Re-watching Miller's Daughter post S3 and the WTH moment

[Amdillae]

I am sure that someone else has have this moment but I did a search and found nothing, so Mods merge, delete, re-direct whatever is needed.

This came when I saw Cora reminding Rumple with almost tears about the changed contract meaning that she owes him nothing that it came to me. Why would she have bothered to make the change to the deal in the first place. The original contract had her owing Rumple as good as nothing, her firstborn whom she had already abandon to another world via a firey green tornado.

This also made me realize that even if Cora never changed the contract Rumple would never have been able to claim Regina.  Am I the only one that thinks that this a strange turn of events considering that a lot of what Rumple does with regards to Regina seems to be an attempt to gain control of the child that should have been his?

[RumplesGirl]

Well if Cora knows that her first born is already “lost” to her, then she can make the deal and get what she wants–the ability to spin–and later claim that the first born clause is negated and instead Rumple must seek out Zelena if he wants her first born. She’s being very shift and clever. She can promise him her first born, but he doesn’t realize she’s already had it.

 

that’s the clever show explanation.

The not so clever show explanation is that during the writing of TMD, Zelena wasn’t fleshed out enough yet in the writers minds. They may have wanted to use Oz and the WW, but it wasn’t set in stone what that arc would be.

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

[Amdillae]

Well if Cora knows that her first born is already “lost” to her, then she can make the deal and get what she wants–the ability to spin–and later claim that the first born clause is negated and instead Rumple must seek out Zelena if he wants her first born. She’s being very shift and clever. She can promise him her first born, but he doesn’t realize she’s already had it. .

That is the part that is perplexing me, it is easy to see Cora attempting something like this to outsmart The Dark One, but why would she then go and change the deal. Was it because she didn’t want Rumple to know about her illegitimate offspring? Did she want to try and make amends for attempting to manipulate the man she now had feelings for? Was she afraid if Rumple found out about Zelena that she would be left alone with a child once again?

“The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.” - Terry Pratchett

[Grimmsister]

Thats right Amdillae thats actually wierd.. hadnt crossed my mind before, but she didnt have to change the contract because of Zelena. When Rumple would have come to collect his prize she could have just said- well to bad I dont have it here then..

?

[torrie]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Rumple was the one to suggest the change in the deal, not Cora.  If so, she had nothing to lose by going along with his change, especially if she knew she was going to break the deal.

[obisgirl]

I don’t know if Zelena was planned as far back as The Miller’s Daughter. She might have been but generally, when I  view that scene I think it was referring to Regina since she was the one who was Simba’d at the coronation.

[RumplesGirl]

I think it’s a mix of the clever show explanation but more so that they hadn’t formed Zelena totally yet. Adam and Eddy have stated that they write the show arc by arc with only a general idea of what happens next. For example: at the end of S2, they knew they wanted to go to NL, but it wasn’t until the summer before S3 began that they came up with PP being Rumple’s father.

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

[obisgirl]

I agree with @RG.

[schaendlich]

I wonder if I’m the only one, but…does anyone else realize that Cora could not have possibly gotten out of her deal? The moment it changed from “Cora’s firstborn” to “Rumpel and Cora’s firstborn”, Cora owed Rumpel that child by all intents and purposes.  She couldn’t have just refused because she didn’t want to have the baby. So, even if it hadn’t been Rumpel who proposed that amendment to her deal, I don’t think Cora had any ulterior motives in accepting. She wouldn’t gain anything but a debt she knew would be more difficult to repay. If this was a scheme, Cora lost the battle, and could not, at that point, feasibly outsmart the Dark One.

In fact, even if the deal went unchanged, she would still owe it to Rumpel to tell him the location of, or retrieve Zelena herself. A price doesn’t become null and void because it inconveniences the payer.

If anyone knows that you can’t just shimmy out of a deal, it’s Rumpel. And if anyone isn’t going to be swindled over something so simple, it’s Rumpel.

So, the questions that I have for you guys are these: Do you think Rumpel let her off out of some small semblance of affection? Or has Cora paid some sort of cost for her abandonment that was unseen, or that we never realized was a price? Or have A and E just not thought that much about this point?

If it’s not explained in show, this episode has a HUGE  pothole with Cora just saying “No”and sauntering out of there. XD

[Myril]

Not quite sure if I can follow your thinking, @schaendlich. It’s not like Cora ever really cared about Zelena, she probably gladly would have handed her to Rumple as price for becoming a royal, if the contract would have stayed unchanged. Cora was smart enough not to tell Rumple, that she already had a firstborn daughter, got her end of the deal and then probably would have let him know about it wishing him good luck finding her, while she would marry royal and be a good royal wife producing a firstborn for the prince without much of any headaches about Rumple’s price.

Think we should assume, that on Rumple’s side affection was involved for amending the contract they had, as a token of his interest in Cora, of his love, lust, saying, that the contract was only to be fulfilled when the two would have a child together. I don’t know if Cora played Rumple already at that point or seriously was thinking to go with him, either way Cora couldn’t lose saying yes to that change. If going with Rumple a child together would have been means to bond stronger anyway and she would have been there to raise it with him. If not going with him she didn’t need to worry much about him either, unless he would take her by force or trick her into bearing his child there would be not firstborn of her and Rumple. No, Cora was not out of the contract but whatever the outcome she could only win, love or royal status, riches in any case, whatever her heart yearned more for.

Rumple was a fool, and this is prove how little good his seer abilities did for him. If he foresaw a daughter of Cora would be the one to cast his curse, he certainly didn’t spot she had already a daughter when he met her. And while he normally liked to be on top of things not wording precisely that Cora owned him her first born daughter was already a bit of stupid risk to take at the at point, could he be really that sure her firstborn would be a daughter? And then this stupid amend, didn’t he already had an idea what it would take to cast the curse, so making it his and Cora’s child wouldn’t that be utterly stupid? What if the thing their daughter would have loved most were him? Or would he been such a jerk to raise his daughter with Cora fearing and hating him?

It’s even believable if accepting that Rumple was so intrigued by Cora that he lost sight for some things, so much that he was about to jeopardize his complicate plan to have a chance to reunite with his son. What a lovesick (or lustsick) fool. And his seer ability never did any good for him, even more of a fool or tragic “hero”.

Cora was the one on top the moment Rumple made the deal about her firstborn, the amend didn’t matter that much anymore. She outsmarted him pretty much one way or the other.

As long as we didn’t know about Zelena the story looked a bit different to us, but it makes even a bit more sense with Zelena, or makes Cora an even more intriguing villain, pretty much the only truly interesting one they had so far. (If ignoring the rather unnecessary stupid attempt to taint Eva a bit with her betraying Cora’s betrayal to Leopold). If taking the Enchanted Forest as a medieval world with regularly little power to women then some of Cora’s behavior was even not that of a genuinely evil character but could be seen as a questionable though comprehensible way to take good care of herself and her offspring, rational choices, using the means she as a woman had. Unfortunately they made her look more like a psychopath the way she reacted to her daughters, particular that she abandoned Zelena in the woods (was she hoping for some wolf pack to pick her up an raise her? She could at least have left her somewhere to be found by someone for sure)

¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯

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