Many of us felt that this resulted in character assassination for the two characters. They kidnapped a baby, doomed said baby with Emma’s darkness, sent said baby to another land, and kept lying to Emma to hide their shame in present day Storybrooke. The writers likely came up with this idea because they had been struggling to do anything interesting with Snow and Charming for a while, thus this twist was created to mix things up a bit.
Yes. And I would argue that this is a larger problem in media, not just OUAT. In order to be interesting, to have your story told, you have to be a darker/grey sort of character. It’s the rise of the antihero (and sometimes straight up villain) who are made out to be, yes, sympathetic but also designed to get the audience to empathize with said character. Not only do we feel bad for said characters but we begin to believe that their actions were necessary and that we would take the same course of action. I mean, how many times have we seen someone justify Regina’s slaughter of an entire village or try and rationalize Graham’s rape? But in order to get your audience to have both sympathy and empathy, you have to tear down the heroes and morally upright individuals. You cannot have them be the epitome of all that is fair and just and good whilst you’re trying to convince your audience to be moved by the antihero/villain.
Since the end of S1, the focal shift moved from a story about the heroes in which the villains find redemption through family and forgiveness to a villains tale in which the heroes are to blame for everything and, like Matt said, not as heroic as everyone believes. As I sit here typing, I can’t quite figure out if the focal shift (from heroes to villains) goes along with the thematic shift (from family to romance) but I do think they work together. A and E and the rest of the writers began to focus more on the villains (probably in large part to their popularity) and decided that the best way to redeem them would be through a romantic partner who saw past their dark past, thus enter OQ and CS. (I have no idea what to do with Rumbelle at this point because I would have included them in that list but…then S5A finale happened).