Reply To: Regina's Regret

[kfchimera]

I read that post and found it made a false distinction between Regret and Remorse.  Its an interesting concept but the two emotions are NOT mutually exclusive as implied.

Here is the Dictionary.com on it:

What is the difference between regret and remorse?

Regret describes emotions ranging from being disappointed to intense sorrow due mainly to an external circumstance or event. An example is: She regrets that the television show has been canceled. One can also regret a wrong done, as in: He regrets his mistakes. Remorse describes deep regret, involving anguish or guilt and self-reproach or repentance. Remorse is felt by someone for a sin or wrong they have committed. So: He felt remorse for lying to the teacher. Remorse is from the Latin remordere ‘to bite again’ – as remorse is a gnawing feeling of guilt from a past wrong. Regret is from the French regreter/regrater and originally was a synonym for regrate meaning ‘complaint, lament’.

The way I see it, Remorse expands upon regret to encompass personal guilt for what one might regret.   So it is not that Regina has no regrets, because she has matured beyond it, to the point of feeling only remorse.  That seemed to be what the person was implying I thought.

I look at how Regina felt to be that Henry was worth whatever pain she suffered, so she doesn’t regret any of it.  Sort of like Grumpy, or if you’ve ever seen Cars II, Tow Mater likes his dents.  All that pain also meant good experiences so no, he has no regrets.

So I don’t think Regina lacking regrets means she has moved on to remorse and accepted her personal guilt for her actions.  I doubt she even feels it about Henry Sr., but maybe.  It was a bit ambiguous.  The fact is,   her speech in the caves at the fail safe  may have indicated some conscience stirring,  but she also was concerned with how others saw her.  So I think she is still very much motivated by her own concerns.  After all the last time we saw her asked to speak of regrets it was that she did not cause more pain.

At Henry Sr.’s grave, Regina thanks him but he is dead.  So I don’t think appreciation of his sacrifice constitutes remorse that she took his life.  There’s no I’m sorry said, no wish expressed that he could be there in her life and that she’d listened and found another way.  She’s appreciative because now she has what she wants (she thinks).  She thinks she’s “won”.  Despite this sort of being about doing what was best for Henry, keeping him despite knowing the risk that the savior would come to find her child, I see it as Regina refusing to back down.   She’d bonded with Henry and he’s her child, and no one is taking that from her.   She keeps up with that line of thought, protecting what is hers.

Yet at the same time, what happens when it comes to sharing Henry’s love with others? We see years later she struggles greatly with this.  She has learned a lot in NL, but we’ll have to see if it is enough long-term to share Henry with Emma and the Charmings, the Stilskins.

She did not change her mind because she knew Pan was out there, because she knew she had to save Henry from a bad fate.   If they’d written it that way, well she would have looked very heroic but that isn’t what they did.

So it came off a bit ambiguous to me.  She knew she felt conflicted about who Henry really was, and so she took a potion to forget it rather than accept and let go her anger at Snow.  She held onto her vendettas, so it could come off like she was not wanting to back down to Rumple’s game.  She would play it and beat him at it.  That’s not to say she didn’t try to love Henry too, but as we saw with Owen (so glad they name checked that rather than sweeping under rug completely), Regina is capable of forming a genuine attachment that is very unhealthy for the person she feels warmly towards.

So one last set of thoughts about that linked post.  The writer brought up Snow being selfish with her Echo Cave confession.  First, Snow  had to say something she would never otherwise reveal.  So let’s not forget the context of Snow expressing this very private emotion.

Snow was not “selfish” in the way of being someone who never thinks of others (like Regina often is).  Snow listened with great empathy to Emma when Emma talked of her experience having no mother.  Snow probably does have remorse over that, except to the extent, it really wasn’t something within her control.  Why should she regret saving her child’s life? This episode clarified it was either wardrobe or death pretty much as the Queen’s guards were there to kill the Savior.   Regina confirms she’ll try to kill the savior on her to do list in the scene this episode with Rumple.  After the curse is cast, of course, that is when killing the savior would break the curse but Gold didn’t tell Regina that until later on.  That was why Regina needed Jefferson to get the curse-sleep apple, if you recall.

So anyway, Snow and Emma have things they regret, but it doesn’t mean they are selfish and not quite to the point of feeling guilt and empathy over the pain they caused (however inadvertently) from the choices they made.    They were both in a rock and a hard place, something Regina actually was not when she decided to cast the curse.  She felt as though she were, but everyone from her own father, to Maleficient told her that was not a real solution.   Then she found out they were right, and that was what motivated her to get a child, and it is every bit as “selfish” in the same sense as MM speaking to wanting another child to raise to have that experience.  Except MM isn’t trying to just fill a void in her life, to get an experience she wants to have–she also has a lot of love to give like most normal people, she could easily love another child AND Emma.  She’s not just wanting the child to fulfill her needs, as we’ve seen with Emma, she is the type of mother who would put her child first and has for Emma before.

What happened in NL though is Emma pushed Snow away as a mother.  So no one really goes into how that might have hurt Snow.  We’re all waxing on about Emma, even though these ladies are the same age!  Snow has to be more mature as she’s the mother, and she tries.  She doesn’t tell her sob story to Emma.  She could have, but she doesn’t. She just listens and tries to reassure Emma.  Yet her confidence weakens as she realizes she doesn’t know how to comfort Emma.

So by the time they get to the cave, Snow’s secret is being said from a place of honesty. Emma doesn’t see her as a mother, and she didn’t get to be one, and she wants to be one.  So let’s not act like that’s Snow suddenly discarding Emma at all because she wasn’t.  Let’s not forget  the first time she was in a rock /hard place to choose Charming or Emma, she was going to pick daughter.  She would have gone in the cabinet to the new world, pregnant and alone.  She was willing to do that, but Emma came early and forced the decision we saw.   Yes, Snow insisted the put the baby in, but she believed if they didn’t it would be worse (and she was right).

Anyway, Snow did what she could and what she feels regret is that it turned out that way, just as is true for Emma.  That they have regrets doesn’t make them selfish, doesn’t mean they don’t feel remorse for some things (Emma might for stealing).   These are not mutually exclusive concepts.

All we really know is, Regina’s regrets/remorse, whatever you want to term it, mattered very little to her versus the love she has for Henry.  I do think she loves him, and with all she has, but what we have yet to see is whether she has yet refined that concept of love to something less possessive and more truly in line with what is best for him.  (Because raising him in that town was not it!).