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Knock. Knock. Knock.
Elsa’s fist pressed ever so gently against the door, almost inaudible to anyone else had her voice not followed. No, she never quite knocked on a door like Anna did. When Anna knocked there was eagerness behind it. Joy. Like she couldn’t wait for the other person to open, as if she would scream in excitement otherwise. Even as queen, some things never changed, and that included all of Anna’s wonderful quirks. Quirks that Elsa loved dearly from the way she clapped her fists together in anticipation to her classic – and often confused – “wait, what?” Beautiful things that made Anna so…well, Anna…and seemed to be soaked up by her children like sponges. That is, except for one.
“Magnor?”
It wasn’t that Magnor inherited nothing from Anna; the strawberry blond hair and prominent freckles splattered across his cheeks were a clear give away. Not to mention his soft spot for chocolate. But then again, all of Anna and Kristoff’s children seemed to have inherited that. At least there was never a dispute over what desserts to eat or what flavor of cake they should bake. Still, for a child Magnor just always seemed so…serious. Or maybe he was more closed off? An introvert like Elsa, perhaps? Maybe that was why Anna thought Elsa would be able to talk to him. Because she could understand him in a way that Anna quite couldn’t.
Elsa cracked the door opened. Tilting her head inside, she gazed across to the bedroom. Underneath a large window, which offered a perfect view of the courtyard, sat a large wooden desk piled with books. And, as usual, Magnor in front of them. He was hunched over, the quill in his hand moving rapidly across a sheet of paper. His head darted left and then right. What was he reading this time, Elsa wondered? Or was he hard at work on his studies? Either was the norm; while the other children would race to greet their aunt Magnor would remain in his room, opting not to come out and play until his work was done.
“May I come in?”
Magnor responded, though his focus remained primarily on his writing. “I’m just finishing rewriting my notes from the last lesson. I’ll be done soon.”
Elsa exhaled. She didn’t miss this at all. The constant work. Reading paper after paper. Studying lesson after lesson or learning about one country after another. Then again, she had to do that. She needed to study and work hard to be a good queen. It wasn’t like she had much else to do growing up anyway; not with the way she and Anna were separated. Surely there would have been more time for fun otherwise. But Elsa’s circumstances as a princess had been different. Magnor didn’t have the trials and tribulations that Elsa had.
“I’m only here until tomorrow morning. Then I have to go back to Northuldra,” she commented.
There was a pause on Magnor’s end. “There’s no one else to watch Bruni?”
“That is not my only job.”
“You also play with snow.”
“Excuse me?”
“And Gale.”
“It is more than just playing.”
“Yeah, cause last time you-“
“We do not talk about last time.”
“But-“
“We do not talk about last time.”
By that point Magnor had turned his attention away from his books and focused on his aunt. His smile was almost crooked, tilting more towards the right than left and highlighting his freckled face. As studious as the child was, he was still just that – a child. And a child, especially one of Anna’s, could be easily distracted. Finally there was an opening.
“May I sit with you?” Elsa inquired.
Magnor raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you gonna build a snowman or something with everyone else?”
“I can do that after I spend some time with you,” she said, stepping closer until she was beside the desk.
For a brief moment it almost appeared as though Magnor was considering her offer. Elsa shouldn’t have been surprised by his hesitation. She would regrettably admit that it was so easy to get caught up in the attention her niece and nephew showered her with. While they tackled her with hugs, chanted and begged for her to do the magic, and asked question after question, Magnor stayed to the side. Or even out of sight. After so many years of hiding away her magic and concealing rather than feeling, not only did Elsa have complete control over her icy powers but deemed a spirit of the Enchanted Forest for them. Even after all this time of having them in the open, using them willingly and freely, and having people cheer for her gift, there was nothing quite like the glow of happiness from children – especially her own family members – when she created a beautiful ice sculpture or started a snowball fight. Could that have played a part in Magnor’s withdrawal? Because she had been so caught up in sharing her magic with the ones that showed the most excitement that she failed to invite him in? Did he not feel welcomed by her? Did he think it was safer to surround himself with books than people? People who might ultimately shut him out? That was no way to live. Elsa knew that better than anyone.
Ultimately, his smile left as quickly as it came and his attention was pulled back to his studies. “I really should finish my….”
Before he could finish his statement, a sheer coat of ice swept across the desk and its confines. With a simple flick of her wrist, Elsa had turned Magnor’s work area into a block of frozen water, unable to so much as crack without a command from her.
Magnor’s head whipped back in her direction. “Aunt Elsa!”
“It wasn’t me,” she lied.
The boy narrowed his gaze in disbelief. Of course he wouldn’t believe such an obvious fib.
“Ok fine, it was me,” she muttered.
He shook his head.
“I promise I won’t distract you for too long. Please? Five minutes with your favorite aunt?” she asked hopefully.
His doubtful look returned.
Elsa blinked. Her brows then furrowed, creating a stare with a hint of jealousy. “You let your girlfriend give a self defense lesson one time…” she mumbled. Elsa shook her head and turned to the side, playing with the edges of her hair as though she were plotting something. “I am going to give Honeymaren a piece of my mind when I go back tomorrow…. I am just as capable of fighting and wielding a weapon as she is…so long as it’s made of ice…preferably ice…and it was only one time…. I….” She cut herself off, her blue pools steadily returning to her nephew. She let out a faint scoff. Two could play at the distracting game couldn’t they? “I see what you did there.”
Magnor smirked. So much like Kristoff did when he won at charades. The only difference was with Magnor Elsa could actually let it slide. “Guess it’s four minutes now.”
Elsa pursed her lips. “I’ll take what I can get.” Shifting her other arm from her side, moving it upwards almost in the shape of an L, she conjured up a chair made of ice behind her. She only had to inch it forward ever so slightly before sitting down on it.
“You know, most normal people would’ve just taken that chair right there,” he commented with a point of his finger.
Following the direction, Elsa turned her head. About five steps or so behind her against the wall was an already-existing non-icy chair. Elsa should have known that. Clearing her throat, as if it were supposed to prevent her face from flushing, she faced her nephew once again. “I am not a normal person,” she stated simply.
Although that was likely the understatement of the century.
“So….” Where to start, where to start? “What were you studying today?”
“History. I was reading about the last ten kings of Arendelle and what they each did for us. Then I got to the passage about Great Grandfather and it got…kinda messy,” he answered. His brown eyes almost seemed to light up with excitement about the lesson until he brought of King Runeard. No, Magnor couldn’t have known all the details. Certainly not the way Elsa did – she had a very descriptive history lesson courtesy of Ahtohallan. Still, even at his young age Magnor was able to pick up on the implication that something about their family wasn’t quite right.
However, Elsa wasn’t going to let him dwell on that.
“I always loved art and geometry,” she commented.
Magnor chuckled. “Nerd.”
Elsa tapped her fingers, sending a couple of tiny flurries in the boy’s direction. His nose wrinkled at the sudden sensation until he sneezed and the flurries vanished.
“Hey, those lessons helped me conjure my sculptures the way I do,” she told him. “Math and art are like a science, after all.”
“You sound even more like a nerd now,” Magnor chuckled.
Maybe she did. And maybe, to an extent, Elsa was a nerd. But to hear it from Magnor was almost…a compliment. It was the teasing tone in which he said it to her. There really was playfulness behind his more serious exterior. And it was nice to see. For a brief moment it almost felt like they were bonding. Something Elsa hadn’t done with him in the way she did with Anna’s other children.
Placing her hands on her lap, she shrugged her shoulders. “I had nothing but time. So I put most of my focus on my studies and my duties to become a future queen of Arendelle.”
Not to mention attempting to control and conceal her powers from anyone finding out, calling her a monster, chasing her out of the kingdom, and causing a riot. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Did you like it?” he asked curiously.
“Sometimes,” Elsa confessed. “I liked having the time to myself. When I did my work, people would often leave me alone. They wanted me to succeed. I didn’t like everything I learned, though. My father made me practice public speaking a lot with him.”
“Cause he wanted you to be awesome like he was,” Magnor said as-a-matter-of-factly.
Elsa blushed. “Thank you,” she replied with a faint giggle. “But, you know, your Mama is much better at that than I am.”
“Is that why you decided to make Mama the queen?” he asked. “Cause she’s better at people-ing than you?”
“You mean public speaking?” she raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, that,” he nodded.
“One of the reasons…. There were a lot, actually,” she admitted. “I guess deep down I always had a feeling my place wasn’t here. Not fully, anyway. But your Mama never had a doubt.”
“Even though she didn’t have a lot of time to learn stuff,” Magnor commented. “She wasn’t very good at school was she?”
“More like…she didn’t enjoy sitting still,” Elsa corrected. “But, when you think about it, Mama knew everything she needed. She was more than ready.”
Magnor’s gaze returned to his frozen books. “I wanna be ready, too.”
Elsa tilted her head. “You have plenty of time to learn. There is no deadline.”
“Not for me there isn’t,” he mumbled.
That was where Magnor had a point. He wasn’t next in line for the throne; his sister was. As was tradition, the next in line came of age to rule Arendelle at twenty-one. But that was still so far away; there was so much more for her – for all of the kids – to learn before then, so many adventures for them to have. Yet the way the words escaped him, they almost sounded…bad. Not for me there isn’t. Was he talking about the time frame? Or that he simply had too much? She could simply ask…. Oh, but it took quite a bit of effort to convince him to open up this much already. Surely he wouldn’t so easily lay it all out for Elsa.
“Did you want to become king?” she inquired.
“Did Mama wanna be the queen?” he questioned back.
“It is not the same thing.”
“What if Mama didn’t wanna be?”
“She would have said otherwise.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I trust and believe in my sister.”
“And what if she didn’t believe in you?”
A sharp silence ensued. Elsa’s eyes widened at her nephew’s comeback. Magnor must have sensed that he stepped too far as well; shortly after it escaped him, he folded his arms and turned his head away. Elsa sat as though she had become a statue of ice attached to the chair.
What if she didn’t believe in you?
She knew full well he wasn’t referring to Anna. There wasn’t a soul that believed the connection between the two sisters was untrue. It didn’t matter whom they were with, who else was in their lives, or what they were doing. Their biggest priority, their biggest support, the most meaningful person in their lives has always been and would always be each other. Everyone knew and accepted that. Even with the children, Anna and Elsa tried so hard to show what a powerful sibling bond could do. The two of them didn’t have their whole lives together; these siblings would. If with the little time Anna and Elsa had together, they were able to create such an incredible, loving, and powerful bond then surely with more time Anna’s children would have that tenfold.
Unless….
Unless he wasn’t talking about Anna and Elsa.
Elsa’s face softened. Hands remaining in her lap, she clasped them together and hunched her body forward slightly. “Magnor…. Is this about your sister?”
He said nothing.
“Ok then,” she nodded. The blonde exhaled. “Yes, your sister is first in line. It is her choice if she wants to become queen when the time comes. If she declines you are next. That doesn’t mean you have to accept either. If you believe your place is elsewhere in Arendelle, Northuldra, or anywhere in the world to do as you please….”
Magnor groaned with exasperation. “You don’t get it!”
“Then help me understand. Please,” she replied.
“You can’t. You had a choice! I don’t!” he argued.
“We all have a choice, Magnor,” she responded.
“No! No we don’t!” the boy yelled, pushing himself off his chair. He spun around to his aunt, able to meet her at eye level as she sat. As his head turned his bangs flew in front of his face, nearly covering his eyes in the process as though the red hues of his hair were engulfing the pools of brown in fiery rage. “I don’t have a choice! Mama didn’t have a choice. The only one who had a choice was you! You were a great queen and you gave it up to run around in the forest! I shouldn’t even be a choice for king, or sissy! I want to be a king, a good one! But it’s not me. I gotta be good! I need to be good!”
Before he could continue, Elsa pushed herself off the chair and knelt onto the floor. Wrapping her arms around her nephew, she pulled him into a tight embrace. Magnor didn’t fight her. Whether that was because he used up so much energy letting out his frustrations or that Anna and Olaf’s claims about Elsa giving the warmest hugs were accurate, she couldn’t say. All she knew was that she could feel him shaking. That was when she understood. No, not all of what he was saying. But one thing became abundantly clear.
He had been holding that in all this time. The pressure. The confusion. The history.
Oh…the history. So that was why he enjoyed the subject so much. Everyone he read about had their place, did something worthy or important. And when he reached the subject of King Runeard it became murky; he had supposedly done a wonderful gesture but it was shrouded in lies. No, it didn’t equate to Magnor’s existence being a lie by any means. But he was correct; by all accounts, Elsa should have remained queen of Arendelle. It should be her children that would be the heirs, not Anna’s. It was as if a mistake was made – that although Magnor did have the chance to potentially become king one day, it wouldn’t be earned. It wouldn’t feel right. That thought was what contained the lies. Lies that no one should feel the burden of carrying.
Elsa pulled back, though she left her hands on his shoulders. This time he didn’t make eye contact. It appeared she would have to state the obvious first. “I can assure you that nothing would have changed. Even if I were still the queen, the order of succession would remain the same. Your mama, your sister, you, and your brother. Unless you could imagine Olaf as king?”
Magnor shook his head.
“No, me either,” she agreed. She then added in a more humorous manner, “I don’t think the world is quite ready for all of Olaf’s philosophies just yet.”
That got the faintest chuckle out of Magnor. Likely he was either thinking about the technological uprising that Olaf claimed was coming, or he just thought it was funny Olaf insisted turtles breathed through their butts.
“Ok,” the blonde nodded. That was the easy part. She slid her hands down his arms so she could take his hands in hers. “Now that that’s out of the way…. I do understand. How hard you want to work, how proud you want to make your mama and papa…. You want to be good for them and, if you do, then you will also be good. Is that close?”
He responded with no more than a small shrug of the shoulders.
Elsa pondered her wording. A puzzled look crossed her face, eyes moving to the corner as f she were trying to watch the frozen wheels in the back of her head spin. “Can I tell you a secret?”
To that, Magnor nodded.
She lowered her voice, as if to emphasize the secrecy. “I was terrified when I was your age, too. And for a long time after.”
Magnor tilted his head, brows furrowing. “But you’re a spirit with snow powers.”
“That may be true now,” she admitted, “but it wasn’t always that way. I spent a lot of my time bottling up my fears and pushing them down far, far away. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to control my powers. I was afraid that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how much I followed in my parents’ footsteps, that I would let them down. I buried myself in my work because I was afraid that if I didn’t know everything, try everything, and put all of my effort into the kingdom, that I would fail the people. I carried those fears on my own for a long time until they were too much, because if I let anyone see them then they would think I wasn’t good enough. I was so focused on trying to be strong enough for Arendelle that I wasn’t letting any strength in for myself. And I couldn’t rule that way.”
“What’d you do?” he asked.
“I didn’t do anything. Not alone. Mama gave me strength. She let me lean on her. She reminded me of what I have to offer. Not as a monarch, but as a person and a sister,” Elsa answered. “I spent so much time carrying the weight alone when I never had to.”
That was what Magnor was trying to do, wasn’t it? That was why he buried himself so much in his schoolwork. He wanted to be good. He wanted to try hard. He wanted to prove what he was capable of. If he could show what he was learning, what he knew, then he could be someone people could rely on. Someone that Arendelle could look up to. Even if he wasn’t next in line for the throne, he wanted to be ready if he was given that chance. He wanted so bad to be trusted with his family’s legacy. If his sister eventually decided to abdicate as Elsa had, for whatever reason, she and their family had to know that Arendelle would be left in good hands. That he would be the right choice. And if he didn’t put all the time, effort, and energy in that he was would it not be enough? Would he not be enough?
Maybe what it ultimately came down to was that he was just afraid of failing, the same way Elsa had been.
He locked himself away so no one could see him struggle.
He studied all he could so that he could live up to the legacy.
He had to do it all by himself so he could prove what he was capable of.
He wanted to be enough…even if it meant concealing himself from everyone else.
No wonder Anna thought it was best that Elsa be the one to talk to him. Elsa understood him in a way Anna fully couldn’t. Anna was open with people. She was optimistic, confident, and encouraging of everyone around her. She saw the brightest light in everyone she came in contact with. She was at her best when people surrounded her. Even if she accepted everyone exactly as they were, it didn’t mean she fully understood. Like why Elsa needed so much time to herself. Why, in the beginning, it was difficult for her to get close to her own sister. The immense amount of pressure Elsa had been feeling not just as the queen of Arendelle, but also as someone who also had so much power in them that could bring about joy and danger simultaneously.
While Elsa looked at the children and saw so much of Anna in them, Anna looked at Magnor and specifically saw Elsa.
Oh of course it was quite possible that any introvert tendencies came from Kristoff as well. But given the parallels to Elsa’s own life she couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt, like the feelings of fear and inferiority that came with them couldn’t have passed on from anyone but her. Of all the things Elsa could have given to anyone in her family…. Sass would have been so much more manageable!
“I’m sorry,” she apologized softly. “No one should ever feel the way I did. But I promise, you are not alone. You will never do this alone. Mama and I will make sure of that. And whatever the future holds, whatever you and your siblings end up doing, wherever that may be, you will do it in your own time and your own way. Not as any former kings of Arendelle, not as me, or as Mama or even Papa. Because you will absolutely be worth it.” Her fingertips floated just underneath his jawline; tilting his head enough so he could fully meet her gaze once again. “You are worth it. Don’t lock yourself away because of fear or what if’s. You have far too much to offer.”
And for the first time, Elsa saw a real smile from Magnor. It was still a small smile, a bit similar to Elsa’s actually. But there was also a sincerity behind it that could have come from only one other person – Anna. All he needed was someone to bring it out; the way Anna always did that for Elsa. It was a beautiful moment while it lasted.
But a deal was a deal.
Releasing Magnor’s other hand, Elsa flattened her palm across the air. The ice she had used to barricade the schoolbooks receded with a light crackling until the particles vanished into thin air. “I believe we are passed our four minutes. Thank you for sharing with me.” She gently swept Magnor’s bangs to the side, so they only barely hovered over his right eye as opposed to falling in front of both, and then brushed her finger across his cheek. His smile remained throughout, just like his siblings’ smiles did when Elsa had similar moments with them. “Now then,” she pushed herself up to her feet, “will you join everyone once you’re done studying? I believe everyone is waiting in the library for charades.”
Magnor pursed his lips. He leaned onto his desk, looking over his handwritten notes. There was a pause as he did so. However, unlike earlier when he merely seemed to consider, he seemed to be taking everything to heart. “Actually….” He looked up to his aunt once more, “I’m almost done with this page. If you wanna sit for a few more minutes, maybe we can go meet everyone together?”
Elsa smiled and nodded. “We may absolutely do that.” She was about to sit again when Magnor stopped her with his voice once more.
“Juuuuuuust…”
He dragged the word out, steadily increasing his pitch as it continued. Oh no, what could he possibly remind or ask of Elsa? That she should not attempt to yield an actual weapon again lest she nearly knock someone’s toupee off like the last time? That he didn’t want her to freeze – or possibly even touch – his books again? Ask her to not come across as a nerd when she joined him? Or was he merely trying to break it to her gently that she was less than apt at charades? She raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe later, if you can help me a little with my art homework before you go?”
To that, her response was a no-brainer. “I would love to.”