Defrosting Ice Queen / Literature

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• Melissa "Schoolmarm From Hell" Mailey, from Eric Flint's 1632 series, finds her notoriously aloof, acerbic self softening considerably due to a combination of falling in love and being thrust three hundred and fifty years or so into the past. The former has the expected effect, but the latter forces her to really confront her own principles and what they mean in the context of 17th century Germany. And she becomes something of a mother figure and counselor to many of the young women stranded by the Ring of Fire. All combined, the Melissa Mailey who emerges is altogether a much softer and more approachable figure... at least to anyone who doesn't get on her bad side. Like setting the Globe Theatre ablaze, for instance...
  Julie Sims: I like you much better this way.
  Melissa Mailey: So do I, Julie. So do I.
• Artificial Human Iason Mink of Ai no Kusabi is known as the "Ice Man" and "Ice Noble" for his cold demeanor and cool judgement. It all slowly starts to melt away when he falls in love.
• The novelization of the original Aliens vs. Predator comic arc does a more thorough defrosting of Ice Queen Machiko Noguchi. She was so unintentionally aloof from the colonists under her authority that she was dubbed the "Nitrogen Queen" behind her back. Only three months into her stay does she realize that they all hate her, and immediately sets about changing her status among them. She makes decent but slow headway until the Predators begin hunting colonists and the subsequent outbreak of Aliens, at which point she becomes an Action Girl and repeatedly risks her life for all of them.
• This is pretty much how Anne and Gilbert's relationship works from books one through three, though she's only cold to him, not other people. The fact that it took over ten years to defrost her and he waited patiently just makes him that much more awesome.
• Bazil Broketail:
  • Ribela of Defwode, when she first appears, is harsh and strictly authoritarian, interested mainly in getting the job done and having a lot of trouble showing that she cares about other people's feelings — particularly men, whom she deems inferior. However, after she spends some time among people, she becomes more sociable and sheds her prejudices (or she becomes far less obnoxious about them, at least).
  • Eilsa Ranardaughter, Relkin's future love interest, is hostile and mistrustful towards him and his comrades when they first meet — especially compared to her friend Silva, who is much more amiable and understanding. In time, though, after getting to know each other better as they all travel and fight Padmasan forces on their way together, they become Fire-Forged Friends and, eventually, Eilsa and Relkin fall in love with each other.
  • Downplayed by Digal Turrent. It's not that he becomes openly nice to his subordinates nor turns into a bona fide Father to His Men — he remains a strict officer to the very end. Nevertheless, over time he becomes less picky when it comes to following rules and starts to praise his men for their efforts more often. Dragonboys are downright shocked when Turrent openly commends them during the battle of Sprian's Ridge.
• While the titular character of Beachwalker is a kind and giving person, it takes a bullet wound for her to let anyone start to get close to her.
• Branded Ann, from the book of the same name. Her ship is even named the Ice Queen.
• In A Brother's Price, after the disastrous marriage to Keifer Porter, the Queens have decreed that their daughters can only get married if all of the surviving ones of age agree to it. Thanks to Keifer, Trini is extremely standoffish towards the man her sisters favor, agreeing only because otherwise the Porters will buy him and she hates that family, but she warms to him gradually.
• Caging Skies: Russian soldiers (pretending to be Polish) Sergey Karganov and Fedor Kalinin. They don't speak German so they can't communicate with the Austrian Nazi Protagonist, but they manage to forge a friendship in comedy and card games
  I don't know how it started but in no time the three of us were sitting around Pimmichen's footrest, shuffling the deck like croupiers until cards either fell or flew, especially those up our sleeves, sneaking in 3s with suites of 8s, adding a stowaway card to every one swept off the deck, erasing points from whoever took the lead. Pimmichen didn't pick up any of this, neither did she Janusz's laughter every time he looked up at her, remembering what he'd witnessed me carrying earlier in the day. I felt sorry for Pimmichen, so demure, unaware and lost in her big armchair, but I couldn't help getting a laugh out of it too. Elsa's kiss contributed to my drunkenness as much as the sips of their vodka.
• Captive Prince: Laurent slowly opens up to Damen as he realizes, to his considerable confusion, that Damen is genuinely trustworthy. Only in private, though — he has a public image as a "cast-iron bitch" to maintain.
• In Catch-22 Nately's Whore.
• In The City Who Fought, Channa Hap is assigned as Simeon's new brawn and they have a bad first impression when he introduces himself by hitting on her and gets defensive when she doesn't appreciate it. Even beyond that, she has a good reason to be hostile to him - he was reluctant to allow his old brawn to retire and slandered all the prospective candidates, destroying Channa's reputation and her chances of landing an assignment she'd prefer. Simeon's forced to admit that he did her wrong, but that doesn't entirely thaw the ice, especially since she's got strict standards and refuses to let him overrule her. Gradually he learns to genuinely respect and be considerate of her and find a Commonality Connection, and she comes to trust and like him.
• Cradle Series: Yerin starts the series concerned with nothing but revenge, and after that advancing down the path her dead master left for her. She slowly opens up more to her companions, especially Lindon, and she begins to admit that underneath everything else she just doesn't want to be alone again.
• At the end of Robert E. Howard's "The Devil in Iron", Conan the Barbarian is rather crestfallen to find that Octavia tried to allure him because she was forced; a kiss later, she is somewhat reconciled, and he offers to burn down the city where she was Made a Slave for her.
• Janine and Candayce, in Dinoverse, both go through this over the course of having to escape the Cretaceous. Janine starts friendly with some people but ultimately is remote, and quite hostile to Candayce as she's a Former Friend of Alpha Bitch. Candayce is just an Alpha Bitch, disdainful of being stuck with a loser like Janine and a turbo-nerd like Bertram with his obvious crush on her. They go from enemies to, well, frenemies sniping at each other with a minimum of actual malice. When they go home Janine reconnects with her mother and doesn't rebel as destructively. Candayce becomes less hostile, starts volunteering, and begins to date Bertram.
• Elevation: In this Stephen King novella the Lipstick Lesbian Deirdre McComb is, for various reasons, cold and antagonistic towards the protagonist Scott Carey, but a close and warm friendship gradually develops between the two. To the point that he elects her to aid him when chooses to Face Death with Dignity.
• Jiltanith in Mutineer's Moon, the first in the Empire from the Ashes trilogy.
• Bean, in the Ender's Shadow series; particularly Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow of the Giant. In Ender's Shadow, Bean was a snarky, cold calculating little boy who was extremely logical and restrained. By the end of the series, having found love, he's happy, romantic, and emotional.
• Ex-Heroes has an excellent example with Stealth and the Mighty Dragon.
• Fish (male example) in Waking Rose and Rachel (female example) in The Midnight Dancers.
• A male example with Aaron from The Fire's Stone: he rejects Darvish harshly when Darvish first eyes him as a potential lover and remains cold and stoic until he slowly manages to connect with him.
• The sorceress Sybel on her remote mountain in The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Multiple characters refer to her as being white or icy. One of the main catalysts of the defrosting part is red-headed Coren.
• Dominique Francon of The Fountainhead.
• Pip does this to the previously cold-hearted Estella in Great Expectations.
• A very literal example of this can be found in the fairy tale Heart of Ice. In this tale, a young man goes on a quest to defrost a young princess's heart, without which he can only be friends.
• Heralds of Valdemar: In The Black Gryphon, Winterhart is a healer who views her gryphon charges as things and is utterly cold and emotionless to humans. She seeks out the services of the kestra'chern Amberdrake for persistent back pain, but over many weeks, Amberdrake slowly and laboriously gets her to open up, first by showing her that the gryphons are sapient beings with feelings, then by delving into her past. It turns out that she was a child of nobility who was in the High King's court when the evil mage Ma'ar attacked it with an Emotion Bomb. As she was also an undiscovered empath, the fear induced by the bomb inflicted particular damage on her psyche, which she covered up by retreating into a shell of uncaring. This revelation allows her to finally start healing, and in the aftermath, she also takes Amberdrake as her lover.
• The Hunger Games: When Johanna Mason is introduced, she acts as little more than a jerkass. However, she becomes somewhat nicer later on, as well as more sympathetic, especially when it turns out that she's one of the tributes in on the operation from District 13 to break out Katniss.
• InCryptid: Sam Taylor acts like a Jerkass to Antimony at first, though he had good reasons: she's an outsider (who turns out to be (supposedly) working for The Covenant), and he's never had a relationship with anyone who likes him in his fūri form before. Over the next two books, he becomes fiercely devoted to her and even moves in with her when they return to Oregon.
• Katherine Madigan (yes, that Katherine Madigan — it's complicated) in Robert Schroeck's metafiction masterpiece, Drunkard's Walk II, gets this treatment. It actually works pretty well.
• In The Lord of the Rings, Faramir finally defrosts Éowyn, the Lady of War who previously looked for glory, honour, and death on the battlefield.
• The Mortal Instruments:
  • Like her brother, Isabelle Lightwood is not very fond of Clary at first. Later, though, she begins to open up to her.
  • Imogen Herondale starts out frosty and unapproachable, but suffers several humbling failures and by the end of City of Ashes she performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Jace after learning that he was her grandson.
• Skirlet Hutsenreither plays this role in Jack Vance's book Night Lamp — over the course of the story, she goes from a stuck up Clam Muffin (it's a social caste) to a warm and friendly space traveler, largely because of Jaro Fath, the main character. (Almost all of Vance's heroines are this, at least towards the hero.)
• Rachel in No More Dead Dogs. She initially thinks that Wallace is a dumb jock, but warms up to him later and by the end, a letter from Julia Roberts tells her that she's practically fallen for him.
• In Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, Virginia is cold, brisk, and businesslike when she and Stephan first meet. When they get a chance to actually talk, she thaws.
• In An Outcast in Another World, Elder Alessia and Alia both share elements of this. Each one hates Rob for being a Human -– as many Elves do –- due to the trauma incurred by The Scouring and The Cataclysm. As Rob repeatedly proves his strength of character, both start to warm up to him. Alessia even goes from telling Rob that his visage will always sicken her to sticking up for him when the Seneschal’s Elves come to take him.
• Pax: Bristle is hostile to Pax at first, because he has human scent on him. She gradually accepts him over the course of the book.
• Calling Perry Rhodan "literature" seems inappropriate but his love interest, the icily beautiful and scornful Thora of Arkon definitely qualifies for this trope — she ends up his devoted wife.
• Lady Aliena in The Pillars of the Earth. She eventually defrosts enough to fall in love with the lowly Jack Jackson/Builder.
• Aunt Polly from Pollyanna is an unromantic example. She begins the book as cold and borderline cruel but Pollyanna eventually defrosts her however it's not until Pollyanna's badly injured that she completely defrosts.
• Male example: Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In fact, contrary to the claim that role reversal is unusual with this trope, the man with the cold and unfeeling façade who is melted by the love of a good woman is extremely common in romance novels because All Girls Want Bad Boys AND Single Woman Seeks Good Man — you can have both that way.
  • And in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Elizabeth, too.
• Much of the plot of The Queen of Attolia revolves around the titular queen slowly defrosting, ending with her marrying the hero, Eugenides. The King Of Attolia shows her continuing to defrost, which disturbs most of the kingdom, which is used to her being cold and cruel.
• Comfort Goodpasture in Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, known as "The Iron Maiden" around school until she gets tired of saying no.
• Angel from Redeeming Love is deeply embittered and cynical as a result of a lifetime of forced prostitution; the novel’s main premise is one man’s divinely-appointed attempt to reverse these effects via The Power of Love. He is ultimately successful, though he strays heavily into Love Martyr territory in the process.
• Maid Marian in some versions of the Robin Hood legend.
• Diana Mayo from the novel The Sheik, in a somewhat disturbing way. After being kidnapped and repeatedly raped, she abandons her old cold, independent attitudes and realizes she's fallen in love with her rapist.
• Hortense for Gilbert in Small Island. He considers it a major milestone when she deigns to laugh at one of his jokes.
• There is a non-sexual example of the trope in the fairy tale The Snow Queen, where the titular character freezes the heart of a young boy, making him Not Himself until he is defrosted by his sister's love.
  • Except in some versions where it doesn't work, he freezes completely, and she goes home and forgets about him.
  • In the original, it's his childhood friend Gerda, not his sister, who attempts to rescue him, and she succeeds.
• Sofia Mendes in The Sparrow. Tragically, the sequel Children of God shows her not only refrosting but becoming a Knight Templar.
• Super Powereds:
  • Chad becomes this in the third year. He could use his power to control his emotions, and until then he almost always did, but after spending time around Angela and the Melbrook five with his defenses down, he begins to see the value in enjoying himself. He also starts seeing Shane and Roy as more than just his sparring partners, calling them friends.
  • Alice was raised as an heiress to her father's business empire and grew up as a socialite, trained to navigate the complex and dangerous waters of high society. Her assumption that she's better than everyone else leads Nick to label her "Princess". However, it doesn't take long for the others' simplicity and friendliness to start rubbing off on her. It also helps that, with Mary around, she has to give up any notion of private thought and be more open with the others.
• Richard causes this in the Sword of Truth series just by being. The Mord-Sith, Sisters of the Light, and Nicci, all of whom are some of the iciest queens out there.
• Played with in The Twilight Saga. Rosalie Hale looks like she's warming up to Bella, but it's only because Bella's pregnant, which Rosalie can never be.
• After more than twenty years of suffer, Cassie from Uncle Tom's Cabin is pretty much a cynical wreck of a Broken Bird. She's harsh and snarky towards Tom and Emmeline when they arrive and talks back to her owner Simon Legree and is feared by almost everyone... but as time goes by, Tom's friendship warms her up slightly, at least enough to take Emmeline with her and run away from the manse. Which, unbeknownst to her, would trigger Tom's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Luxa from The Underland Chronicles.
• Vampire Academy:
  • Mia Rinaldi, the cold enemy of Lissa and Rose is won over by The Power of Friendship in Frostbite, becoming a genuinely caring friend for the rest of the series.
  • Queen Tatiana has a cold demeanor and acts with an air of superiority towards Lissa and Rose, treating the latter as dirt and a lowly dhampir. However, she is revealed to be a caring great-aunt to Adrian Ivashkov, acts as a mentor for Lissa, and even tries to afford Rose some respect when she becomes the girlfriend of Adrian.
  • Sydney Sage starts in Vampire Academy as an Alchemist too fearful and distrusting of vampires and dhampirs to stay in the same room as Rose overnight. By the end of the spinoff series Bloodlines, she has completely defrosted to Moroi and dhampirs, marrying a Moroi, raising a dhampir, and having almost all of her closest friends being Moroi dhampirs.
• Villains by Necessity: Kaylana. Over the course of the book she slowly warms up under Sam's romantic attention toward her, and at the end, she finally laughs at something he says. It's implied they are together after this.
• Glinda Arduenna Upland in Wicked becomes this as her friendship with Elphaba grows, and even more so when Dr. Dillamond was killed by Madame Morrible
• Dia Passik of Wraith Squadron wasn't quite a Rich Bitch, but she was distant and sometimes cruel and blamed other Twi'leks for selling her into slavery as a child. After being forced to Shoot Her Wingmate Castin Donn, who was probably already dead, she had a Heroic RRoD, told her squadmates that Diap'assik (her child name, representing her compassionate, vulnerable side) was dead. It wasn't. She hooked up with Face, and Word of God says that they later broke up amicably.
  • Myn Donos, also a Wraith, is a male version. He'd once been in charge of a squadron of his own, but everyone except him and his astromech was killed on their first mission, and he blamed himself and became the Wraiths' Cold Sniper, going into a catatonic Heroic BSoD after that astromech was destroyed and his failure became complete. His wingmates brought him out of it, particularly a woman who'd started falling for him. When she died, he was left a little less cold, and Lara did the rest.

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