Second Born Royalty has all the fun!

I started to think about this after seeing Anna's personality as contrasted to Elsa.

Elsa is all calm and regal, Anna is michevious, freewheeling and hot tempered.

In Brave there's a similar situation with Merida and her brothers in Brave.
She's always pressured to "behave properly", but nobody really cares that they are little terrors.


So, I started to wonder, are the firstborn in each Royal family expected to act in a manner befitting a future queen? Therefore, they're not given the freedom to do whatever they want.
Whereas there are no such expectations attached to their younger siblings, so they can be as naughty as they want.
Merida even gives a monologue on this issue.

It's not just royalty though... it is like that in any family regardless of social rank. The 1st born will always carry the expectations of the parents... and the parents tend to be a lot stricter when raising their 1st child too, by the time the 2nd child comes around they are more laid back about certain things because they have learned what and what not to do.

But Elsa's case is an exception because of her powers. IMO Elsa's Dad totally blew it... I could understand wanting to hide her powers if she were a peasant because then she would be considered a threat to the crown. But since she is the princess and her dad the King... they had no one to fear IMO. IMO Elsa's Dad should have embraced her power and told her to practice everyday in order to learn to control it. And since Disney bought Marvel... maybe they could have sent Elsa to Charles Xavier's School for the Gifted.

Oh, and Ariel too... except she wasn't second born... she was... well, not sure what number she was... but she definitely had a lot of sisters.

Interestingly, in the original draft of the the script, they were going to explore this theme.
There's a song (We Know Better) that was written which is Elsa singing to Anna shortly after she is born.
It's full of references about how much pressure there is on Elsa to live up to expectations as the future ruler and her fear that similar pressure will be placed on Anna as well.
This song didn't make it into the final cut of the movie, but it was still written and a demo recording exists (you can find it on the deluxe version of the soundtrack).

The secret to controlling Elsa's powers was

Spoiler: show

not the powers themselves, but her emotional state while using them. So regardless of how much she practiced, it would have done no good, since nobody knew the connection until the very end of the movie, when Anna tells the secret of control to Elsa (she learned it from the Trolls).
Ironically, Elsa thought the trick to controlling her powers was to suppress her emotions, when in truth, she had to embrace them in order to master her powers fully. Specifically, love and happiness.

What you discover at the end of the movie, by isolating herself from Anna, she's actually making the situation worse, allowing her negative emotions to feed the power.
If she'd just stayed happy, there would have been no problem controlling her powers at all!

Ariel was 7th in line, she was the youngest.
Ironically, despite that, there is a subtext that she was going to be the future ruler of the seas.
Something about how she was so much like Triton that she would have been chosen above the others, despite her low ranking in the order of succession.

@Tangled&tron, who says Bobby Drake isn't one of Elsa's descendants? Of course, staying more in the Disney family is Frozone...

The heir is groomed for rule from an early age. Naturally they'd be held to a higher standard... although typically the other royal children would also have etiquette (etc.) training.

Compare with Princes William (straight-laced) and Harry (wild parties) or Edward VIII's abdication causing his under-prepared brother to take the throne... which worked out well in the end, but was not easy for him (allegedly).

I won't repeat what Beatrice was caught doing, but it was pretty wild.

I'm not sure where she stands in the line of succession, either 3rd or 4th maybe, depending on whether she's the first born of Sarah Ferguson's kids.

But it's case in point, she's not the number 1, so nobody really cared that she was tearing it up.

Scar being second born kind of drove him to intense jealousy and eventually caused him to commit fratricide/regicide, so I wouldn't say it's ALWAYS fun and games for second born royalty, lol.

My mum was the oldest of SEVEN!!!! It must have been really hard to have six annoying brothers and sisters! According to my aunts and uncles though, she managed to keep it together pretty well! Not sure if I could have managed!