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I have been toying with ideas about Rumplestiltskin for over a week now, and although not fully developed would like to hear some other people’s thoughts.
First of all, after Skin Deep and Rumple’s refusal to allow himself to love Belle, to believe her, and his choice to choose power over love, I have to wonder why, especially since it was obvious the curse could indeed break if he accepted love. I also recently re watched the pilot and “The Thing you Love Most” where the belief that good always wins is emphasized, as well as the fact that both power and love are seductive (said by the EQ’s father Henry). Because we saw some possibility of redemption for Rumples in that Skin Deep episode I find myself and others leaning toward him being a good guy. But why? At the beginning of that episode in SB, he was not a good guy willing to let Moe French sell his Valentine’s flowers to pay him, in fact, he was quite cruel to the man. But I have let his obvious affection for Belle taint my previous view. After re watching him in episode 2 I feel to an extent that Rumplestiltskin is for himself. If his ultimate desire is to see the curse broken, I cannot tell. His actions hint at this (like bringing young Henry to Regina as a baby), but still in the overall scheme so far he gets what he can get for himself. The one chink he seems to have in his proverbial armor at this time is feelings for Belle, which have been made obvious to us.
So why did he refuse Belle’s love. Because he didn’t believe? C’mon, can you really fake true love’s kiss? If it wasn’t true love, it wouldn’t have begun to break his curse, would it? As much as he ranted and raved about it being fake, I think he knows it wasn’t, otherwise why would the memory be so dear? I think in that moment he had to choose to give himself to love or power and he spoke truly when he told Belle he picked power over her. Although it does seem to be a choice he regrets in some small way. “Power is seductive, but so is love” Henry Sr. said to the EQ. She chose power as well. So, i have to wonder if Rumplestiltskin resists how dark he could be, because he seems more crazy than dark. Also have to wonder if his choice was to keep the EQ from being all powerful and more powerful than everyone else in FTL. I wonder if he chose power because he saw it as the only hope (not that it was) for keeping things in check, so to speak, in that world.
So, in FTL, Rumples does not remind me of the Dark One we saw and he killed, although he was under the control of the Duke. No, Rumple comes across as kind of crazy, but also confident in what he knows,except for those moments shouting in the mirror, that would be crazy, but still a loose cannon so to speak. He also makes potions and somehow has power to stop ogres from attacking a town and the ability to appear out of thin air. And every deal he makes comes with a price, a cost.
Now in SB, Mr. Gold seems very calculating, very intent to “help” (as he did in True North when Emma wanted info on the children’s father) or hurt (as he did to Moe French — taking his van and then beating him in the cabin) or irritate (as he did to Regina at the end of episode 2 in her backyard by the apple tree). We’ve seen no power in the making of potions or appearances, but he obviously is considered the one who “owns” the town so to speak. Granny also made that clear in episode 2 when she asked Emma to leave the Inn. So we know he makes deals with people in SB as well, and he still has the ability to know desperation when he sees it. Whether he is a “good guy” remains to be seen. Perhaps ultimately yes, but I can’t help but think he is mostly about himself and winning a game. If he decides that breaking the curse is winning (and everyone wins) then yes he is a good guy. But as long as it is about him beating Regina and no one else, I think we will still see some things happen that are not so helpful, and might make us think twice about what we think or hope of him.
[adrotate group="5"]I think Rumpel is neither good nor bad. All of his deals are for something that is a gain to him. He doesn’t care about other people (except for Belle and his son, so far) and so if bad things happen to them because of his deals it’s not because he specifically meant to be cruel but because he simply doesn’t care, to him it’s their problem and not his. So long as he’s gaining something that’s all that matters. So even if his end goal is to break the curse that still wouldn’t make him a good guy because he wouldn’t be doing it for the others, he’d be doing it for himself. Probably because even if he has some power in SB he doesn’t seem to have as much of it as he did in FTL.
As to why he didn’t accept Belle’s kiss, I think he did know it was true love but just because he’s got all this power now doesn’t mean he’s not the same coward he was before. He hates what he’s become I think and not so much doesn’t believe she doesn’t love him but rather is too scared of the idea to allow himself to believe it. He’s scared of the possibility of her love not being real, in which case he’d end up hurt and alone without his powers, but he’s also scared of it being real and then somehow losing her or things going badly. He did lose his previous wife after all. I think the very idea of loving someone or someone loving him scares him to death so he chooses to ignore it and tries to convince himself it isn’t real.Rumpel is really complex and is actually my favorite character, I really look forwards to getting to know more about him and seeing both his past and the way he’ll develop in the future ^^
Thanks for that response. I agree with you. You put into words some of the ideas I could not quite get together. What came to me while reading your post was that remembering what his life was like without power might not be something he wants to go back to. He was quite the cowardly/fearful character before killing the dark one. I don’t know that he believes there could be something different with true love. Maybe he just sees what he was and who he is now and nothing else.
Oh good, I wasn’t sure I was getting my thoughts out properly XP
But yeah, I think he’s had this power for so long the only thing he really remembers about being without it is being both a coward and too weak to do anything about it so he’d rather have power and pretend nothing scares him than go back to that.Also found this little tidbit with a few quotes from Kitsis and Horowitz concerning Rumpel. Don’t know if it qualifies as a spoiler or not, so better safe than sorry:)
Ausiello: Although series co-creators Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz won’t quite come out and say he isn’t as bad a guy as we think, the former does allow that “he’s a complicated man, [and how you view him] depends where you line up with his interests. [It’s always a question of] whether you’re in the way of that agenda or not.” Adds Horowitz: “There’s more to come this season” — in particular, in Episode 19 — “about him and his son and what happened there that may, hopefully, shed a little more light.” And yes, there is some light in him. “A lot of these characters have grey areas,” Kitsis reminds. “There’s some humanity in him.”
I’m sure Rumplestiltskin is terrified of love and being without his powers. After Belle kissed him and he went a little crazy, he started yelling into the mirror. He was yelling at the queen because she can see through mirrors. And thats also why he had all of the mirrors covered up, so she couldn’t spy on him or catch him off guard. Whenever the queen told Rumplestiltskin that Belle had died, I don’t think he completely believed her. Or he did just because of the situation he was in and how bad he felt. He told the queen that she would never be more powerful then he was, so I think those two have some sort of game going on. They both want to be more powerful then the other.
You can fit the “Miller’s daughter” theory into the story with few loose ends. If Regina is the millers daughter, then Rumplestiltskin helped her spin straw into gold for the king. But on the third night she had nothing to offer him for his services so Rumplestiltskin said that he would take her first born child. Whenever she had her child (which would be the thing she loved most) Rumplestiltskin would come to finish the deal. As the story says, Rumplestiltskin would let her keep the child if she ‘guessed’ his name in three days. Well, she didn’t guess, because one of her messengers overheard. But she still told Rumplestiltskin his name so she got to keep the baby.That could be the secret that she told Snow and Snow let it slip and Rumplestiltskin came back to claim the child. He probably killed the baby, since he had been tricked. And that would explain why Regina hates him so much and could be the reason she wants to be more powerful then him. That would be why she took Belle, to make him suffer like she had.
I really like this theory. What do you think 🙂
I read through the forum with that theory and I really like it too. I somehow think that even if it went that way though Rumpel doesn’t kill babies. I mean, he’d probably want the baby for some purpose so it’d ruin that purpose if he were to just kill it. Could have been an accident of course. But I doubt he’d do it on purpose.
On the why Regina hates Snow thing, I think it’s possible it wasn’t really something Snow did as such but rather something that might have been Regina’s fault and she just blames Snow, like she blamed Emma for Graham leaving her when the reason wasn’t that he loved Emma but that he didn’t love Regina.Thinking back over the Skin Deep episode for like the gazillionth time, I also wonder if Rumple was fearful of whether Belle would love him if he was “just an ordinary man.” I mean there he was prancing around his estate (in those tight leather pants!!) as this very powerful, feared “monster” who had made a deal to keep her at the castle forever feeling very much the one in charge of the situation. He had established that Belle could never love someone shallow like Gaston but given his human background as a coward who had no power, no money and a wife who left him I’m guessing the thought of him being “exposed” for the ordinary man he really was was probably concerning to him. So I think that when he says that “No one could ever love me” he is probably referring to himself as the monster as well as himself as the human – so being concerned about those two issues led him to choose power over love. I think he obviously did realize that Belle loved him, the problem was that he realized that even WITH his power he was STILL a coward when it came to love – that was that one weakness that couldn’t be removed by the curse.
The thing that I have started to find really interesting about Skin Deep is how Regina screwed up the whole thing by telling Belle that Rumple’s curse could be broken with true love’s kiss. Because, I honestly don’t think Belle would have cared about turning Rumple into a human again until Regina gave her the idea, I think Belle would have eventually gone back to Rumple on her own anyway. Belle had managed to find a way to pull the humanity out of Rumple in his “monster” form just by exisiting around him – she didn’t have to kiss him in order to do that. Kissing him was actually the thing that drove the humanity away. I think Rumple’s confidence would have grown the longer he was around Belle and then when they just naturally kissed (and you know they would have) the curse would have been broken without either one of them even realizing what had happened.
I don’t think Rumple/Gold regrets not allowing the curse to be broken – I think he regrets reacting so poorly and then sending Belle away. I have always thought that when he was beating Moe French it was really himself that he was taking his anger out on and that everything he said (except “you were her father”) he meant for himself. I think he regrets not explaining to Belle how he lost his wife and son and why he ended up with the curse in the first place. I think Belle talking about how she wanted to be brave and how she couldn’t be with someone shallow and how she thought love was layered and a mystery to behold – made him feel like he should have realized that she was exactly the person who would have understood why he felt the need to keep the power from the curse because she could see past the layers of the curse.
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