Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin Character Analysis

[obisgirl]

I actually have the opposite opinion when it comes to Henry and Rumple. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rumple take a more active role in Henry’s life. They are each other’s strongest connection to Neal. I can see Belle really emcouraging Rumple to do so. The problem is the mess Rumple made with the dagger and killomg Zelena…and if anything that might get in the way of family bonding depending on how they handle it.

I’d like to see that too. Rumple can be a very loving person whe he wants to be and family means a lot to him, so maybe he will put forth an effort next season to bond with Henry.

And that pesky Rumple was going to kill Henry thing…so it might take some time but I definitely can see the relationship moving forward

I can see how that might be a problem. Not only that, how Rumple acts on a whim he might be considered too dangerous to be around Henry. But hopefully, the Charmings have moved past that.

[RumplesGirl]

With one month to go before 5B, I think we’re all becoming a bit restless because 1) we all love to talk and 2) we all have a lot of opinions. However quite often the conversation gets localized to shipper threads which have been designated safe havens for shippers to praise/critique the show without going up against too much opposition.

This, of course, means that most of the conversation is happening in shipper thread(s). It can be daunting because the conversations become unwieldy and highly unfocused. Therefore, an experiment/compromise of sorts. A little over a year ago, we spent an entire hiatus going through character threads and having really great conversations. I asked a series of questions to get the ball rolling and people responded in turn.

I’d like to try this again because the conversations being had are great ones with informed and well argued opinions but because they are taking place in shipper threads they are either one-sided or bog down the purpose and main conversation of the shipping threads.

With that in mind, I propose that we open the character threads for 3 of the biggies–Rumple, Emma, and Hook. The conversations will be polite and well argued but free from “safe haven” rules of shipper threads–meaning that you can defend or detract a character and expect responses of agreement and disagreement with recrimination.

We’ll start with Rumple.

I think, unlike a year ago, I’m only going to ask one question since Rumple is such a big and divisive character.

1) What informs Rumple’s character the most: is he a coward? A bad man? A good man? A hero? A father? Addict? Or something else? Is there an ageist or classist or other bent to him?

 

*claps hands* Discuss.

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

[Keb]

I believe that fear is the biggest driver of Rumple’s character; almost every major decision he makes is colored by his fears. For most of his character arc, the fear is of losing/never reuniting with his son in various shades, though he’s always afraid to lose his life/power with the exception of the moment love completely won out and he killed Pan. His relationship with Belle, too, is entirely colored by fear–fear that she cannot love him the way she professes to, that she will leave him, that she will discover who he really is, that harm will come to her (and worse, because of him). We see it in his relationship with Henry (which I’d really love to see more of)–especially in the moments when he toys with the idea of killing Henry. That moment was driven entirely by fear.

But his biggest fear is that he is unworthy of love. Right after that is the fear that he will be weak and unable to protect the ones he loves or himself.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[PriceofMagic]

I agree with Keb. Fear has been a driving force in Rumple’s life, fear that he’s unlovable. It started with Malcolm casting him out of Malcolm, it continued with Milah, even Baelfire started to pull away from him. Even though that was to do with Rumple’s actions, Rumple probably took it as a rejection of himself rather than his actions. Belle came along and it has taken Rumple so long to actually believe he is worthy of love even up to the end of 4B, he still questions whether he is worthy of love. This isn’t because Rumple chooses to be a coward, it’s because of past traumas where he’s been rejected by people who are supposed to love him: his father, his wife, his son. It’s more complicated in regards to Baelfire but I think Rumple is trapped in a vicious cycle. He fears that the people he loves are going to reject him so he resorts to underhanded tactics so they don’t see the “real” him but because of his actions, the people he loves reject him for his actions. It just goes on and on. Rumple doesn’t deliberately go out of his way to go behind Belle’s back (at least he didn’t in S1-3B) but he has a such deep-seated fear as a result of his past traumas but the cycle just keeps reinforcing itself. He acts to prevent rejection but he is rejected because of how he acts.

Also it’s unclear how much influence the dark one has over it’s host. This is where there is inconsistent writing with Rumple. We were led to believe that Rumple’s actions from 4A onwards were all his own whereas Hook’s turn as the dark one was all the dark one’s doing. It can’t be both. Either Hook had control over his actions, knew what he was doing and still did it anyway or Rumple was not in fully in control in 4A which would explain why he was so gung ho to get his plan complete.

Actually there is two inconsistencies with Hook:
1. Hook as the dark one vs Rumple as the dark one.
2. Hook being heart controlled vs Graham being heart controlled.

A&E seem to be going out of their way to absolve Hook of any blame for what happens, preferring to pin it all on Rumple. If you use the excuse that Rumple learned to control the dark one persona over time hence why he’s not so homicidal as Hook because Hook being a new dark one had no control, then theoretically Rumple can’t be held accountable for the murders of Hordor and company, the mute maid, snail guy because at that point in time he had no control. A&E like to peddle that Rumple is responsible for his own actions as the dark one but they don’t seem to want to extend the same logic towards Hook.

Hook being heart controlled is also another inconsistency. We’ve seen with Graham that, unless Regina was physically holding his heart to control him, then he had free will which ended up getting him killed when he used his free will to choose Emma over Regina. With Hook, A&E like to pretend that Hook had no control at all since Rumple had his heart but this is just not true. In fact, the one time Rumple was actively controlling Hook, Hook still managed to grab Emma’s hand of his own free will to let her know something was wrong. If he could do that when he was actively being controlled, why didn’t he put up more of a fight when Rumple had his heart but wasn’t actively controlling it? Rumple couldn’t crush his heart until the time was right so it’s not like he was using that as a threat to get Hook to do what he wanted, in fact Rumple was very open about the fact that he was going to crush Hook’s heart anyway. Nothing Hook did would’ve made a difference so why didn’t Hook cause Rumple more trouble even if it led to Rumple actively controlling him more often in which case Hook’s actions in 4A wouldn’t have been his fault as much.

I think Hook is a creator’s pet which is why they’ve thrown Rumple under a bus in order to make Hook look less disingenuous than he actually is.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[Keb]

I do think the writers have been inconsistent, partly because I don’t believe they got the idea for how the Dark Ones -are- controlled by the darkness until they started writing S5. The Darkness works by manipulating their fears and making them believe that Darkness is the only way to get what they need/want.

Yet we have seen Rumple controlled by that concept of “this is the only way,” even if he always offers OTHERS a choice in flashbacks. I always believed that his trading was part of keeping the darkness in check, actually, as well as necessary to keep the magic in balance–perhaps less within himself and more in general, as we see with the wraiths.

I don’t think Hook’s behavior in 4B contradicted the idea that Rumple needed the heart to control his actions, but because Hook did not want to die at that point and because he was trying to protect Emma, Rumple still had powerful control over Hook; Rumple’s had centuries learning to manipulate people, and Hook knows that he could cause a lot of pain and still reach his objectives. He only has a little leeway to try to warn anyone.

I do think the characters in the show have whitewashed Hook’s behaviors significantly, but they’ve also looked past Regina’s occasional flashes of reverting back to Evil Queen (as when Zelena taunts her). One thing I appreciated about S5A is that Regina WAS called out on her prior evil doings…however, Regina got out of it with the Charming’s hope-flavored get-out-of-bad-stuff-free card.

And Rumple’s own past behaviors were whitewashed significantly when his heart was made “pure” and he was turned into a hero in three easy steps. We have not really had a chance to see how Darker One Rumple functions…but his reversion to darkness does make sense given how driven he is by fear, which is not something the Darkness made him. Belle’s leaving him just when he had proven himself a true hero, when she herself said he was everything she’d ever wanted him to be, told Rumple that he really wasn’t ever worthy of her love and never could be. We see how depressed he is when Emma arrives for the sword. There isn’t anything left for him…and she offers him the chance to regain the one thing that DID give him something, his power–power which enticed Zelena and Cora, which could have allowed him to keep Milah, which gave him the chance to be with Belle in the past, which made him someone that people sought out even if they didn’t like him, and which drove away the fears (though not really, as the darkness preys upon them in reality). The power allows him to pretend to be who he wants at least.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[thedarkonedearie]

So here’s the deal with Rumple.  I absolutely see the fear side of it.  It is definitely there.  No doubt.  It is one of the many characteristics that embodies him.  However, for me, and this is why I have zero problem with the show turning him into a full fledged villain, his desire for power (addiction) is the most prevalent and has been the most consistent part of his character.  This addiction caused him to lose his son, it caused him to get thrown out of Storybrooke by Belle, and it’s caused him to revert back to his old self and not accept the blank slate hero status he could have chosen.  Even when he was more of a gray character, he manipulated things to benefit himself so he could stay in control, and on top.  Now, it’s just more in our face.

I think the show has made it very clear that Rumple was a coward only before he became the DO.  Since then, I have not seen his cowardice until this past season, but that’s because he wasn’t the DO anymore.  So he’s only a coward when he isn’t the DO.

As far as hero, he is not.  He never will be in my eyes.  He never had that kind of personality in my opinion.  Maybe the writers want to go back to that, and maybe he can be the man who sacrificed himself at the end of 3A, but I just don’t see it and quite frankly, I don’t want to see it.  I want to see Rumple pay for his sins and lack of control over his thirst for power.  And I want to see Emma finish him off.  All these seasons and we still have not seen a magic fight between Emma and Rumple.  I find that shocking and it makes me think they are saving it.  They are clearly the two most powerful people.  It should end with them.

But make no mistake, Rumple is a good man.  Tough to swallow, but yes that’s what I think.  He has a problem.  He has an addiction.  He was given the powers of the DO unwillingly, and once he got a taste of not being a coward and having all this power, he could not let it go, even for his son.  He loved his son, and he still could not let go of his powers.  He did it once, and that should have been it.  But they brought him back from the dead and you just can’t go back now.  He does horrible despicable things and manipulates the alleged love of his life constantly, but he definitely is not a bad man.  He is a villain, because he can’t control himself, but there is a good man in there still.  Whether the writers decide to write him as the guy who saves everyone in the end, or whether he will be the big bad to finish off, is still up in the air and I think the writers could go either way.

Rumple will always be my favorite character on this show and I hope they don’t screw up his character any more than they already have.  Make the final season (next year) all about taking him down.

[Keb]

I think the show has made it very clear that Rumple was a coward only before he became the DO. Since then, I have not seen his cowardice until this past season, but that’s because he wasn’t the DO anymore. So he’s only a coward when he isn’t the DO.

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I have to disagree–the fear drives his addiction. With power, he is less afraid because it’s harder for things to hurt him. But one of the few things I loved about S5A is I could -hear- how in the past the darkness could have persuaded Rumple “THIS is the only way to protect your son/get to your son/be safe.” You see it when he’s planning to get the hat; every plan is “Well, now THIS is the only way to be free of your fears.” He takes back the DO power because he’s still, at his core, afraid. That’s the definition of cowardice. The Rumple he shows everyone else is a mask (or series of masks, really) to hide his fear, to make others fear him so that they won’t hurt him.

He has rarely overcome his cowardice; the DO’s power is part of his being a coward, even if he clings to it in the hopes that it will mean he doesn’t have to be. And it took Emma approximately 2.5 seconds to prove that he still is a coward when she threatened to take Belle from him again.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[thedarkonedearie]

I have to disagree–the fear drives his addiction. With power, he is less afraid because it’s harder for things to hurt him.

Potentially yes.  I guess it depends on whether you look at his lust for power more of a product of his cowardice and fear, or his addiction to being able to be in control where nothing can stop him.  And perhaps not wanting to give up that power and control is reflective on his cowardice and why he may still be just a scared man.  If the writers really dug in to the core of Rumple, as to WHY he wants the power so bad, and WHY he even has this addiction, you are right, it may be because he simply is afraid to become a normal person getting picked on again and that drives his motivations and his addiction.

[nevermore]

Really interesting posts, y’all. I actually think there’s both the power aspect and the fear aspect that have an ambiguous and complicated relationship in Rumple’s character. In early seasons, we see Rumple seeking and clinging to power because of his fear — of losing Bae, to be sure, but I think it’s more insidious than that. S1-3 Rumple’s EF’s “prehistory” is very much about a man who is given very few options for any sort of control over his fate. This, in my opinion, has to do with class — being born a peasant, within what is presumably a feudal society with a rigid system and no upward mobility to speak of — Rumple has control over literally one thing: how he dies. That’s it. His life and the life of his son literally belong to whoever is lord of the estate on which Rumple’s village is located. At least, that’s what we’re given to understand with the Ogre Wars. Offered with the likely prospect of dying as part of the cannon fodder war effort, and leaving his son fatherless, he opts for the “cowardly” way out, but that “cowardice” is shown in context of Bae. This gets retconned in 5A as real cowardice, but that’s not how the story’s written early on. Anyway, Zoso exploits exactly this — it’s not that he’s exploiting Rumple’s fear in Desperate Souls. I don’t think Rumple is “Desperate” because he’s simply afraid. He’s desperate because the type of person he is has such a narrow horizon of possibility for exercising any sort of agency outside of the simple live/die dichotomy. And in EF, magic is really the only way around the rigid class structure. We see this later with Cora, we see this with Regina, we see this with Zelena. Magic is the weapon of the proletariat. 😉 And actually, except for Merlin and his Apprentice, and Emma, who is the product of “true love” very few magic users seem to be genuinely good (I’m of the Blue Fairy is shady as hell persuasion).

So I think that’s really Rumple’s origin, and everything else folds out of that. So, for one, I absolutely don’t buy that all of Rumple’s character is about “for the powerz and ze evilz” but there’s another, bigger question for me here which I don’t think folks have asked.

That’s the question of “so what”? Why is wanting power bad? Why does it feel so natural “Oh, of course, he wants power. Bad Rumple!” If power is about control over one’s life, as the early seasons of OUAT seem to suggest, why is this something to necessarily condemn?

I honestly have a huge problem with what I think is OUAT’s undercurrent classism, and that’s because the show has taken a classic fairytale trope — seeking power for its own sake is evil, only people who “fall into” power/magic/riches accidentally deserve them, and generally speaking, everyone should know their place. It gets refracted through gender of course: women’s way up the totem pole is through marriage or magic, but magic is never shown as a legitimate way to climb the social ladder. “Know your place”  is a very important moral if you live in a feudal society, for sure. In that sense, I can see the social utility of this kind of trope, considering what sort of societies have given rise to these fairytales. But that OUAT would take it, and unreflectively reproduce it, is intellectually lazy and a missed opportunity.

But I don’t think they did this early on. What I dislike about the way Rumple is written post-reboot is the way in which these very complex social and psychological issues explored in the first 3 seasons, and the commentary on class and power, gets jettisoned in favor of a much flatter narrative along the “Rumple seeks power and hence is evil” lines. And actually, this would be almost OK, if it were where the show started in the first place, but we were shown something else. So the result of this, is that OUAT ended up doing something really awful: it “naturalized” Rumple’s evilness, but because we had this class commentary early on, it can be easily read as a subtle commentary about who’s “deserving” and who “isn’t.” Ie. peasants should mind their place because they are of “lower stock.”  I’m not saying that this is what they’re consciously doing, but I think there’s a risk of that interpretation — it’s subtle, like OUAT’s racism is subtle.

 

[PriceofMagic]

Rumple has so much potential if the writers really did play with the addiction angle but now it seems they’re only interested in making him a villain just because instead of their original premise of exploring WHY the villains are the way they are.

5A Emma is the worst Emma of them all. Does nobody care about Belle as an actual human being at all? They’re all aware that Rumple is hiding things from her, but rather than telling her, they’re using her as leverage against Rumple. Yet they’re all there to “comfort” and “help” Belle when she does find out what Rumple’s been up to and gets upset about it. It’s hypocritical.

It’s getting harder more and more to root for the supposed “heroes”.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[Author]

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