So I went to bed and we still haven’t settled this questions. lol 🙂
I thought a lot about this last night and I have a few more points.
–I don’t think Cora knew what love really was until the moment Regina put her heart back into her body. She only thought she knew what love was, and to her it was weakness. In those last few moments, she suddenly realized that love is what she felt when she was staring at her child and suddenly knew that it was more than enough, that the power didn’t matter. But she didn’t know love until that moment.
–Did Rumple love Cora? I still don’t know the answer to this question. Jane Espenson’s tweets make me *head desk*. When I went back and re-watched, I was disturbed that Rumple needed to know if Cora ever truly loved him. Why does he need to know? He clearly found a love that was more powerful and real and y’know..actual love with Belle. and like Jane said, he clearly doesn’t love her anymore. Rumple knew love before Belle with Milah, I accept that. And I think with Milah it was a young, hopeless dreamer type love. With Cora it was feeding into each other’s darkest desires and tapping into power. He mistook it for love because of how alone he was and because he finally found someone who shared that desire for darkness. I don’t know if we can call that love in a show that sets up love as the most powerful magic of all. The most powerful good magic of all.
–I keep going back to this but love was never mentioned until Cora needed something. And then, Cora being uber smart, probably realizes how Rumple felt and played off that. She plays people; I strongly suspect her dressing up in that red gown and “pretending” that she didn’t realize she was talking to the Prince was all a ruse to get him to notice her so she could raise in her station.