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Magic makes people feel too powerful... too entitled. It makes them think they can defy the will of a king!
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~ King Ruenard expressing his reason for distrusting the Northuldran people.
King Runeard is the posthumous main antagonist of Disney's 58th full-length animated feature film Frozen II and the overall posthumous Greater-Scope Villain of the Frozen franchise. He is the former King of Arendelle, the father of King Agnarr and the grandfather of Queen Elsa and Princess Anna. As opposed to his son and granddaughters who are benevolent monarchs, Runeard is a ruthless tyrant who plotted to exterminate Northuldran people out of fear of their association with magic.
He was voiced by Jeremy Sisto, who also voiced Talon in Batman vs. Robin.
Years prior to the events of the film, Runeard ruled the Kingdom of Arendelle and at some point married Queen Rita, his wife. Together, they had Prince Agnarr, their only son and heir. It's unknown what happened later to Rita, but it seems that she passed away, possibly when giving birth to Agnarr. According to the tie-in novel Frozen: Forest of Shadows, Ruenard oversaw the construction of the modern Arendelle Castle.
At some point during his reign, the tribe of Northuldra, who lived in the Enchanted Forest north of Arendelle in harmony with the elemental spirits who also resided there, made peace with Runeard and his kingdom, with Runeard and his men frequently meeting with them because of this. However, in truth, Runeard actually feared and despised the Northuldrans, believing that their association with magic made them too entitled and that they could potentially threaten his power. He would later have a dam constructed in the Enchanted Forest, supposedly designed to help the Northuldran people and bring prosperity to their land, although in reality, its purpose was to reduce the Northuldrans' resources in order to weaken them.
When the Northuldran leader brought this to Runeard's attention, he declared that they would discuss in private, where he would attack the leader from behind and kill him. As a result of this, a battle broke out between the Arendellian soldiers and the Northuldran people, during which Runeard was driven to a cliff and fell to his death. The spirits of the forest, enraged by the fighting, cursed the forest by enveloping it in a mist that would keep anyone from leaving or entering, trapping the Northuldran people and Arendellian soldiers inside. Prince Agnarr managed to escape the mist with the help of a Northuldran girl named Iduna, whom he would later marry upon inheriting the throne of Arendelle.
In the following years, King Runeard posthumously gained a daughter-in-law when Iduna married Agnarr and later became a grandfather with the arrival of Elsa and Anna. Due to Iduna's selfless act during Runeard's attack, however, the elemental spirits rewarded Elsa with ice powers. Years later, Agnarr would tell his daughters Elsa and Anna about the story of the Enchanted Forest, unaware that his father Runeard had actually started the conflict that sealed it off from the world in the first place.
Frozen 2
Three years following the arrest of Prince Hans and the exile of the Duke of Weselton and his thugs for the attempted murder of Elsa, the stakes changed when Elsa, upon hearing the call of a mysterious voice and accidentally awakening the elemental spirits, travels to the Enchanted Forest alongside Anna, Olaf, Kristoff and Sven. There, they met the trapped Northuldran people and Arendellian soldiers, learning of her mother's heritage and encountering the different elemental spirits in the process. While travelling towards the Ahtohallan, a mythical river said to hold all explanations of the past, Elsa, Anna and Olaf discover Agnarr and Iduna's shipwreck, realizing that they had perished trying to reach the Ahtohallan themselves and find answers about Elsa's powers. Believing that her powers are the reason why both Agnarr and Iduna died, a guilty Elsa forced Anna and Olaf away and seek out the river by herself. Upon reaching it, Elsa views the past and finds out that Runeard was responsible for the forest's curse in killing the Northuldran leader, managing to send the information to Anna before freezing as a result of venturing into the most dangerous part of Ahtohallan.
While trying to find a way out of the cave she and Olaf had become trapped in, Anna receives Elsa's message — in the form of an ice sculpture of Runeard about to attack the Northuldran leader. Realizing the horrible truth about her grandfather and seeing what a heinous scoundrel he truly is, Anna concludes that she has to destroy the dam for peace to be restored before Olaf fades away as a result of Elsa freezing. Upon escaping the caves, Anna provokes the Earth Spirits into chasing her to the dam and explains the truth about Ruenard to Lieutenant Mattias and the other Arendellian soldiers to get their help, thus getting the Earth Spirits to destroy the dam with boulders, lifting the curse and saving Elsa in the process. After saving Arendelle from the ensuing flood, Elsa, acknowledging her and Anna's role as the bridge between the people and magical spirits, decides to give up her title as Queen of Arendelle to Anna in order to help protect the Enchanted Forest, thus bringing peace between Arendelle and the Northuldran people again and ending Runeard's dreadful legacy for good.
Trivia
King Runeard is one of the rare sequel villains to actually appear in the Disney Animated Canon, the others are Percival C. McLeach from The Rescuers Down Under, Firebird from Fantasia 2000 and Arthur from Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Despite being the successor in the second film of the series and already being dead by the time the story takes place, King Runeard is more evil than Prince Hans, the main antagonist of the first film. This is because while Hans posed a genuine threat towards Anna and Elsa, he did so because in part because of his tragic past of being tormented by his abusive father and hiswickedbrothers, whereas King Runeard betrayed and tried to exterminate the Northuldrans solely out of spite and fear that they could threaten his power.
Ironically, the scene in which the snowy manifestation of King Runeard killing the leader of the Northuldrans with his sword bears a resemblance to the scene from the first film where Hans tried to kill Elsa in the same manner. Coincidentally, both did so out of fear and despise against their victims. The difference is that while Hans failed to carry on Elsa's murder, Runeard did succeed in killing the Northuldran leader. Thus, Runeard may serve as an example of what Hans could have easily become if he had succeeded in killing both sisters and been crowned King of Arendelle in the first film.
King Runeard is the foremost antagonist of the Frozen franchise. His heinous actions against the Northuldran people not only led to the main events of Frozen 2, but also to the events of the first film. Given Iduna's selfless act of saving Agnarr from the battle which Runeard started, the elemental spirits gave Elsa her ice powers, which caused her to accidentally unleash them and allowed the Duke of Weselton to turn Arendelle against her in the original Frozen; while the construction of the dam caused the Northuldran to resent the Arendellians until Anna and Elsa managed to destroy the dam so they could be released from their imprisonment in the forest.
King Runeard 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 while his actions plague the protagonists in the present.
King Runeard was entirely omitted from pre-release merchandise, hereunder the official storybook versions of the movie (all of which ended with the vague explanation that Elsa "found the truth" and nothing more), to shroud anything to do with his true role in the story to the theorizers. When Jeremy Sisto attended the premiere, many knew nothing of the characters he was voicing.
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