Okay, the portal thing, in Gold’s defense: He honestly believed that Cora would beat Emma and Snow. Cora in Storybrooke would have been a serious threat to him (and she DID find his dagger and almost kill him with it) as well as the people he loved (oh and everyone else but let’s face it, Gold probably wasn’t too concerned about them). He told Cora that he had had a vision of their final confrontation, so that probably fed into his belief that it would be Cora to come through any portal
Exactly. In his eyes, Emma and Snow didn’t have magic and magic is power, as we have heard him say so many times. And since he didn’t know the depth of Emma’s magic, he assumed Cora would win.
Cora still wins for pure unadulterated evilness in my mind, since while post-curse Gold is almost always motivated in his crimes by his love for Belle/Bae or his own self-defense, and Regina usually by her desire to be with Henry, Cora kills people just because
Mmmhm. Everything Rumple has done he did for the love he feels for his son. Now granted, many things he’s done have been devious and manipulative and down right terrible BUT he was a parent looking for a child. I’m not a parent myself, but if I was missing I’m sure my mom would move heaven and earth to find me. Regina was manipulated by Rumple, absolutely. But she also made her own choices. She didn’t have to choose to push Cora through the mirror, she didn’t have to choose to be Rumple’s apprentice, she didn’t have to choose to take her father’s heart, she didn’t have to choose to enact the curse. She made many bad choices, motivated by hatred (misplaced hatred mind you) for Snow. But I do consider her to be a victim of her mother and to an extent Rumple. Cora is just a wackadoodle.