Reply To: True Love's Kiss?

True love in general has become some sort of goal and it’s what proves a couple as “valid.

Yes, exactly. And the fact that the cases of TL that aren’t romantic love — and, increasingly, some kind of love at first sight version thereof — are now almost nonexistent really feels jarring to me.
I think a story where Regina and Snow share a version of TLK — as “sisterly” love or friendship, after years of bitter enmity — would have made for such a wonderful completion to the original story of Snow White and the EQ.