's about Arendelle. Until one of us has children, YOU are all that stands between the kingdom and chaos if I'm gone."
Anna suddenly lost the humor in her voice. "I know that, Elsa. Honestly, I do. And I take it seriously. It's just, I remember how hard it was for you, and if I don't joke about it, I'll cry."
This admission touched Elsa. It was easy to forget that there were depths to Anna that she went to great lengths to disguise under her care-free demeanor. Elsa decided it was time to show Anna something that had been a family secret.
"Come on, I need to show you something. I think you'll like this, it's just the sort of thing that appeals to your mischievous nature." Elsa got up from her desk and extended her hand to Anna.
As they walked down the hall toward the library, Elsa casually said, "So speaking of children ... How are things between you and Kristoff?"
"Wait, what? That's one heck of a segue, Elsa! Where'd that come from?" Anna was so surprised she stopped walking, pulling her hand from Elsa's.
Elsa simply grabbed her hand and started moving down the hall again. "I like him. He's a man of integrity. He works hard, and I can see that he adores you. And...from what I can tell, you adore him. So, when can I expect the two of you to come to me and ask for my blessing?"
"Whoa, Elsa, that's kind of a personal question!" They had arrived at the library. Elsa closed the door and sat Anna down on the cushioned window bay, then sat beside her.
"Actually, it's not." Elsa looked at Anna, who squirmed a bit under the scrutiny. "Anna, I love you, you're my baby sister, and this would concern me just for that reason alone. But you're the Crown Princess as well. Which means not only is it my business as your Queen, but the business of the whole kingdom."
Elsa could tell that statement wasn't going over very well with Anna. "Anna, most royals don't have the luxury of a marriage of love. I think you and Kristoff will have such a marriage, if that's what you want. Certainly I'll do everything I can to make such a marriage possible for you, with Kristoff or someone else. But you have to know that there is pressure out there for us to marry and secure the succession to the throne."
"Now we're back to that 'heir and the spare' business! Phhtt!" Anna was working herself into a sulk pretty quickly. Elsa stroked her hand.
"Honey, that's what we were born to, unfortunately. If we were both men, they'd be pestering us to find some willing little Princesses and get busy making little royal babies. We didn't choose this, it chose us. We have to make the best of it. And Kristoff would make a good husband, I think." Elsa's sincerity broke through Anna's stubbornness.
"You do?" Anna asked shyly.
"Yes, I do. Have you two discussed this at all?" Elsa was proud of Anna; she and Kristoff behaved with all the propriety she could ask for in public-and in private, if she was any judge. She was pretty sure there would be no scandals, although she was also sure there was some discreet canoodling going on. She hoped so, at any rate. Anna deserved a canoodle or two. And Kristoff knew Elsa would freeze his ... ice cubes ... off if it went beyond canoodling.
"Well...we've kind of danced around it. I don't want to push him, and after that disaster with Hans, I needed to be sure in my own heart that it's not just giddy infatuation again." Elsa just nodded and squeezed Anna's hand in sympathy. "But ... I think Kristoff is afraid he's not good enough for me."
Elsa nodded a little grimly. "He's not the only one."
"Wait, Elsa, I thought you just said..." Anna was startled.
"Not me, Anna, but there are others out there in the nobility who think an ice harvester is not a suitable consort for the Crown Princess. They have other candidates, if not themselves then young men of 'good families'." Elsa looked at her sister. "That's why this wasn't quite as wild a segue as you thought it was. Political reality is something you need to be aware of every minute of every day. It's part of your education as my heir."
Elsa got up and pulled her sister up as well. "We'll talk more about this later. Right now, here's what I wanted to show you."
Elsa walked over to one of the bookshelves on the wall opposite the fireplace. She pulled over a small stool to stand on. On the third shelf from the ceiling, she counted carefully from the left, and tugged on the 17th book. It moved, but did not come out into her hand. Instead, there was a low grinding noise, and Anna whirled to see the bookshelf to the left of the fireplace swinging out, revealing a passageway behind it.
Elsa hopped off the stool, headed for the opening and called to Anna, "Come on!"
Elsa squeezed through the narrow opening, and once Anna had followed her, pulled down on a small lever on the wall next to the passageway. The bookshelf slid back into place, closing them in.
"What is this?" Anna asked as she looked down a narrow corridor. It seemed to parallel the hallway outside the door of the library.
Elsa smirked. "Every old castle has to have secret passageways!" She had conjured up a small flurry in her hand. The eerie blue glow was just enough light for them to walk slowly down the passage once their eyes had adjusted.
They walked a few yards to a 90 degree bend in the passage, then followed it further along. Eventually, they came to a small alcove with a chair and a small desk. Elsa stopped and let the light of her magic die out. Anna could see a small patch in the wall that seemed to be ... not transparent, but like a fine screen of linen or something similar. There was a dim light shining through the patch.
"Where are we now?"
"Outside the Royal Council Chambers." Elsa seemed lost in thought. "Papa made me 'attend' Council meetings from here before he ... left us. It was part of my education as his heir."
"Whoa, Elsa, did they know about this?"
"No. And no one outside the succession ever will. This needs to remain a secret, a Crown Secret. But it's time for you to know, even if you never use this." Elsa turned to her. "There is no reason I can't have you at the Council meetings openly. But it was different for me. Papa was protecting me, he knew I was too afraid of displaying my magic. But he also knew I needed to see the Council in action, to begin making judgments about the men who shared responsibility for Arendelle with the Crown."
"And did you? Make judgments, I mean."
"Of course I did-that was part of the lesson. After every meeting Papa would come to my room and we would discuss what I had heard. He made me explain what I thought before he said anything, he was always testing me. Especially about judging the Council members." Elsa reached for another small lever and pulled it down. Another grinding noise, another narrow opening appeared in the wall a few feet to their left. "Come on."
When they emerged into the Council Chamber, Elsa walked over to a lamp fixture and twisted it. The passageway closed, concealed by another tall bookshelf.
"Wow, Elsa, how many of the rooms have secret entrances?" Anna was wide eyed at the revelation her sister was showing her.
"Not that many. The library, this one, the Throne Room. There's also an exit to the outer curtain wall going up into the hills. That one's apparently for use if the castle is under siege and the royal family needed an escape route. Hasn't been any use for that one in centuries." Elsa was brushing dust off herself as she explained this. Anna followed her example, then sneezed.
"Gesundheit." Elsa chuckled. "I'll give you a map, but you have to memorize it, then burn it. You need to learn these passageways, especially that exit to the hills, by heart. Just in case."
"You are really into having plans to backup your plans to backup your backups. When did you get so paranoid?"
Elsa shot her a look with a raised eyebrow. "I don't know, maybe when I was eight and decided I was someone that could be hated and feared for my sorcery, and they'd burn me at the stake?"
Anna flinched. She hadn't been thinking before letting her mouth run off again. "Elsa, I'm sorry ..." Her sister stopped her with a raised hand.
"No, it's okay, but this is why I need to share all these lessons with you. Honey, you've been sheltered all your life. Protected. Too much, as it turned out. It left you vulnerable to being manipulated. You learned from your experience with Hans, but there is so much more to be wary of. As your sister, and as your Queen, the best way I know to protect you is to teach you how to spot the phonies and the toadies and the hidden agendas." Elsa's eyes were sad as she remembered Anna telling her about Hans' betrayal and how he had left her to die in the library.
"You'll always protect me!"
"Yes, unless something happened to take me away from you. I love you, but you need to be able to protect yourself, too."
"Point taken, oh Great and Powerful Worshipfulness!" Anna grabbed Elsa's arm and dragged her toward the room's door. "You can educate me some more tonight, but right now, it's dinner time!" A tummy rumble punctuated this declaration. A LOUD tummy rumble.
Elsa couldn't help but chuckle at her sister's antics. "Okay, but you're going to pay for that 'Great and Powerful' crack with extra homework tonight!"