Having spent 12 years at a Jesuit university, metaphysical questions have always fascinated me.

The implications of Elsa's god-like ability to create sentient beings with the wave of her hand seemed to beg for exploration of that ability. How could she be so casual about it? What would happen once she started thinking through what she had done?

Originally, this story was entitled "Elsa's Lesson". She is still fragile at this point, still teetering on the edge of emotional peril, still feeling her way in her duties to Arendelle and to herself. It seemed to me that as she settled down into the daily grind of being the ruler responsible for the well-being of her kingdom, she would have to learn and grow, and some of those lessons would be tough ones that challenged everything she thought she knew.

And sometimes, a ruler has to do things they don't want to do. Life is shades of gray and the balancing of competing needs. Sometimes life demands we choose between bad and worse. A Queen must have a fine sense of nuance when dealing with moral and ethical dilemmas. Those dilemmas pretty much define the job. Her fear of becoming a monster will keep her from ever using lethal force as anything but an absolute last resort. She is reconciled to the fact that political reality and the safety of her kingdom may require death to be dealt in her name. But personally taking a life? We don't know if the future will bring her to a situation where she has no other option, and what she would do if faced with such a situation.

Just to be perfectly clear: IMHO, in the movie, she would have been legally, morally, and ethically justified in killing the two thugs that the Duke sent to kill her. There were two reasons she didn't: a) Disney! and b) it would have killed HER to have that last big dollop of guilt piled onto the load she was already carrying. It would have been a very different movie, one I'm not sure I would have enjoyed. Not because I would have judged her poorly for the act, but because I don't see any way for her to dump the guilt trip afterwards. Which would lead us to a very different dramatic arc. Hans, that bastard, did her (and us) a huge favor by talking her down from doing it.

YMMV, as always.