Regina as a mother

[arjay369]

I love this thread. I thought this was going to be a plain ol’ Regina doesn’t love Henry whatsoever type deal, but it’s been pretty deep. I think Regina does love Henry but she has issues. Of course, the primary one against her is that she’s a murdering psychotic.

However, beyond that as has been mentioned, she’s a mother out of selfish needs. There is a void she’s trying to feel. Unfortunately, she’s trying to replace lost love instead of nourishing a new love. Right now, it’s like Regina’s attempted to replace her prize steed – which she had originally sacrificed to the curse. I’m sure if a person has a rather large estate, they pay little mind to where their pets roam – much as to how Regina acts with Henry. And I’m sure when Henry grows up, Regina would either groom him to be like herself or demean/degrade him as Cora did her husband and become Regina’s valet and lackey.

I am conflicted with statements regarding someone loving their child and someone who is fit to be a parent. Coming from a broken home with natural parents who both married and divorced three times each and who were either unable to parent adequately due to selfish actions on one side or guilt for those actions on the other, it’s difficult to say what is real loving emotion and what is simple parental action.

Regina is straddling both sides. Is she waffling? Undecided? No, she loves her son. Unfortunately for Henry and herself, other things happened in Regina’s life before he came into it. Has she done bad things, whether seen as selfish or evil? Yes. Does that mean she is incapable of loving her child? No. Is she a bad parent or unfit? Currently, yes.

[sam993]

Regina has the same bit of magic that Emma has. The magic that a mother has on her son. I think the reason why no one returned back to fairytale land was Regina gave up Henry.

In Apple Red as Blood, Mr. Gold said. “The curse meant to take away Snow White and Prince Charming’s happiness, perhaps you giving up Henry is just the price to keep the curse unbroken.”

Although, Emma gave her true love kiss to Henry, Regina did give up her love for Henry in return. Keeping the curse alive.

So, ya, Regina does have a maternal love for Henry, which was enough to keep everyone in Storybrooke.

[schmacky]

I also didn’t feel as much sympathy for her as it seemed a lot of viewers did after her speech to Henry in “A Land Without Magic” about how she really does love him, because I think once again it was more about her needs rather than Henry. Now if she at least had a little awareness that her it was her actions all along that turned him against her and not other people trying to turn him against her, I would have felt more sympathetic.

The way I felt about Regina’s speech I could never exactly pin point. But you nailed it here for me. To me, Regina’s speech about loving him was more about defense. Like “poor me! These people will say horrible things about me, but know that it’s not true and I love you!”

I don’t even think she has any regret for what she did… only regret that Henry got caught in the crossfire. I don’t think she has any remorse for what she did and how it would have affected Henry emotionally had Emma eaten it.

While I felt that scene in the hospital was slightly heartbreaking for her, it just left something to be desired. And I can understand why Henry just stared at her. He didn’t know what to make of that statement. I don’t know what to make of that statement.

She’s only sorry she lost. She’s like Rumpel.. she didn’t learn a damn thing.

Anyway, back to Regina as a mother. I’m glad there are quite a few people here who see that there’s more to being a parent than being a provider. I go on the IMDB forum and there are either people who have very different ideas of what being a good parent is than I do or just super crazy Regina fans that think she’s a wonderful person that’s only misunderstood because of an abusive mother.

And I agree with those who say that Henry turning out to be a good kid doesn’t necessarily reflect Regina’s parenting skills. Although.. and I may be overanalyzing this a bit… Henry seems to be more involved with the book and the story than the people themselves. He wants to fix the happy endings because that’s how it should be more so than actually wanting to help these people. And I think that could be a byproduct of having Regina being his main role model in life. He doesn’t connect with these people on a personal level.. something Regina I think has issues with even with her own son.

[antbee]

@Schmacky wrote:

The way I felt about Regina’s speech I could never exactly pin point. But you nailed it here for me. To me, Regina’s speech about loving him was more about defense. Like “poor me! These people will say horrible things about me, but know that it’s not true and I love you!”

I don’t even think she has any regret for what she did… only regret that Henry got caught in the crossfire. I don’t think she has any remorse for what she did and how it would have affected Henry emotionally had Emma eaten it.

While I felt that scene in the hospital was slightly heartbreaking for her, it just left something to be desired. And I can understand why Henry just stared at her. He didn’t know what to make of that statement. I don’t know what to make of that statement.

She’s only sorry she lost. She’s like Rumpel.. she didn’t learn a *(please avoid obscenities)* thing.

Thanks. It seemed like everyone felt bad for her after the finale, but I agree for me the only reason she was regretful was because Henry got caught in the crossfire and everyone finally had proof of what an evil person she really was like he’s been saying all along. I’m sure the next time Henry gets hurt either on accident or directly from whatever she does against the Charmings, she’ll probably try to blame it on everyone else again, and say how sorry she is to him, but she’ll really loves him. And the 100th time it happens, she’ll blame everyone else again, but tell him that she really loves him no matter what those mean people say about her.

Yes, her and Rumple are certainly alike in that they never learn, but right now I find Rumple’s character to be more layered and am more sympathetic towards him usually except for the last episode when I couldn’t believe he’d still unleash magic after being reunited with Belle. I think it’s because he was tricked into becoming the Dark One, and I think after he became the Dark One, magic is an addiction to him that he’ll choose every time even over those that he loves most. It certainly doesn’t excuse his actions because in some ways he might be more frustrating at times than Regina since he does seem more capable of redemption and seems to have some humanity left in him compared to her, and yet he keeps making the wrong choices.

Of course, I don’t think he was a good father after he became the Dark One either, and while I cried in the matter in which Bae was separated from his father, maybe in some ways Bae was lucky because as much as he might be screwed up from that, I wonder how screwed up he would be if he had stayed with his father and not been able to cure his father from being the Dark One.

And I agree with those who say that Henry turning out to be a good kid doesn’t necessarily reflect Regina’s parenting skills. Although.. and I may be overanalyzing this a bit… Henry seems to be more involved with the book and the story than the people themselves. He wants to fix the happy endings because that’s how it should be more so than actually wanting to help these people. And I think that could be a byproduct of having Regina being his main role model in life. He doesn’t connect with these people on a personal level.. something Regina I think has issues with even with her own son.

I never thought of that before, but it does make sense since Henry was so isolated from making real relationships for so long. It must have been really weird when he realized that he was the only one that was aging and being able to notice all the other bizarre things going on. No wonder he became so obsessed with the book. I’m sure he’ll start connecting with people more now that he’s away from Regina and gets to know more about the people in the book as real people.

[killianhookfan]

I think the writers have opened a huge can of worms with Regina as a mother and I think at least parts of it were done on purpose. Others, I’m not so sure about because I know several adoptive parents who have stopped watching the show specifically because of the Regina vs. Emma issue and I understand why they feel that way.

I’m one who defends Regina – sorry, in advance. If I look at it strictly from a TV show perspective then Regina is nuts and Emma should get Henry. But once I became a parent it became impossible for me to look at things without automatically viewing them through my “mommy glasses.”

When I was younger I probably said a million times “When I’m a parent I will never so and so, or I don’t understand how parents could ever such and such.” But then you have kids and you eat your words. It’s really easy to have a parenting philosophy when you don’t have kids (regardless of what your own family situation was when you were a child) because you don’t get to choose the temperment of your children and the circumstance of your life when you have your children. And it’s easy to judge other people’s parenting because you don’t know their entire situation. That’s where I am with Regina. We have rarely seen any one on one time with Regina and Henry – when we have it has been Regina reinforcing rules at home or trying to console him after his book went missing – both completely acceptable to me. But I don’t feel like we have been allowed to see enough to make any judgements as to what their actual relationship is like and we haven’t seen ANY of their backstory – and I am particularly interested in their backstory prior to Henry receiving the book.

Everyone assumes that it is Regina’s poor parenting that is the reason for Henry’s huge file at Dr. Hopper’s office. There are all kinds of reasons for children to go to counseling – at a young age parents are often trying to get help for kids who are having problems so I don’t assume that Henry is there because he has been messed up by Regina but I also don’t assume he isn’t. As far as people saying Regina never knows where Henry is – from a parent’s perspective, Henry has a serious disobedience issue when it comes to sneaking out and not being where he is supposed to be. That is completely different from Regina not caring where the kid is. This is one of the reasons I am curious about their backstory prior to Henry receiving the book. I want to know what Henry was being seen by Dr. Hopper for before he received the book. Did his disobedience start only after he started to think Regina was the Evil Queen? Were they close before that but he had different issues or was he always disobedient? Did he start to be seen by Dr. Hopper when he realized that he was the only one getting older? That would mess a kid up. So did Regina try to find a way to help him through that or only hide what was going on? Archie obviously didn’t believe him so how did those sessions work? My other questions is – did Regina actually WANT Henry? I don’t think that has ever been addressed since we don’t really know how he came to SB. Did she request a child or did Gold just give one to her?

I do beleive Regina loves Henry, not only from what I have seen on the show but also because Lana always says that how she plays the part. I believed the part in the hospital was authentic. I felt like Regina realized that Henry had confirmed that she was the EQ and she knew he was going to hear HORRIBLE things about her from EVERYONE and this was her last chance to tell him that in spite of what he was going to hear she needed him to know that she does love him. What confirmed that for me was that after the BF told her that she should go hide, she ran out of the hospital, but instead of going to hide she went home, went to Henry’s room, sat on his bed and smelled his pillow – it reminded me of something that parents do after they have a child die. I felt like Regina felt like she had just lost someone else she loved. At that point I don’t think she really cared about hiding.

I don’t agree that Regina has “hurt” Henry in the sense of the word that others use, probably because as a parent I realize that we often have to, or end up, hurting our children all the time. I don’t think destroying his favorite place was bad (it was falling apart and unsafe, I wouldn’t have allowed my son to play there – we tore down a similar structure at our new house but we couldn’t afford to build a new one), if my son was adopted and his birth mother showed up, moved in and started hanging out with him, I would do everything possibly legally to keep her away from him unless it was under my control regardless of how he felt about that (at Henry’s age the decision of how much time to spend with his birth mother should ONLY be up to his mother).

I think it’s a matter of perspective. If I wasn’t a mom myself I would probably look at it differently. Obviously, I agree with everyone that Regina’s murderous sociopath qualities aren’t going to win her any Mother of the Year nominations. 😀

Oh, and just a side note . . . to be sensitive as we do have some adoptive parents on our boards, try to be careful when talking about titles. Technically (unless we find out that the adoption wasn’t legal) Regina is Henry’s REAL mother and Emma is his birth mother.

[arjay369]

@rumplegoldfan
What an amazing response! If there was some way to ‘like’ or ‘ thumbs up’, I would. I am in awe of your parental wisdom. And I mean that. Very nice. 😀 That’s all I wanted to say.

[Aliasscape]

I think what a lot of people see in some of the playground destruction or other things like that is a pattern of disregard for Henry’s emotional well-being. There’s also her not seeming to have had any concerns about Henry being a kid with no friends, or what it would be like to for HIM to be a kid who ages in her non-aging town with clear memories when everyone else’s are hazy.

Perhaps she wanted all this since it guaranteed her being able to raise a child in near total emotional isolation, hopefully keeping him from ever wanting to leave her. Just as Regina believes she loves (only) Henry, I think she also wanted Henry to love only her.

I also don’t doubt Regina BELIEVES she loves Henry. I believe Lana BELIEVES Regina believes she loves Henry. All this means to me is that Regina loves Henry as much as she is capable of loving or in the only way she knows how. What I think they’ve shown us though is that in the grand scheme of things Regina doesn’t love him enough to give up her quest for revenge or to stop doing bad things that make impossible for her to remain a free member of society without placing people in danger. So her love for him doesn’t really rise high enough to hit the threshold of “should keep custody.” since that’d be especially hard to do with banished or locked away, or on the run from the “untold millions you cursed”

The less we try and compare the Regina, Emma, Henry custody situation to a real life adoption the better, imo. Using real as a synonym for biological or birth is insensitive to and rude. But there are other ways to mean real, I think a lot of times people are referring to who they feel most acts as a mother should toward Henry or may even be using Henry’s own phrasing from the pilot, relying on who he FEELS is his mother. Or maybe real as in who currently has physical custody.

It’s a given that Henry’s so called legal adoption was surely based on fraudulent. paperwork. Can you imagine Regina putting the real answers to questions like “Where were you born?” “How old are you?” “Ever been married?” Haha, if she put the real answers, any adoption agency that gave a baby to someone who listed their birth place as “Enchanted Forest, Another World” can’t be reputable. 😆

[antbee]

@Oncescape wrote:

It’s a given that Henry’s so called legal adoption was surely based on fraudulent. paperwork. Can you imagine Regina putting the real answers to questions like “Where were you born?” “How old are you?” “Ever been married?” Haha, if she put the real answers, any adoption agency that gave a baby to someone who listed their birth place as “Enchanted Forest, Another World” can’t be reputable. 😆

Excellent point. While I definitely did not want to see a long, drawn-out custody fight where Emma would surely lose if the case was tried in Storybrooke, I don’t think his adoption was legal either. I think that it was obvious from “The Price of Gold” that Mr. Gold wasn’t exactly a reputable baby dealer, and while Henry’s “adoption” may have seemed on the up and up, I’m guessing that there would have been at least one loophole that Rumple could have exploited to help Emma had he decided not to let August try to help her first.

Maybe I’m wrong or we’ll never know for sure, but I think it has to do with why Henry was brought to Storybrooke and by whom was he brought to Storybrooke. I think that some person (Baelfire) or entity (the Blue Fairy, the Curse) wanted Henry in Storybrooke for a reason, and that he was only “adoptable” because of who his birth parents were.

[darcyfarrow]

I was on the fence about Regina’s love for Henry–many of her decisions were, to my mind, responsible and reasonable. What tips the scale for me is looking at the situation from Henry’s point of view–and it was the parallel situation with Belle that led me to to a resolution. To keep hold of Belle, Regina not only locked her up but also had her receiving psychological treatment–by keeping her drugged and trying to convince her she wasn’t sane, Regina kept her under control, and kept her from learning the truth about herself, her beloved, and everyone else in SB.

Regina resorted to a similar tactic to keep Henry under control: she put him into therapy, not to help him cope with the truth that he was learning, but to convince him the lie was the truth. It’s clear from her conversations with Hopper that her reason for placing Henry in therapy was to get Henry to accept the lie, not to make him feel better. She would have gone so far as to allow Henry to be labeled delusional. Worse, she would have rather had Henry think of himself as ill than to allow him to see the truth. If Henry had been a bit less self -confident, a bit more people-pleasing, he would have grown up convinced that two of the three most important adults in his life thought he was delusional.

Henry needed to be in therapy–but therapy grounded in truth.

[Slurpeez]

“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’
Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.’” Erich Fromm

While Regina may love Henry, it is a very immature and self-centered love. She needs Henry to try and fill a void that she has after losing a lover, Daniel in episode 18. Moreover, by killing the thing she loved most (aka her dad, Henry Sr.) in episode 2, Regina has a void that can never be filled. That was the price she had to pay to enact it. She has tried to fill that void by means of a dubious adoption, and yet, that emptiness persists inside of Regina, as Mary Margaret picked up on.

Regina is the one who is mentally ill – she finds pleasure in other people’s pain. Also, her idea of love became twisted when her mother killed Daniel. Her mother’s words were something akin to “I only did it out of love for you.” Her mother demonstrated a twisted, self-serving “love,” and when Daniel was gruesomely murdered, something in Regina snapped. I think Regina is the one with real psychiatric issues. I wonder if we’ll see her in the same mental ward in the cell next to Sidney now that the people of SB have awakened to her twisted scheme. Though I feel somewhat sorry for Regina for having such a horrible mother like Cora, she is still ultimately responsible for her own actions. She is consumed by a desire for revenge, and I only hope she finds some sort of redemption. However, now that magic has come to SB, chances of that are looking slim.

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[Author]

Posts