Was Gerda Right?

Honestly, even to keep with the mythology of the movie this wasn’t a necessary move storytelling-wise. To make the plot of “wait, who the heck is this woman?” work, yeah, they needed to wipe memories. And it’s getting a little old…I couldn’t stop thinking about how lame it was to have Regina drink a memory potion so she wouldn’t undo all of S1 by knowing who Emma was from the start.

But that’s a writer issue, not a character issue, so Gerda’s choice:

1. There are bound to be questions and some of those might lead to serious questions about her legitimacy as a ruler. After all, she just put the rightful heir/queen in a jar, and with the other sister dead, she took over the kingdom with that act. Ingrid, who was going to run away in the first place, may well have agreed with Gerda’s becoming queen at the time, but the people might not understand that (and what proof would they have?)

2. Gerda’s scared. She just lost her sisters–one in self defense from the one who killed the other. She may not be thinking through all the repercussions. I think in some ways it’s on Grand Pabbie to make the better long-term decision here…so it’s possible that there’s more to the political situation he and Gerda are seeing that we, focused as we are on the princesses, don’t see. Grand Pabbie seconds the motion and carries it through, though…so it’s not JUST Gerda doing it.

Even so…I’m not sure such an extreme act was justified. It’s certainly historically supported, though–plenty of cases where subsequent rulers did their best to eradicate predecessors from public memory. Obviously they didn’t have magic to completely do so, but there are Egyptian examples where the face of a particular ruler has been scratched off lots of monuments. Defacing, you see?

In this case, Gerda was doing it out of fear of what people would think (leading to possible unrest/uprising against her) and fear of what had just happened (maybe someone would bring Ingrid back…and Ingrid just became very, very scary).