King Runeard

King Runeard is the posthumous main antagonist of Disney's Frozen franchise. He served as the posthumous overarching antagonist of Frozen, the posthumous main antagonist of Frozen II, its novelization and manga, and the overarching antagonist of the tie-in prequel novel Dangerous Secrets.

He was the oldest known monarch of Arendelle who, in his quest to crush the neighboring Northuldran people of the Enchanted Forest, doomed his own kingdom for over thirty years.

What Makes Him Pathetic?

 * He refused to give his arranged wife, Queen Rita, any love or freedom, driving her to abandon her own child, Agnarr, erase her memories and flee into the wilderness in despair.
 * If Rita had taken Agnarr with her, Runeard would have waged war against her kingdom, killing countless innocents.
 * He locked away all of Rita's belonging and banished anyone who would even mention her name.
 * He blamed everything wrong in his kingdom, including Rita's disappearance, on magic, turning his subjects against it and all who practiced it.
 * He emotionally abused Agnarr, shaming him for crying and causing him to lock himself in his room for two years.
 * He built a dam in a plan to ruin the Northuldrans' lands so they would have to depend on him to survive.
 * When the elderly Northuldran chief realized the effects of the dam and begged Runeard to do something, Runeard mercilessly murdered him.
 * He instigated a bloody battle just to secure his own power, fooling the Arendellians into thinking the Northuldrans had attacked. This led to tons of deaths and mountains of wounded soldiers and civilians.
 * He left Agnarr, his own son, on a boulder to bleed to death.
 * During the battle, some of his soldiers were in agreement to slaughter any Northuldran on sight.
 * He dragged another Northuldran with him off a cliff to his death.

What Makes Him A Pinhead?

 * He was an incredibly destructive and delusional king, driving his own wife away and refusing to admit to a single one of his mistakes, using magic as a convenient scapegoat. His scapegoating and refusal to take responsibility is part of the reason Agnarr would grow up a relatively struggling ruler.
 * Even though his plan of building a dam to deprive the Northuldrans of their natural resources seemed clever on paper, it was immediately figured out by the Northuldran chief, whom Runeard was completely unable to manipulate, leading the king to simply kill him in a panic.
 * Additionally, the dam built up such a towering body of water behind it that if the structure were to fall, a tidal wave big enough to annihilate Arendelle would be unleashed. This meant that Runeard had effectively doomed his own kingdom in an attempt to consolidate his royal power. In fact, if not for Elsa's intervention, the kingdom would have been wiped out after the curse of the Enchanted Forest had been broken.
 * He funneled all of Arendelle's royal guard into the Enchanted Forest on the day of the faux celebration, leaving his kingdom defenseless, which would later be exploited by the underhanded King Nicholas of Vassar.
 * He was one of the first people to die in the gruesome battle he started, somehow managing to lose to a Northuldran armed with nothing but a stick, while the king had both a shield and a sword.
 * His disregard for Agnarr's life resulted in his son almost bleeding to death if not for the selfless Northuldran Iduna. This would've destroyed Runeard's bloodline altogether.
 * His callous and sporadic actions caused the survivors of his army to be locked in the Enchanted Forest for over thirty years.
 * In summary, for every effort he made to heighten the sovereignty of his reign, he pushed his own kingdom closer and closer to its collapse, getting himself killed, his heir nearly killed and allowing the entirety of his kingdom to be knocked down with a single tidal wave due to an architectural oversight.