| “ | Magic makes people feel too powerful… too entitled. It makes them think they can defy the will of a king. | „ |
| ~ King Runeard showing his true colors and his most famous quote |
King Runeard is the main antagonist of Disney's Frozen franchise. He served as the posthumous overarching antagonist of Frozen, the main antagonist of Frozen II, its novelization and manga and the sequel novel Polar Nights, 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.
He was played by Jeremy Sisto.
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.
- He didn't care that the dam would indirectly starve the nearby kingdom of Vesterland by driving its wildlife away/to extinction.
- When one of the princesses of Vesterland, Inger, objected to the dam, Runeard framed her for the accidental death of her sister and sent her to the gallows to be hanged.
- When the elderly Northuldran chief realized the effects of the dam and begged Runeard to do something, Runeard mercilessly murdered him.
- Despite claiming that his act of killing the chief was "for Arendelle", it's clear he did it entirely out of his own selfish interests.
- 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.
- His death is not played for sympathy, but instead satisfiction since he fought another Northuldran before his death and succeed at killing him.
- His only motivation behind all of his actions is power and he's never portrayed as sympathetic.
- There's nothing about Runeard that's comedic in the slightest, with him being taken as a completely serious threat by everyone, in-universe or not.
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.
- He isn't shown to be a smart king at all, as the audiences find it baffling as to why being a murderer could give him more power:
- 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.
- Not only would the dam ruin the lands of the Enchanted Forest (as planned), but it would destroy the lands around Vesterland , a neighboring kingdom, and its wildlife. What's especially baffling is that Runeard still expected Vesterland to fund the making of his dam, and he in fact needed their patronage.
- 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. This shows how pathetic he is as a fighter.
- 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.
External Links[]
- King Runeard at the Villains wiki
- King Runeard at the Pure Evil wiki
- King Runeard at the Hate Sink wiki
- King Runeard at the Disney wiki
- King Runeard at the Frozen wiki