I agree – his character is all over the place (which is exactly why he is my favorite character. And why Robert Carlyle should just be handed an Emmy – I’ve never seen one actor play so many different aspects of one charater on one show before. He amazes me!!).
There’s obviously a lot to him – both as Rumple and as Mr. Gold, and there has got to be some kind of serious connection between Rumple and EQ in FTL. I don’t think I buy that they were once married (at least I don’t WANT to buy that story – it greatly disturbs me for some reason) but I do think that for some reason there was some kind of bond between the two of them. Maybe Rumple felt like the EQ became evil in somewhat the same way that he did – not really wanting to be evil but because she was trying to protect someone she loved. So maybe he thought he was helping her out by giving her a terrible curse thinking that she was going to somehow use it for good (the way he originally thought he would use the Dark One’s power for good) only to realize too late that she was truly evil to the core. At that point it became a power struggle between the two and when he recognized that she was powerful enough on her own to eventually figure out how to finalize the curse he realized the only way to stop her was to find a way to break the curse.
Someone said before that Rumple never uses his power for evil – he just gives people what they want in exchange for more power or sometimes, in exchange for things that really don’t make sense (like babies). But Regina does use her power for evil – she kills people, or does things to cause them great pain and suffering (physical or emotional). I think that Rumple has a problem with this.