Aahana Swrup
‘I Am Frankelda’ is a Spanish stop-motion animation film in which the lines between reality and fiction are blurred. Francisca Imedla is a young girl in a small town who sustains her passion and her zest for life by penning down exceptional stories of terror and morbid escapism. However, little does she know, her creativity isn’t entirely devoid of reality. A character she wrote about long ago, Harneval, the Prince of the Terrors, faces his own mountain of setbacks and challenges in the far-off realm of Topus Terrentus.
When his kingdom faces the edge of extinction due to a shortage in nightmare-induced power, he seeks out help from the finest author of torment he knows. As a result, Francisca sheds her human form and takes on the role of Frankelda to join the Prince in his realm. However, between growing political tension and a scheming Royal Nightmare Maker, the duo realizes they may have bit off more than they can chew.
I Am Frankelda Plot Synopsis
In 1866, in Real del Monte, Mexico, Francisca Imedla lives in a small village with her mother. The latter’s passion for painting compels her daughter to fuel her own creativity and channel it through her writing. However, everything changes when the mother dies, leaving the young dreamer as her grandmother’s ward. Under her guidance, Francisca was encouraged away from honing her writing skills and pushed toward mundane housework and other domestic tasks. Nonetheless, despite the dire circumstances, she never let up on her love for the worlds in her mind. Meanwhile, in a different realm, a curious young Prince Harneval climbs the Harpspider in the palace and finds himself tumbling into the realm of reality. Though his and Francisca’s meeting is brief and coincidental, it leaves an impression on the Prince who ends up reading some of the other’s work.
Fast forward a few years, and both the Prince and Francisca have grown. Their troubles have also evolved simultaneously. Harneval’s parents, the royal couple of Topus Terrentus, grow weaker and weaker by the day. The realm gets its strength from the nightmares it sends out into the other realm. Yet, as of late, these stories, penned by Procustes, have been getting less and less effective. The latter firmly believes that the only solution to this is to invade the other world and subjugate it to the terrors’ whims. On the other hand, Harneval has a different plan. He wants to improve the quality of the nightmares by bringing in a more skillful writer: Francisca.
In the reality realm, Francisca continues to suffer from her community’s ridicule and social ostracisation due to her horror stories. After one particularly stinging rejection, she runs off to her mother’s grave, where she vows to achieve her dream under a new name, Frankelda. Shortly afterward, Harneval pays her a visit and makes his case and convinces the author to journey with him to Topus Terrentus. Using his magic, he extracts her spirit from her body and takes her into the other realm. Initially, Frankelda’s time in the realm of fiction is pleasant. She writes bonds with the prince and witnesses the various wonders of the new world. However, simultaneously, Procustes conspires against her from their first meeting, eager to keep his position as the Royal Nightmare Maker. In fact, he secretly gathers the Chiefs of the other realms, poisoning them against the Royal Couple.
Eventually, Procustes makes his move. He manipulates Harneval into convincing Frankelda to surrender her writing to him. Afterward, he reveals that the Prince was going to let him rework her work, compelling her to believe she had been lied to. As a result, the writer decides to return to her own world. This allows Procustes to further exploit the Prince, and pushes him to send the writer a nightmare of his making, promising that it would make her stick around. Nevertheless, all this does is give the Royal Nightmare Maker the ability to steal Frankelda’s fears, and subsequently the inspiration that drives her creativity. As he imprisons the writer, and the Prince returns to the other realm in search of her, Procustes finds the perfect time to stage a coup by claiming the girls’ writing as his own and earning the other Chiefs’ trust.
I Am Frankelda Ending: Does Frankelda Survive? Does She Return to the Human World?
Once Procustes manages to imprison Frankelda, things seem bleak for her future. The old writer has no ingenuity left of his own. Instead of accepting that he strives to hold onto his success by stealing from the younger artist. Therefore, he keeps her imprisoned and steals her inspirations and imagination. He allows her nightmares to create new terrors and presents them to the Chiefs as his own. Furthermore, he poisons them against the Royal family by convincing them that Harneval was actually planning on stealing his work and crediting Frankelda, a human, in order to add fuel to the fire. Therefore, things play out in his favor, and he almost succeeds in overtaking Topus Terrentus. Fortunately, before he and his new following can solidify their plans of invading the other realm, Herneval returns and seeks Frankelda out.
With his help, Frankelda is able to escape from her jailor’s prison. Even so, instead of taking the easy way out and returning to her world, she decides to stay back and fight. Moreover, she has a plan to overpower the has-been, Nightmare Maker. By now, she has understood Procustes’ playbook. She knows that he would try to send her another nightmare in order to steal from her fear-fuelled imagination again. However, this time, she has a plan to become the architect of her own nightmares. Since the royals are the only ones who can operate the Harpspider to influence dreams in reality’s realm, Procustes will inevitably have to rely on Harneval to do his dirty work. Only this time, instead of feeding Frankelda the arachnid’s dream, he weaves a story of her own making.
Consequently, when Procustes tries to enter her subconsciousness, he ends up getting overpowered by her, allowing her to trap him inside her mind. Still, defeating the Nightmare Maker isn’t an easy feat, and the writer almost succumbs to his power. Luckily, Harneval uses his powers to astral project his own spirit into her mind to lend her a helping hand. With the Prince by her side, Frankelda realizes the power that she holds as the writer of her own dreams and destiny. Thus, she finally manages to gain control and rid herself of Procustes. Yet, the dup aren’t entirely out of trouble yet. Harneval’s physical form back in the Topus Terrentus palace is dying, and Frankelda’s own projection in the realm is weakening.
Afterward, things take a strange turn. At one point, the writer turns into her own quill inside her mind. However, it’s the way she is able to break free from that form that helps her realize that she is still in control. The Topus Terrentus realm is one outside of reality, where fiction thrives. In this realm, the writer holds all the power. Simply put, as long as she can write, she will never die. Once she has this epiphany, she realizes that she has the power to influence and mold her own story. Thus, she decides to simply leave the fictitious, nightmarish realm and “wake up” in a sense. In the end, Frankelda’s spirit returns to her mortal body in Mexico in the real realm. The writer avoids the end of her own story, and through her ink and paper, she ensures that the end doesn’t soon come for the realm of fiction either.
Is Prince Harneval Dead or Alive? Does He End Up With Frankelda?
When Prince Harneval enters Frankelda’s consciousness, he takes a great risk. His physical form, back in the palace, has recently been wounded by a mind-controlled Mythelitas, the head of the royal guard. This means that even though he isn’t under threat of death in the writer’s mind, his body’s fraying grasp on mortality presents a prominent threat to him. Even so, he risks his life to ensure that his friend knows she has someone she can rely on. Once the duo defeat Procustes, the effects of Harneval’s reckless decision begin to catch up to him. Still, he can’t find it in himself to have any regrets. He knows that by defeating the Nightmare Maker, the writer has saved his parents.
With that out of the way, Frankelda remains the only thing that holds any importance to the Prince. In the days they had spent together, he had slowly but surely fallen in love, and he’s happy to lay out his life for the same. Yet, inside her mind, the writer refuses to accept this fate for the man she has also grown to love. As the two share a kiss, something miraculous happens. The duo shed their mortal spiritual forms and instead take on the shape of Frankelda’s beloved book and quill. Once disconnected from his old form, Harneval realizes that he can still stay alive as something different and new.
In the end, Harneval’s body remains crumpled at the Palace in Topus Terrentus, and his parents likely assume he is dead. However, the Prince is alive in the mind of the writer. After all, he has always belonged to the realm of fiction. In Frankelda’s mind, the prince can stay alive as long as she does, even if it is only in the form of the book. Inversely, since he is a being purely reliant upon her imagination, she can write a different fate for him and bring him back to life with enough creativity as well. In the end, Harneval’s destiny is wide open, with many different ways for his path to unravel. Either way, as a terror Prince or a book, he can rely on the writer’s support and her undying love.
What Will Happen to Topus Terrentus? Does Procustes Take Over?
Procustes plans never simply involved overtaking Topus Terrentus and crowning himself the new king. The realm was powered by the fear of humanity’s realm. Therefore, as the Nightmare Maker’s work became incompetent, so did the entire kingdom. The royal couple was growing weak and fragile, while many of the other terrors were dying on the streets. Yet, Procustes refused to accept his mistake and seek out new ideas. Instead, he clung to the past. He looked to his and the royals’ shared ancestor Enkara, who once traveled to the living world and subjugated them under her rule. With Frankelda, he finally found the key to ensure terrors could once again gain enough power to make this journey.
Frankelda’s writing was so vivid and realistic that it struck fear into the hearts of the humans. Perhaps this is why Harneval has always been able to journey between the two realms. While the writer is under Procustes’ imprisonment, the new terrors her fears create retain this ability. Nonetheless, when they try to travel to the other realm, the other Chiefs grow envious and prevent this from happening. They compel Procustes to create new nightmares for all of them so that everyone can invade the other realm together. Unfortunately for them, this delays the possibility of invasion, preventing the Nightmare Maker’s dreams from coming true.
Soon enough, Harneval returns, frees Frankelda, and the two fight off Procustes. In his absence, the coup no longer has a foundation to function. They quickly scatter in the face of the loyalty that the Royal Couple find in Saymut and Coyote, the Chief of the Realm of Death. In the end, the dangers to the Topus Terrentus palace cease with Procustes. Furthermore, as Frankelda wakes in the human world and takes a part of Harneval with her, their return to the other realm is also halted. As such, the king and the queen find themselves on their own as they wage war against the other Chiefs. Topus Terrentus has now found itself in a unique civil war where it would once again have to conquer the other realms and bring them under its control. Although Frankelda and Harneval aren’t a part of this mission yet, nothing is stopping them from eventually returning and taking up arms beside their friends and family.
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