King Runeard

**King Runeard** is the posthumous main antagonist of *Frozen II* and the overall posthumous Greater-Scope villain of the *Frozen* franchise.He was the ruler of Arendelle, and the father of King Agnarr. In his lifetime, Runeard was revered as a noble and generous leader. In truth, however, he was a ruthless tyrant who believed magic to be a threat to his kingship. In his attempt to eliminate the Northuldra, Runeard sparked a decades-long catastrophe that was then left to his granddaughters, Anna and Elsa, to rectify.

## Background

Runeard is the oldest known monarch and founder of Arendelle. At some point, he arranged to be married to a woman from another kingdom named Rita, who became Arendelle's queen upon their marriage. The couple had one son and heir named Prince Agnarr, and Runeard oversaw the construction of Arendelle Castle when Agnarr was a child.

Rita loved Agnarr very much and spent a lot of her time caring for him and playing with him as he grew. When he was a baby, she even knitted him a stuffed puffin doll that she named Sir JorgenBjorgen. Despite the joy she had with Agnarr, Rita was completely isolated from her home country and subsequently became very homesick. Furthermore, while Runeard showered her with all sorts of lavish gifts and material possessions, he never gave or showed Rita any true love or affection. As the years passed, Rita's longing for freedom and her home so much caused her to grow increasingly depressed; eventually, it got to the point that she would stay in her room and bed for days at a time, crying. In response, rather than comforting her and trying to be understanding, Runeard grew impatient with Rita and accused her of being ungrateful, as he didn't understand how she could be so sad when he had given her everything she could possibly want. When Agnarr was five years old, Rita could no longer take living with Runeard, so she sought out the trolls and begged their leader, Pabbie, to remove her memories of her marriage and family so she could completely forget her life in Arendelle. She had wanted to take Agnarr with her, but realized that doing so would lead to Runeard coming after them, possible even starting a war against her kingdom, which would lead to many people dying and Agnarr's life being put in danger, just to bring Agnarr back. With all the potential negative consequences in mind of what could happen if she left with Agnarr, Rita decided that he had to remain with Runeard in Arendelle, and she asked Pabbie to erase her memories so she could forget him and live with leaving him behind.

After having her memories wiped, Rita fled Arendelle entirely, and Runeard officially blamed her disappearance on evil spirits. This was only one of the many instances of Runeard scapegoating magic, fostering widespread xenophobia towards its users in his kingdom. Intent on forgetting about Rita and unwilling to accept that he alone caused her to leave, Runeard hid away all of her belongings, barred her bedroom door, and forbade anyone to speak of her. If anyone mentioned Rita, including speaking her name, they would be immediately banished from Arendelle. However, Runeard did not know about Sir JorgenBjorgen, and the servant Gerda hid the doll from him until she could return it to Agnarr in the future.

Sometime after he began his reign as king of Arendelle, Runeard and the Arendellians made peace with the Northuldra, a northern tribe that resided in the Enchanted Forest along with the elemental spirits of earth, wind, water, and fire. This allegiance was a ploy, however, as Runeard secretly feared and hated the Northuldra due to their association with magic. He declared that their magical ties meant they couldn't be trusted, and orchestrated a plot to eliminate the tribe.

In the Forest, Runeard commissioned the construction of a dam, which was gifted to the Northuldra as a peace offering designed to bring prosperity to their land. In truth, the dam would weaken the Northuldra’s resources and—in their desperation—force them to be susceptible to Runeard. Upon realizing the damage being brought upon by the dam, the leader of the Northuldra consulted Runeard, who offered to heed the leader’s pleas in private. Once alone, Runeard murdered the leader in cold blood. This sparked a war between Arendelle and the Northuldra, during which Runeard fell off a cliff to his death while fighting a tribe member. The conflict between Arendelle and the Northuldra angered the spirits, who turned against humanity. In their wrath, the Enchanted Forest was encapsulated within an impenetrable mist that prevented anyone from leaving or entering.

In the decades following Runeard's death, conflicting information spread regarding the origins of the war. The Arendellian citizens believed that the Northuldra were the enemy, and that Runeard was brutally killed in cold blood. The truth wouldn't be discovered until over thirty-four years later by Runeard's granddaughters, Elsa and Anna, under the guide of the spirits.

## Personality

At first glance, Runeard presents himself as a calm, collected, and upright person who cares about his people and family, and is willing to treat the neighboring Northuldrans as equals. Unbeknownst to the rest of the Arendellians (including Lieutenant Mattias and Agnarr), Runeard is truly a vile, selfish, cruel, hateful, arrogant, xenophobic, power-hungry, and cold-hearted tyrant who is obsessed with expanding his power and doesn't care about anyone or anything other than his position as king and the power and authority it gives him. Runeard is also hostile, ruthless, bigoted, and merciless to anyone who isn't within in his power, perceiving himself as a superior, supreme person simply for being a king while simultaneously discriminating everyone else as being below him based on their race and social status, including his own family, servants, soldiers, and the Northuldra. These traits ultimately became his undoing and negatively affected his kingdom and his entire bloodline.

The junior novelization and *Dangerous Secrets* expands on this. Runeard didn't have affectionate, loving relationships with his wife, Rita, or with his son, Agnarr, and only saw them as assets to his power, rank. and their kingdom. He and Rita, who was a princess from another country, were in an arranged marriage, which Runeard had presumably organized just to create an alliance with her home country and to further increase his political status and power. The only kindness he offered Rita was giving her many superficial material possessions, but he became annoyed and impatient with her when she grew depressed over missing her home kingdom and longing for freedom from their marriage. When Rita finally broke down and fled upon having her memories of her life in Arendelle erased by Pabbie, Runeard refused to accept that he had been a bad husband and was the only one at fault for her departure. He blamed Rita's disappearance on evil spirits and subsequently locked up all of her things and anything else that reminded him of her. Runeard also created a harsh decree against the mentioning of Rita's name, which had a penalty of immediate banishment.

Over the years, Runeard developed a fearful, paranoid belief that magic corrupts people into thinking they are so powerful and entitled that they can defy and overpower a monarch like himself. Much like what he did after Rita ran away, he refused to take responsibility for his own sins and the problems in Arendelle, so he instead blamed them on magic since blaming is much easier than taking responsibility and magic is unable to defend itself.

When the Arendellians met the Northuldra, Runeard immediately distrusted, hated, and became prejudiced towards them simply because of their relationships with the Enchanted Forest's magical spirits. He wrongly believed that, since they were indigenous peasants who followed magic, the Northuldra posed a great risk and challenge to his power and status, and that they had to be eliminated. The novelization reveals even greater depths of Runeard's wrath and bigotry towards the tribe: during the gathering in the Forest, he looks at other Northuldrans with condescending glances, as if he thinks he is better than them, and even as he watches Northuldra children playing with the spirits, he shakes his head and frowns with disapproval and disgust. The Northuldran Yelana witnesses Runeard doing all of these things, allowing her to sense his hatred and realize that he had been lying to her people all the time.

Runeard was proven to be intelligent and cunning, as he plotted a subtle way to destroy the Northuldra with the dam he had built in the Forest, making his people believe it was a gift of peace that would help strengthen the Forest when it was actually created to weaken the lands and starve the tribe of their resources. Then when he murdered the tribe leader when the latter realized the true purpose of the dam, Runeard drew suspicion away from himself and instigated a full-fledged war against the Northuldra.

While he had been an awful husband to Rita, Runeard's treatment of Agnarr was no different: cold, dismissive, abusive, neglectful, and unloving. When Rita left, Runeard lied to the then five-year-old Agnarr about the reason why she was gone and constantly chided him for crying over her absence. Years later, when the Arendellians arrived in the Enchanted Forest, Runeard ordered Agnarr to stand tall in his posture, showing that he only saw his son as a means of indoctrination and hoped to mold him into the same evil man as himself. He then reminded Agnarr that he represents Arendelle, hinting that he only cared about Agnarr's status as his heir and the prince of Arendelle, so he wanted Agnarr to only act royally all the time and not like a child or a non-monarch at all. Shortly before the battle broke out, Agnarr explored the Forest before Runeard impatiently called him over, then coldly berated him for wandering off and being fascinated by magic. When Agnarr tried to apologize and explain himself, his father abruptly brushed him off and left him alone without saying goodbye and refusing to accept his apologies (this was the last time they spoke to each other). Runeard didn't prize Agnarr as his son or as a person in general and had no interest in being a real father to him, so he frequently assigned Agnarr to Lieutenant Mattias to keep him out of his way.

Runeard successfully managed to instill some of his xenophobic, paranoid views about magic into the minds of the Arendellians, who would subsequently follow suit by blaming their own problems on magical spirits, seeing magic as an evil entity, and thinking that the Northuldra were a hostile group of people who would attack Arendelle if given the chance. This shows that Runeard was a direct influence over the kingdom's distrust of magic and anyone with ties to magic for decades, even long after his death. It was due to the Arendellians' hostility towards magic that prompted Agnarr to keep Elsa's powers subdued and hidden from the populace at all costs. Runeard serves as a darker reflection of what Elsa could have become if she had allowed her fear to consume her, had it not been for her younger sister Anna and Olaf during the eternal winter.

## Trivia

* He is the first main antagonist of a Disney animated film to be a completely posthumous character, since he had been long dead by the time the film's events take place.

* Despite being the main antagonist of Frozen II, King Runeard only had four minutes of screentime. In fact, out of all the main antagonists in the Disney Animated Canon, he has the smallest amount of screentime, making his actions having the biggest impact in the franchise.
* Runeard is the first villain to die in the Disney animated feature canon since King Candy in *Wreck-It Ralph*, seven years prior.
* In *Dangerous Secrets*, Agnarr and Iduna learn from Grand Pabbie that Rita had her memory erased after no longer being able to live with Runeard. In response, Runeard told Agnarr that his mother was taken away by "evil spirits" and locked away all her things to forget her, even going as far as to banish anyone who said her name.
* King Runeard will appear in *Thomas and Twilight Sparkle Gets Frozen II**.*