Judge Claude Frollo is the main villain in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He is the head judge.
Place
In UltimateDisney.com's countdown for top 30 Disney villains, he was villain #10 (better then Gaston but less then Lady Tremaine). The Nostalgia Critic placed Frollo in fourth place of his "Top 11 Disney Villains" list. His Death is similar to Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars Saga.
Character History
Claude Frollo resides in Paris, France, where he is employed as a Court Judge. As a man of strong medieval Catholic faith, Frollo uses his position to inflict great suffering upon the gypsy population, believing them to "live outside the natural order" and engage in "heathen behavior". He regards it as his mission to rid the world of vice and sin and he hopes to accomplish this by eliminating Paris's entire gypsy race.
One night, a group of gypsies attempt to enter Paris, only to be stopped by Frollo and his soldiers. When one of the gypsy women attempts to flee, Frollo pursues and trips on the stairs of cathedral.
Naming the child Quasimodo (which means "half-formed"), Frollo raises him within the towers of Notre Dame, attempting to "protect" him from the human world. Prior to attending the annual Festival of Fools, Frollo encounters Captain Phoebus, a well-meaning soldier who is assigned the task of locating the infamous Court of Miracles, which the gypsies have taken as their official hiding place.
While attending the festival, Frollo discovers a gypsy dancer named Esmeralda, who simultaneously attracts and disgusts Frollo with her beauty; shortly afterwards, Quasimodo is revealed to have fled the tower and joined the festivities, only to be crowned the King of Fools and publicly humiliated. As the townspeople mock Quasimodo, Frollo refuses to help and is disgusted when a defiant Esmeralda assists him instead. Frollo was once good until he was hypnotized by Satan
Esmeralda claims sanctuary within the cathedral, although Frollo remains watchful of her behavior. That evening, Frollo is disturbed by his attraction for Esmeralda, believing a relationship with a gypsy will result in his eternal damnation (which he expresses in "Hellfire"). In this scene it becomes clear that Frollo is losing his mind as he struggles with his concepts of good and evil and his desire for Esmeralda. During the song he suffers from violent hallucinations, eventually passing out. Unbeknownst to Frollo, Quasimodo has allowed Esmeralda to escape from the cathedral.
He later attempts to murder an innocent family whom he suspects of collaborating with gypsies, but an appalled Phoebus intervenes and rescues them; Frollo declares Phoebus a traitor and attempts to execute him, but he is eventually rescued by Esmeralda.
Realizing Quasimodo assisted Esmeralda, Frollo convinces him that the Court of Miracles has been found and will soon be attacked; a misled Quasimodo follows Phoebus to the Court where Frollo and his guards arrested the gypsies. Frollo then sentences her to execution while Quasimodo remains locked in the bell tower. He offers to save her, revealing to her she must chose him or the fire. She refuses to become Frollo's mistress and is prepared to burn to death, but Quasimodo escapes, rescues her and brings her to the cathedral. Frollo's men then attack Notre Dame, engaging in a violent battle against the townspeople and Quasimodo, who sends stones from the tower and eventually fills the street with molten lead.
"And He Shall smite the Wicked and pluge them into the firey pit !"
After defying the Archdeacon and flinging him down a flight of stairs, Frollo engages in a violent struggle in which Quasimodo overpowers the deranged judge and informs him that because of all the lies Frollo has told him, he knows that the only thing dark about the world is people like him. Esmeralda awakens, and Quasimodo rushes her to safety. Frollo chases him and Esmeralda onto a balcony overlooking the city, engaging in yet another fight with Quasimodo. He declared he would now kill him, by making him fall over the edge of the balcony, but Quasimodo manages to hold on Frollo's cape and pulls Frollo along with him, and Frollo dangles momentarily for his life, but he is soon able to climb on a statue in perfect position to kill them. Frollo laughs maniacally and shouts "And He shall smite the wicked and plunge them into fire" but as he was about to kill them, the demonic gargoyle he is standing on starts to break beneath his feet, causing him to loose his balance. Frollo grabs onto the gargoyle for dear life and the figurehead appears to come to life and snarl at him, glowing with fiery eyes. Frollo yells in fright just as the gargoyle breaks off of Notre Dame, sending him plummeting with a dreadful scream into the raging inferno a long way below, killing him. His soul is then trapped in eternal damnation in Hell for all eternity.
Personality
While the character of Frollo was a much more sympathetic and complicated man in the original novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in the Disney version he is portrayed as a self-righteous corrupt, manipulative, sly, dishonest, cold hearted, delusional, overprotective, and narssistic. According to Clopin, he sees corruption everywhere, and believes that he is making the world a better place through his actions. In the original novel, he was the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, but in the film, he is a Judge so as not to portray the Church in a negative light, although his religious hypocrisy (which he is symbolic of), fanaticism, bigotry, lust and racism remain quite mature for a G-rated Disney film. His song, "Hellfire", whilst being regarded as one of the greatest Disney v
Follo on the cover for Kingdom Keepers IV:Power Play
illain songs of all time, garnered viewer complaints given the overt satanic nature of the song. Frollo to this day is considered one of Disney's best and most frightening villains.
The words that Frollo uses in the song Hellfire such as, "Beata Maria you know I am a righteous man" and "Protect me, Maria" imply the church that Frollo is minister of is Catholic as people who pray to Jesus's mother Mary usually go to a Catholic church.
A deeply religious man, Frollo has a hatred towards gypsies, seeing them as impure commoners, and his goal is to kill them all. Through believing his work is for God is what makes him a hated villain.
Frollo is especially uncaring to animals, when he used an ant nest underneath the railings on gypsies in the Court of Miracles, and is blind to understand the mysteries of the world, when he underestimates the gargoyles as being alive until he sees one come to life in irony (althugh this could have a hallucination) just as he plummets to his death near the end of the film.
The Kingdom Keepers
Frollo is going to appear in the fourth book of the Kingdom Keepers, Power Play. In the book he is the new leader of the overtakes replacing Maleficent and Chernabog as they were captured. The book is to be released on April 5, 2011. On the cover, he is seen having pointing at Willa, a DHI, or Disney Host Interactive, while she runs with a scared face (the DHI's are the protagonists of the book).