The Snow Queen

"The Snow Queen" (Danish: "Snedronningen") is a Fairy Tale by author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) first published in 1845.

The story begins with a tale of an evil troll, actually The Devil himself, making a magic mirror that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it. It fails to reflect all the good and beautiful aspects of people and things while it magnifies all the bad and ugly aspects so that they look even worse than they really are. While attempting to carry the mirror into heaven with the idea of making fools of the angels and God, it slips from the troll's grasp and falls back to earth where it shatters into billions of pieces — some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters are blown around and get into people's hearts and eyes, making them only see the bad and ugly in people and things.

Years later, a little boy, Kai, and a little girl, Gerda, live next door to each other in a large city. Their grandmother tells them of the legendary Snow Queen, ruler of bee-like creatures made of snow. Shortly thereafter, Kai is struck by the shards in the heart and eye. Later he runs afoul of the Snow Queen, who causes him to forget everything and takes him back to her castle. Once Gerda learns of this, she sets out to find him - not an easy task.

Many movie adaptations and pop culture references have been made in honor of this work, one of them a Soviet Russian animated movie, which made Hayao Miyazaki believe that working in animation was worth it after all. Following the lead of Tangled, Disney made a very loose adaptation titled Frozen. The Snow Queen is also the antagonist of the third installment of the Dark Parables PC game series. And Joan D. Vinge adapted it into a Hugo-winning science-fantasy novel in 1980.

Tropes used in The Snow Queen include:
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