Regina’s love for Henry

[Phee]

I think she wanted Henry because she saw this reality as her second chance. If this is her happy ending, then she wants to have love in her life again.

Also, it’s some tasty icing on the revenge cake if Regina can have a child when the curse took Snow’s child away from her. Even if Snow doesn’t realise it, it’d still be enough for Regina to feel like she came out on top in that regard.

Sucks for her that the kid she ended up with can see who she really is, so it’s not working out quite as perfectly as she’d hoped.

[lissy]

I think she wanted Henry because she saw this reality as her second chance. If this is her happy ending, then she wants to have love in her life again.

I agree! Too bad she has no idea how to be a good mother… she is too controlling like Cora. Maybe she holds on so tightly because she fears loosing him.

[dorothy]

I think Regina really does love Henry, but she’s just not able to express it in a way that Henry would read as love-I mean look at her own mother. 😯

A couple of episodes ago (I’m not sure which one it was) when Regina gave Henry a video game to replace the loss of his book, he didn’t seem all that excited. When she asks what’s wrong, Henry says that he wants to see Emma again, and you can tell from the look on her face that she’s hurt. I think that Regina is mostly familiar with going through the motions of being a parent, taking him to school, feeding him when he’s hungry, checking his temperature when he’s sick, tucking him into bed when he’s sleepy, giving him presents, etc. As far as emotional love, I think Regina might be lacking in that department.

We know that she sent him to therapy because he thinks (or rather knows) that she’s an Evil Queen, but do we know if she ever asked him why he feels that way? Has she taken the time to try and understand his feelings, where he’s coming from? Did she send him off to therapy the moment she found out about this, or was she a mother at her wits end? If she did send him off to Archie the moment she found out, it might be the reason Henry says that Regina is only “pretending” to love him.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about their relationship to really judge.

[angiebelle]

I think the curse has left a void in her heart just as Malificant warned her due to having to sacrifice her father to enact it. She has tried to fill the void by adopting a child- even naming him after her father. She really, truly wants to love Henry, but because of her own upbringing, she doesn’t know how.

[darcyfarrow]

I was just rewatching “Still Small Voice” and I’m convinced Regina does love Henry; her reactions to Henry’s entrapment–for example, the way she swallows her pride to cooperate with Emma–suggest to me real concern and affection for Henry. I suppose it’s possible she’s putting on a show for her constituents, but the catch in her voice convinces me. If Regina is redeemed at series’ end, I think it will be because of her love for Henry and vice versa.

As to how she decided to adopt Henry, my hunch is that Gold planted the notion in her head. Gradually, over small conversations, bit by bit his suggestions led her to “realize” that she ought to be a mother…all part of his scheme to bring the savior to town.

[killianhookfan]

I would love to get my hands on Archie’s notes! In reality (so to speak since this is a TV show) I wonder why Henry thinks Regina is evil. Is it only because he has identified her as the EQ and knows what she has done via the book? Is he harder on her because he knows she’s the evil queen so that when she tells him not to leave his shoes on the stairs and when she grounds him for sneaking out of the house he looks at that as evil as opposed to normal things that moms do? Does he assume that she is only pretending to love him because they books says she is incapable of love?

I guess I’m just a bit puzzled because I haven’t seen her be emotionally or physically abusive to Henry the way her mother was to her. And just because we haven’t seen the two of them be affectionate doesn’t mean they haven’t been. I almost wonder if the problem is Henry – and if that is the reason he was initially in therapy. Depending on when Henry got the book and realized Regina was the EQ, he could have been pulling away from her for years or months. What if they had a normal relationship and then he suddenly changed when he got the book? We don’t know if Henry knew he was adopted until he got the book – that could affect how he interacts with Regina as well.

[Slurpeez]

rumplegoldfan wrote: Depending on when Henry got the book and realized Regina was the EQ, he could have been pulling away from her for years or months. What if they had a normal relationship and then he suddenly changed when he got the book? We don’t know if Henry knew he was adopted until he got the book – that could affect how he interacts with Regina as well.

I think that Henry has always had a strained relationship with Regina. I think he had grounds to be distant from her before he got the storybook from Mary Margaret. In episode 2, Archie tells Emma that although Henry only got the book a month before Emma came to town, Henry has been receiving therapy from Archie for years prior to that point. He said that Regina was a very complicated woman, and that the book was simply Henry’s language for dealing with his problems. Henry clearly has had issues with Regina from the very start. Henry is trying to cope with a very demanding mother. She expects a lot from him, and fairy-tales are Henry’s escape.

If Henry and Regina used to have even a normal relationship (let alone a loving one), Henry wouldn’t have started hating Regina just because of some story book. It had to be that Henry has had unresolved issues with his adoptive mother for years, if not his entire life. I believe the book just helped to enforce Henry’s dislike for his adoptive mother. Henry told Emma in the pilot that Regina doesn’t really love him, but that she only pretends to love him. Although Regina probably does love Henry, she’s never been able to demonstrate that love in a way he understands. She provides him with material comforts, but she’s unable to convey love to him in a way he comprehends.

Perhaps that is in part because she had a terrible shrew of a mother. Perhaps it’s also because of the curse. Regina never heeded Maleficient’s warning that enacting the curse would leave an unquenchable void in her heart. Regina is too consumed by hatred and revenge to be able to move past her own suffering to be able to show love outwardly to someone else. In other words, Regina is too emotionally crippled to demonstrate her love for Henry, even though she does loves him. While I want to see Regina redeemed through her love for Henry, she’s going to have to move mountains and receive forgiveness for all of her monstrous ways.

"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

[killianhookfan]

@Dorothy wrote:

A couple of episodes ago (I’m not sure which one it was) when Regina gave Henry a video game to replace the loss of his book, he didn’t seem all that excited. When she asks what’s wrong, Henry says that he wants to see Emma again, and you can tell from the look on her face that she’s hurt. I think that Regina is mostly familiar with going through the motions of being a parent, taking him to school, feeding him when he’s hungry, checking his temperature when he’s sick, tucking him into bed when he’s sleepy, giving him presents, etc. As far as emotional love, I think Regina might be lacking in that department.

This is an example of where I think they might be setting us up in making us assume that Regina isn’t much of a parent. I think they tried to make us think that Regina took Henry’s book and then gave him a video game to make up for the fact that she took it. At this point, it doesn’t appear that was the case at all. It actually seems that Regina felt bad that Henry was upset about the loss of his book and gave him the video game in the hopes that it would cheer him up – she actually had nothing to do with the book’s disappearance at all. To me I saw her making an effort with Henry but I saw Henry rebuking her effort.

I guess what I am saying is that I made the assumption that Regina isn’t a good parent but when I look back at episodes I can’t really find a situation where I have seen Regina be a bad parent, yet I can find situations where Henry is purposely not accepting Regina’s attention and affection while purposely seeking out Emma’s attention and affection. I would like to see some of Regina and Henry’s backstory and what their relationship was like before Henry got the book.

[darcyfarrow]

I wonder what it was like for Regina when she realized that baby Henry was growing–since time was frozen and the other kids weren’t growing. I wonder if, at the time of the adoption, she knew that would happen, that one day he would be grown up and she would have to let him go–the only mom in town to have to do so.

Okay, now I feel sorry for her.

[midnight dreary]

I’m stil trying to figure out why Regina wanted to adopted a child. And why would she trust Mr. Gold to get it for her?

[Author]

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