"Word was, the war in Arendelle lasted less than a day."
Tempest
is a fanfiction of Frozen (2013) written by the author kaiserklee. It takes place in alternate universe where Elsa is Queen of the Southern Isles and is raised as a weapon of war due to her powers. After declaring war on Arendelle and promptly winning said war in a matter of hours, Elsa claims complete sovereignty over the nation. Once her terms of surrender are complied to, she grants the opportunity of leniency to Arendelle in her policies.
On one condition. The princess comes with her.
As of January 30, 2015, it is complete at 52 chapters (the last chapter is an author's note with a short scene).
On the 27th of February 2015, Kaiserklee announced a sequel, titled Polaris after the North Star used by lost travelers to find their way home.
Tempest demonstrates examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Markus is shown to not care much about his sons and bluntly ridicules Stefan and Rafael for their interests in the arts. He also emotionally manipulates Elsa to become dependent on him and purposefully drives Edmund to attempted suicide at age five, all for the sake of his plans.
- Adaptational Heroism: Hans retains his scheming persona from the film, but is ultimately a protagonist of the story. He later even promises to redeem himself after he gets a reality check and gets to be crowned king.
- Adaptational Villainy: Elsa gets this, having been raised as a weapon of war for the Southern Isles.
- After-Action Patch-Up: Anna does this for Elsa after the latter saves her from an assassination attempt.
- Age Lift: Hans, being 23 in the movie, is aged down to 20 in Tempest. This was actually unintentional; the author didn't know Hans' canon age at the time of writing.
- All There in the Manual: The author's tumblr provides some extra info concerning the characters seen in the story, particularly the princes. There are also sidestories you can read on his FanFiction.Net page which focus on certain individual characters and their interactions before the events of Tempest.
- An Arm and a Leg:
- Elsa removes Tobias' arm to prevent his body from freezing over.
- Hans loses his legs as a result of his Heroic Sacrifice (see below).
- Asshole Victim:
- No one will miss Reid.
- And neither will they miss Tobias and Fabian.
- The Atoner: Eventually after some Character Development, Hans decides that he genuinely wants to make up for his past actions.
- Band of Brothers: Though the thirteen brothers as a whole are a Dysfunctional Family, individual brothers tend to bond together quite strongly. Alek and Hans form a memorable duo as they work with Anna to track down the Sorcerer.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Subverted. Ed!Anna catches a sword, but her gauntlet shatters and her hand is injured.
- Becoming the Mask: After possessing Anna, Edmund comes to hate his previous life so much he tries to mimic Anna's mannerism and even love for Elsa. Elsa lampshades this.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Sorcerer and Markus are defeated, and Elsa comes to accept herself and regains her heart. However, the Southern Isles family has been reduced, and they have a long way to go to make up for everything. Anna is left traumatized and Edmund dies having never fully accepted himself.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Oliver, the strategist, who has train tracks in his room so he can ride a cart to his bed.
- Combat Breakdown: Elsa's battle against Markus. It starts with both of them flinging around spells trying to overpower each other, then they both switched to swords and had a magically augmented duel, before it eventually dissolved into a magicless slug fight with Elsa trying to choke Markus to death.
- Death Equals Redemption:
- The abusive and warmongering Markus uses his dying breath to warn Elsa.
- Edmund shatters the Mirror, disrupting Elsa's Heroic Sacrifice to prevent eternal winter, after he had unleashed its powers himself.
- Despair Event Horizon: Edmund crossed this when he first realized that Elsa created a reliquary, destroying his hopes of ever becoming anything other than a heartless monster.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Edmund. Good, loving, thoughtful Edmund turned out to be the sorcerer pulling the strings all along.
- Driven to Villainy: Assuming that he was truthful, the Sorcerer. Forced to create a reliquary at a young age, he was left with the same empathy-crippling effect Elsa experiences, but magnified over an even longer stretch of time. Also, the then-incomplete process left him with a crumbling heart and a countdown on his life.
- Fake Memories: Elsa. For a majority of the story, she believes that her parents abused her and it was Markus who saved her from them. The truth is eventually revealed to her through the Mirror.
- Foreshadowing: When Elsa and Edmund play chess, he beats her with an unorthodox move that she does not see coming. He remarks that he could only beat her while she is distracted.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Played with, somewhat. Although Elsa, Marcus and even Gustaf were all stronger than the sorcerer, his plans playing out turned him into the most dangerous villain by the final segment of the story. In another form, although Anna starts out as a helpless girl, her possession by the sorcerer turned her into an utter nightmare.
- Grand Theft Me: Edmund's body is dying, and he has utterly lost faith in himself. He decides to steal Anna's body and identity. He succeeds(somewhat).
- Handicapped Badass: Hans during the final battle. Being stuck in a wheelchair limits him to mounted combat, but that just gives him the motivation to kill anyone who comes close. He even manages to fight a mind controlled Alek to a draw.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Hans loses function in his legs after he saves Anna from a collapsing warehouse.
- Kristoff throws Edmund over to safety right before he gets sucked into non-existence.
- Elsa attempts this in the final chapter by absorbing the Mirror's magic, but Edmund shatters the Mirror before she can finish.
- Hidden Depths:
- Edmund has eidetic memory and is an avid reader, fluent in several languages. He's also The Chessmaster.
- Alek likes growing flowers.
- Hijacked by Ganon: The Sorcerer makes his return after Markus' defeat, using Anna's body to stab Elsa in the back.
- I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
- Saul has this mindset, encouraging Anna to accept her feelings for Elsa, whom he felt Love at First Sight for.
- The Sorcerer invokes Love Makes You Evil in him before Elsa leaves to conquer Weselton.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Averted. Elsa actually loves her powers.
- In the Back: Anna, possessed by Edmund, stabs Elsa.
- Jack of All Trades: Edmund likes to imitate what each of his brothers do.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: A letter from the recently deceased Gustaf reveals Edmund is Odon, his supposedly deceased son.
- Made a Slave: Kristoff was enslaved after his unknown home was conquered. Technically, Anna is in the same boat.
- Magical Guide: An apparition, in the form of Elsa as a child, leads Anna to the trolls.
- May–December Romance: There had been some nasty rumours spreading surrounding the nature of Elsa and Markus' relationship, this being one of them. This was never the case.
- Meaningful Name:
- Gustaf means either "Royal Staff" or "Staff of the Gods." It's a name commonly held by monarchs, and hints at the high hopes Markus held for him.
- Alek is a variant form of Alexander, meaning "defender of men," or "protector of mankind." Alexander the Great was, of course, a remarkably successful military leader.
- Odon is the Hungarian equivalent to Edmund, foreshadowing the reveal that they're the same person.
- More than Mind Control:
- Chapter 27 reveals that this is how the Sorcerer's brainwashing works: he simply removes the inhibitions in the victim's mind that prevent him/her acting on their existing urges.
- Chapter 49/50 and Polaris preview reveals that Ed!Anna is not simply Edmund's mind in Anna's body; the real Anna is also present and making decisions (though heavily warped by Edmund's influence).
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Very minor, but Elsa admits she had this reaction after demanding that Anna come to the Southern Isles at the beginning. She quickly took it back and made it very clear that she didn't have to come, but Anna was convinced that was just a lie and she didn't really have a choice in the matter.
- After being freed from possession, Anna realizes to her horror that at least some of the deeds perpetrated by Ed!Anna were in fact her own. (to be fair though, that was due to Edmund removing her inhibitions).
- Mythology Gag: The way The Reveal is done in Chapter 44 (that Anna has been possessed by the Sorcerer) can be seen as a nod to the original film, where Elsa and Anna are related.
- Necromancer: The Sorcerer possesses Reid's dead body.
- Older Than They Look: With his youthful looks and childish personality, Edmund genuinely looks younger than his brother Hans, despite him being older (albeit by only a couple of days). Anna even views him like a little brother, and she's younger than him!
- Omniglot: Edmund speaks thirteen different languages.
- One-Word Title: The story is simply titled Tempest.
- Redemption Equals Death: Saul is promptly killed by Ed!Anna after moving past his selfish love.
- Red Herring Twist: Edmund is suspicious, until Gustaf reveals himself to be the Sorcerer, and the matter is dropped. Later, Edmund is revealed to have been the Sorcerer, and Gustaf a decoy.
- Restored My Faith in Humanity: Subverted. Elsa only cares about Anna. In the end, Elsa gives the world a chance, but because her faith in herself is restored rather than humanity at large.
- The Reveal: Given the nature of the story, this understandably appears more than once:
- Chapter 30 reveals the identity of the Sorcerer.
- Chapter 31 reveals the fate of Gustaf's son, Odon.
- Chapter 44 reveals that the Sorcerer was actually Edmund.
- Reverse Whodunnit: The bulk of the story deals with unraveling the identity of "the Sorcerer", an identity who is (indirectly) killing off the Princes of the Southern Isles and bears a grudge against Elsa.
- Sequel Hook: Chapter 52 ends with Anna displaying Edmund's shadow magic.
- Shout-Out: Other than some toward the obvious, there's a few.
- Chapter 20 is called Day One: 72 Hours Remain.
- Chapter 22 is called (Ab)normal Days.
- In Chapter 44, one of Edmund's lines is a direct quote from Majora's Mask.Edmund: What you think is your true face... the face behind the mask... is that really... your true face?
- Unreliable Expositor: Markus does not tell Elsa everything; Elsa blindly believes Markus, and as such becomes unreliable when relaying information to Anna.
- Unskilled, but Strong:
- Elsa is incredibly powerful, yet lacks fine control over her powers. The Sorcerer is Weak, but Skilled.
- With both Elsa's magic and the Sorcerer's magic at her fingertips, Ed!Anna is the most powerful character in the story, but she is reckless with them and ends up repeating Elsa's mistakes against her.
- Unwitting Pawn:
- Villainous Breakdown: The villainous Ed!Anna breaks away from her Anna-persona for a brief moment when Elsa hits a nerve, and eventually admits to being Odon.
