Ana's Wish

[Mark Atherton]

She in a way, is trying to force his love to her. If she really loved him she would try to fix there relationship the good old fashioned way. By PROVING that she regrets the choice she made and showing him that she does love him and wants him. Love is true, its not magic

That’s true, but it COULD have been worse and she could have just done the direct “make someone fall in love with you” option. At least with the “change the past” option, it’s in a time where Will did love her of his own free will.

But I do agree that she’s going about it the wrong way and should try to improve the present on her own rather than fix the past with magic.

Jafars actions are slightly better.

….You lost me. Jafar has been consistently FAR WORSE in his actions than Anastasia: mass murder, brutal torture, mental and emotional manipulation…I’m not sure what you were trying to get at with this statement, but it really came out wrong.

That’s really well put. The difference for me is that Jafar never had his father’s love in the first place and was cruelly used and abused. Ana had Will’s love, his devotion. He did everything for her, including going to WL.

Which is why Jafar’s end-goal is less sympathetic to me. Jafar may want his father’s love, but he should understand that if his father won’t give it, then his father just isn’t worth it. Rumple probably wants his father’s love, but you don’t see him trying to get it after realizing his father is incable of it.  Jafar should kill the bastard and be done with it.

I think Ana wants to change the laws of magic to use on herself because she is envious of all those people who are totally happily in love. She doesn’t love Will but wishes she did, and her confession this week was a bit of a smoke screen for that. She thinks Will is a great catch, and it confuses and frustrates her that she’s never felt head-over-heels in love with him.

…..Er, NO.

Anastasia isn’t a sociopath, this isn’t Regina we’re talking about here. Not only did Cyrus, who can read wishes and desires, say she was being truthful, but it’s blatantly obvious that Ana DID really love Will and still really does. She was and is head-over-heels in love with him, her giving into weakness and choosing wealth and power over him doesn’t change that.

Hell, your theory falls completely apart because it assumes her confession is a cover-up and she still wants to keep her wealth and power…but if that was the case, then why the bloody Hell (couldn’t resist) would she find Will “a great catch” when he has neither to his name?  Why go to all this trouble for him?

Sorry, but your post just boggles my mind. It’s pretty clear in the writing and in Emma Rigby’s acting that there’s no secret agenda: what you saw is what you get. Ana loves Will, she made a mistake and traded him for high status, and now regrets it and wants to undo it.

[RumplesGirl]

Which is why Jafar’s end-goal is less sympathetic to me. Jafar may want his father’s love, but he should understand that if his father won’t give it, then his father just isn’t worth it. Rumple probably wants his father’s love, but you don’t see him trying to get it after realizing his father is incable of it. Jafar should kill the bastard and be done with it.

Well I agree with you that the Sultan is just plain not worth it. But I think it’s very hard to accept that you can’t somehow get your parents love. Don’t most children try very hard to win their parents love. It’s supposed to be a natural thing and when you can tell that they don’t love you….what wouldn’t you do.

It’s a theme both ONCE’s have always used: desperate souls do desperate things. Jafar (and Ana) are desperate but it’s their pasts that are so different that I do find I sympathize with Jafar a bit more (but my very character is Rumple so it’s not unsurprising)

EDIT to add

I agree that Jafar’s actions are far worse but I also think that he is the more desperate of the two. Ana ruined her own life; Jafar’s life was ruined by others. Active and passive voices, if you will. And I’m aware that it doesn’t excuse what he did, but for me it does make Jafar a bit more sympathetic.

Anastasia isn’t a sociopath, this isn’t Regina we’re talking about here. Not only did Cyrus, who can read wishes and desires, say she was being truthful, but it’s blatantly obvious that Ana DID really love Will and still really does. She was and is head-over-heels in love with him, her giving into weakness and choosing wealth and power over him doesn’t change that.

I agree that Ana really does love Will. And I think she is regretful of her actions but her method of fixing past wrongs is what bothers me. She was the acting agent in those wrongs. SHE left Will. I think this was said on the last page but it’s a “show me don’t tell me” thing.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Mark Atherton]

Well I agree with you that the Sultan is just plain not worth it. But I think it’s very hard to accept that you can’t somehow get your parents love. Don’t most children try very hard to win their parents love. It’s supposed to be a natural thing and when you can tell that they don’t love you….what wouldn’t you do. It’s a theme both ONCE’s have always used: desperate souls do desperate things. Jafar (and Ana) are desperate but it’s their pasts that are so different that I do find I sympathize with Jafar a bit more (but my very character is Rumple so it’s not unsurprising) I agree that Jafar’s actions are far worse but I also think that he is the more desperate of the two. Ana ruined her own life; Jafar’s life was ruined by others. Active and passive voices, if you will. And I’m aware that it doesn’t excuse what he did, but for me it does make Jafar a bit more sympathetic.

But the thing is: he DID ruin his own life. He could have moved on. He found love, the love Amara gave him. He had someone who willingly loved him but he didn’t accept it and only used her for his own scheme of getting love from someone who willingly didn’t. His childhood was ruined by outside forces, but he had the choice to change his life for the better and he refuses to take it. I pity him for this, but I cannot sympathize with him, especially when he hasn’t a shred of remorse.

And really, I think Ana is more on the Rumple side of things. He made a mistake and did evil trying to correct it and even offered to undo it as much as he could (“turn back the clock and make Bae 14 again”, remember?)  Doesn’t that sound more like Ana than like Jafar?

I think people are letting gender distract them from the fact that, when you get down to motive, Ana’s closer to Rumple and Jafar’s closer to Regina: Regina too could not move on with her life and past when she had the choice to and she also craved the love of a parent who wouldn’t give it to her.

but her method of fixing past wrongs is what bothers me. She was the acting agent in those wrongs. SHE left Will. I think this was said on the last page but it’s a “show me don’t tell me” thing.

See again: Rumple, who you say is “your character”. He was the acting agent in his wrongs, HE left Bae, and he picked a wrong method of fixing these past wrongs. Isn’t it a tad hypocritical for you to be so judgmental on Ana for doing something very similar to what Rumple has done?

[kfchimera]

I think Jafar is less sympathetic in some ways because we’ve seen how cruel and cold he is, and how utterly lacking of sympathy for others, while Ana seems to have sympathy but covers it up at times under a stern exterior, so as not to appear weaker than she is.  Jafar wants to force the Sultan to submit.  I”m not sure it is about love at all really, but in some ways, pride and revenge, but underneath that, perhaps he is desperate to feel loved but I do not think so. Why not change the past and save his mother instead if he wants love?    If he’s going to all the trouble to change the laws of magic, it feels to me there is this element to consider.  He wants all the power and his father’s love,  I think, so he can then reject his father to make him feel the hurt he felt.  It is not good enough to just kill the Sultan when the Sultan expects that.  He has to break his heart and shatter him with unexpected betrayal first–the pain he felt.  He did that to Amara so he is capable of it.

I do agree though that Ana seeking to wish away her choices is not growth or truly redemption for her character.  She is looking for magic to solve her problems and the trouble is, she wouldn’t change anything about herself so she would just make the same choices more or less as before.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

[PriceofMagic]

I think the Red Queen is the more sympathetic of the two. She made a mistake and now she wants to fix it. She’s not trying to force the knave into loving her, she’s wanting to go back in time so that she didn’t make the choice that lost her the knave’s love in the first place.

Also at the time Ana chose to marry the king, she and Will were constantly struggling to find their next meal. Ana was offered the chance to improve her life and in a moment of weakness took it. Also the king basically told her that if she didn’t accept his offer, she and Will would be punished for the attempted theft of the crown jewels.

Ana was a good queen to her people.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[RumplesGirl]

See again: Rumple, who you say is “your character”. He was the acting agent in his wrongs, HE left Bae, and he picked a wrong method of fixing these past wrongs. Isn’t it a tad hypocritical for you to be so judgmental on Ana for doing something very similar to what Rumple has done?

Yes he did but Rumple and Jafar also have a lot of similarities with their past and their fathers. They had incredibly tragic upbringings that affected how they interacted with the world. Can a child EVER move on from not having a loving parent? Do you ever really recover from that? His father tried to kill him and refused to even acknowledge that Jafar was his child. I think that does things to a young mind. I’m not excusing his actions which are numerous and terrible, but simply trying to understand why he is going to such lengths for a parents love.

I’d like to see more of Ana’s life pre-Will before I gauge her as a character. I don’t hate her by any means (I have plenty of sympathy for her as well as for Jafar, just like I have plenty for both Rumple and Regina; the main difference for me personally is that I empathize with Jafar and Rumple more than Ana and Regina) and I do think she and Will will probably end up back together. This is ONCE. She’ll probably realize the error of her methods and do more “showing” instead of “telling.” And I’m a little offended that you’re calling me a hypocrite. It’s my own personal take on the matter. You’re not right and I’m not right. It’s a difference of opinion.

Ana was a good queen to her people.

How do we know that? She tells her people as they complain to her in 102 (I think) that their problems bore her.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[PriceofMagic]

The fact that she allowed the people to bring their problems to her and the fact that she told Jafar she had things to do before she could help him leading Jafar to “clear her schedule” by turning her subject to ash suggests she was a good queen to her people. She might have just been having a stressful day and not wanted to deal with petty issues that led to her telling her people that their problems bore her.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[RumplesGirl]

The fact that she allowed the people to bring their problems to her and the fact that she told Jafar she had things to do before she could help him leading Jafar to “clear her schedule” by turning her subject to ash suggests she was a good queen to her people. She might have just been having a stressful day and not wanted to deal with petty issues that led to her telling her people that their problems bore her.

I think there is no way to know her mindset about having a stressful day and why are these petty issues? As I recall they were about food and livelyhoods, something a queen or any ruler should be concerned with no matter what else is happening. But I don’t think there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that she is a good queen, but that isn’t to say that there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that she was a bad queen either. From the first episode, Chesh tells Alice, while in the tree, that WL has changed dramatically since Alice was last there, food has run out or is running out for instance. She’s a queen who held two baby bunnies hostage and constantly threatened their lives to get the White Rabbit to do what she wanted but overall we’ve barely seen her actually ruling. Just dealing with Jafar and their plans.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Mark Atherton]

I don’t think she was a bad queen OR a good one. She just…wasn’t really cut out to be a ruler, which is another reason she regrets her choice aside from the Will factor. The scene with her subjects shows this: a good queen wouldn’t be bored with their problems, but a bad queen wouldn’t insist on listening to them regardless and be horrified when Jafar kills them.

I think Jafar is less sympathetic in some ways because we’ve seen how cruel and cold he is, and how utterly lacking of sympathy for others, while Ana seems to have sympathy but covers it up at times under a stern exterior, so as not to appear weaker than she is. Jafar wants to force the Sultan to submit. I”m not sure it is about love at all really, but in some ways, pride and revenge, but underneath that, perhaps he is desperate to feel loved but I do not think so. Why not change the past and save his mother instead if he wants love? If he’s going to all the trouble to change the laws of magic, it feels to me there is this element to consider. He wants all the power and his father’s love, I think, so he can then reject his father to make him feel the hurt he felt. It is not good enough to just kill the Sultan when the Sultan expects that. He has to break his heart and shatter him with unexpected betrayal first–the pain he felt. He did that to Amara so he is capable of it. I do agree though that Ana seeking to wish away her choices is not growth or truly redemption for her character. She is looking for magic to solve her problems and the trouble is, she wouldn’t change anything about herself so she would just make the same choices more or less as before.

I don’t know if Ana would remember or not, I’m not sure how changing the past works and if the present Ana would disappear or if she’d replace her past self in time.  Regardless, I agree it wouldn’t be true growth or redemption, which I believe she’s going to have now since changing the past is out of the question at this point.

 

 

[RumplesGirl]

I don’t think she was a bad queen OR a good one. She just…wasn’t really cut out to be a ruler, which is another reason she regrets her choice aside from the Will factor. The scene with her subjects shows this: a good queen wouldn’t be bored with their problems, but a bad queen wouldn’t insist on listening to them regardless and be horrified when Jafar kills them.

Agreed. She’s just not “queen” material. Which makes me wonder, though, if she ever went home to the EF. We know her mother wanted her to marry high, into the nobility at the least, royalty being her true aim. So I’ve been toying with the idea that she had the White Rabbit take her home to the EF once to show her mother what she had accomplished but most likely not receiving the accolades she desired and maybe having a moment of realization that being Queen isn’t what she truely wanted. And then maybe she sought out Jafar? (we still don’t know how those two came to work together)

Regardless, I agree it wouldn’t be true growth or redemption, which I believe she’s going to have now since changing the past is out of the question at this point.

Now that’s she has severed ties with Jafar, I agree: she’s going to move heaven and heck to get Will to forgive her. And I think a large part of that will be helping him to find his heart, or at least retrieve it. (rather a poetic metaphor)

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

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