Regina's Regret

[RumplesGirl]

I still wish though that Regina and Mary Margaret could have a heartfelt conversation. If Regina is going to apologize to anyone or feel regret for hurting anyone I think she should feel regret for hurting Snow since they did love each other once. Perhaps she may even feel regret and shame for what Emma had to go through as a child as a result of the curse. I think Snow has more than atoned for her sin against Regina (in revealing her secret) 1. because she was a child 2. because Regina killed her father, chased Snow away and hunted her down 3. Snow spared Regina from execution. 4. Snow willing ate the apple. She has yet to atone for murdering Cora. I think for that though she needs to forgive herself, not look to Regina for forgiveness.

I think at some point, A and E do need to stop the action for one episode and have EVERYONE sit around table and just *talk*

Snow and Regina and Charming

Emma and Snow and Charming

Neal and Emma and Snowing

Rumple and Neal

Hook and Rumple

Neal and Rumple

Regina and Emma

Henry and everyone.

I would be ok with one episode of just talking. (yeah, I know) (not gonna happen)

[timespacer]

I think at some point, A and E do need to stop the action for one episode and have EVERYONE sit around table and just *talk* Snow and Regina and Charming Emma and Snow and Charming Neal and Emma and Snowing Rumple and Neal Hook and Rumple Neal and Rumple Regina and Emma Henry and everyone. I would be ok with one episode of just talking. (yeah, I know) (not gonna happen)

Me too! They could title the episode “Waiting for August” (since he will presumably never show up.)

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I still wish though that Regina and Mary Margaret could have a heartfelt conversation.

Me too. But I think Regina is still a long way from that point. Probably in the final year of the series, if not the very last episode.

[truidia]

This is an excerpt of a much longer really fantastic character analysis that makes my point about regret and remorse perfectly.

Firstly, looking at the concepts of “regret” and “remorse”, I think it’s important to mamke a distinction between the two and look at how they manifest themselves.  For me, regret is as much a selfish emotion as remorse is unselfish.  I think that people regret words and/or actions because of the negative effect they have on themselves.  People feel regret because it’s made THEM feel bad, irregardless of how it makes others feel.  If we think about things we’d like to take back, or things we wish we hadn’t done, how many of them are because of the way that WE feel as a result of them?
 
Remorse, however, is based on how our words and actions affect OTHERS.  If we do or say something that makes someone ELSE feel bad, and we are troubled as a result of it, then that says more about how we feel about others than we do about ourselves.  And as an example, I’d like to posit that Regina felt and still feels remorse over killing her father – no matter how she justified it and appeared unrepentant, I believe that it still hurts her because she caused his death.  And in losing him – someone she clearly loved and who loved her too, even if that love was cowed by Cora’s strict control and emotional manipulation – Regina really is “sorry”, as she says.  I don’t think it’s coincidence that Regina took Baby Henry to her father’s coffin and said “thank you”.

The complete post, which I strongly recommend that everyone read, can be found on tumblr here: http://heartsways.tumblr.com/post/68795600961/remorse-regret-and-regina

 

 

[kfchimera]

I read that post and found it made a false distinction between Regret and Remorse.  Its an interesting concept but the two emotions are NOT mutually exclusive as implied.

Here is the Dictionary.com on it:

What is the difference between regret and remorse?

Regret describes emotions ranging from being disappointed to intense sorrow due mainly to an external circumstance or event. An example is: She regrets that the television show has been canceled. One can also regret a wrong done, as in: He regrets his mistakes. Remorse describes deep regret, involving anguish or guilt and self-reproach or repentance. Remorse is felt by someone for a sin or wrong they have committed. So: He felt remorse for lying to the teacher. Remorse is from the Latin remordere ‘to bite again’ – as remorse is a gnawing feeling of guilt from a past wrong. Regret is from the French regreter/regrater and originally was a synonym for regrate meaning ‘complaint, lament’.

The way I see it, Remorse expands upon regret to encompass personal guilt for what one might regret.   So it is not that Regina has no regrets, because she has matured beyond it, to the point of feeling only remorse.  That seemed to be what the person was implying I thought.

I look at how Regina felt to be that Henry was worth whatever pain she suffered, so she doesn’t regret any of it.  Sort of like Grumpy, or if you’ve ever seen Cars II, Tow Mater likes his dents.  All that pain also meant good experiences so no, he has no regrets.

So I don’t think Regina lacking regrets means she has moved on to remorse and accepted her personal guilt for her actions.  I doubt she even feels it about Henry Sr., but maybe.  It was a bit ambiguous.  The fact is,   her speech in the caves at the fail safe  may have indicated some conscience stirring,  but she also was concerned with how others saw her.  So I think she is still very much motivated by her own concerns.  After all the last time we saw her asked to speak of regrets it was that she did not cause more pain.

At Henry Sr.’s grave, Regina thanks him but he is dead.  So I don’t think appreciation of his sacrifice constitutes remorse that she took his life.  There’s no I’m sorry said, no wish expressed that he could be there in her life and that she’d listened and found another way.  She’s appreciative because now she has what she wants (she thinks).  She thinks she’s “won”.  Despite this sort of being about doing what was best for Henry, keeping him despite knowing the risk that the savior would come to find her child, I see it as Regina refusing to back down.   She’d bonded with Henry and he’s her child, and no one is taking that from her.   She keeps up with that line of thought, protecting what is hers.

Yet at the same time, what happens when it comes to sharing Henry’s love with others? We see years later she struggles greatly with this.  She has learned a lot in NL, but we’ll have to see if it is enough long-term to share Henry with Emma and the Charmings, the Stilskins.

She did not change her mind because she knew Pan was out there, because she knew she had to save Henry from a bad fate.   If they’d written it that way, well she would have looked very heroic but that isn’t what they did.

So it came off a bit ambiguous to me.  She knew she felt conflicted about who Henry really was, and so she took a potion to forget it rather than accept and let go her anger at Snow.  She held onto her vendettas, so it could come off like she was not wanting to back down to Rumple’s game.  She would play it and beat him at it.  That’s not to say she didn’t try to love Henry too, but as we saw with Owen (so glad they name checked that rather than sweeping under rug completely), Regina is capable of forming a genuine attachment that is very unhealthy for the person she feels warmly towards.

So one last set of thoughts about that linked post.  The writer brought up Snow being selfish with her Echo Cave confession.  First, Snow  had to say something she would never otherwise reveal.  So let’s not forget the context of Snow expressing this very private emotion.

Snow was not “selfish” in the way of being someone who never thinks of others (like Regina often is).  Snow listened with great empathy to Emma when Emma talked of her experience having no mother.  Snow probably does have remorse over that, except to the extent, it really wasn’t something within her control.  Why should she regret saving her child’s life? This episode clarified it was either wardrobe or death pretty much as the Queen’s guards were there to kill the Savior.   Regina confirms she’ll try to kill the savior on her to do list in the scene this episode with Rumple.  After the curse is cast, of course, that is when killing the savior would break the curse but Gold didn’t tell Regina that until later on.  That was why Regina needed Jefferson to get the curse-sleep apple, if you recall.

So anyway, Snow and Emma have things they regret, but it doesn’t mean they are selfish and not quite to the point of feeling guilt and empathy over the pain they caused (however inadvertently) from the choices they made.    They were both in a rock and a hard place, something Regina actually was not when she decided to cast the curse.  She felt as though she were, but everyone from her own father, to Maleficient told her that was not a real solution.   Then she found out they were right, and that was what motivated her to get a child, and it is every bit as “selfish” in the same sense as MM speaking to wanting another child to raise to have that experience.  Except MM isn’t trying to just fill a void in her life, to get an experience she wants to have–she also has a lot of love to give like most normal people, she could easily love another child AND Emma.  She’s not just wanting the child to fulfill her needs, as we’ve seen with Emma, she is the type of mother who would put her child first and has for Emma before.

What happened in NL though is Emma pushed Snow away as a mother.  So no one really goes into how that might have hurt Snow.  We’re all waxing on about Emma, even though these ladies are the same age!  Snow has to be more mature as she’s the mother, and she tries.  She doesn’t tell her sob story to Emma.  She could have, but she doesn’t. She just listens and tries to reassure Emma.  Yet her confidence weakens as she realizes she doesn’t know how to comfort Emma.

So by the time they get to the cave, Snow’s secret is being said from a place of honesty. Emma doesn’t see her as a mother, and she didn’t get to be one, and she wants to be one.  So let’s not act like that’s Snow suddenly discarding Emma at all because she wasn’t.  Let’s not forget  the first time she was in a rock /hard place to choose Charming or Emma, she was going to pick daughter.  She would have gone in the cabinet to the new world, pregnant and alone.  She was willing to do that, but Emma came early and forced the decision we saw.   Yes, Snow insisted the put the baby in, but she believed if they didn’t it would be worse (and she was right).

Anyway, Snow did what she could and what she feels regret is that it turned out that way, just as is true for Emma.  That they have regrets doesn’t make them selfish, doesn’t mean they don’t feel remorse for some things (Emma might for stealing).   These are not mutually exclusive concepts.

All we really know is, Regina’s regrets/remorse, whatever you want to term it, mattered very little to her versus the love she has for Henry.  I do think she loves him, and with all she has, but what we have yet to see is whether she has yet refined that concept of love to something less possessive and more truly in line with what is best for him.  (Because raising him in that town was not it!).

 

“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

[storyteller]

We have to be clear that when Regina said she had no regret for the horrors, it was because with out the horrors there would be no Henry in life to do right by and be believed in and have her heart opened if only a crack. We must also remember that letting go of the past is part of her redemptive arc. Her admission can be taken as a sign that she is letting go of the past and if we have a think she has played a part in reuniting Ariel and Eric, Wendy and her brothers and Henry with herself and the rest of the family.  Add to that the fact that some SB residents are happy to be out of the Enchanted Forest (i.e. Ruby and Whale and the Dwarf brothers w/ the exception of Grumpy). The reservoir of goodwill and willingness to forgive might just be building on the other side of the scale.  The reconciliation will come when the stars align and while they are not in conjunction they are a sight closer together.

Custodian of Graham's darts, Rumple's spindle and Robin's quiver

[RumplesGirl]

We have to be clear that when Regina said she had no regret for the horrors, it was because with out the horrors there would be no Henry in life to do right by and be believed in and have her heart opened if only a crack

I get *why* she doesn’t have regret. Because if she had not done X she would not have Y. This is why we’re talking about remorse. Even if she says “I’d do it all over again because it got me Henry” she needs to be able to say “though I feel really bad about the hurt”

If she has no remorse for the things she has done, then I think she’s fallen of Redemption Road.

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

[Slurpeez]

“I did cast a Curse that devastated an entire population. I have tortured and murdered. I’ve done some terrible things. I should be overflowing with regret, but…I’m not. Because it got me my son.” She’s very “end justifies the means,” but her means were about as mean as you can get, and can she really admit to herself and accept how truly horrible many of her actions have been? I think if she could admit and accept that, then she would have some regret.

The way I read it is that she acknowledges the sins she’s committed but her heart is now full of love for Henry. She sees her errors, but she can’t do anything much now about it except fight to get back her son. He’s all she has. She can’t afford to wallow right now. She’s a mama bear on a mission. She told Tink that she finally got something right with Henry, which means she recognizes all of her other past actions were things she got wrong. Sure, she could retreat into deep depression over all the atrocities she’s committed and live with a huge sense of guilt, but that’s not going to get her son back. So, in this case, I was actually glad to see Regina’s  tenacity and refusal to fall victim to PP’s mind-tricks. Not going to work on Regina. I think the best way forward for Regina would actually be just to move on. She’s already done her part for everybody else in SB by being willing to sacrifice her life to save the town. Sure, it was her own craziness in wanting Henry all for herself which drove her to retrieve the fail-safe in the first place, but at least she was willing to atone by sacrificing herself so that Henry wouldn’t have to be alone. And in this particular instance, I don’t think Regina regressed. I think she just did what needed to be done so that she, Emma and Snow survived to save Henry.

"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

[RumplesGirl]

She can’t afford to wallow right now. She’s a mama bear on a mission.

That’s a good point. I just hope that when we get back home, she doesn’t go all EQ again and it’s back to square one because she has made progress this season and I’d like to see that continue. But if going back to SB means her trying to kill the Charmings, be possessive over Henry, and seek power at all costs then it’ll be Cora all over again.

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

[Slurpeez]

I just hope that when we get back home, she doesn’t go all EQ again and it’s back to square one because she has made progress this season and I’d like to see that continue. But if going back to SB means her trying to kill the Charmings, be possessive over Henry, and seek power at all costs then it’ll be Cora all over again.

I think we all hope that Regina finds her redemption. I think the promo for 3×10 might just be playing up the “old rivalries” resurge thing for the sake of selling it. I don’t actually think Regina is going to go all bats$!t crazy on the Charmings again though she probably will do to Felix and Peter Pan if she gets the chance. Also, remember that spoiler about Regina possibly saying goodbye to Henry and hugging Emma in 3×11? Sounds like Regina is going on some mission, possibly to combat whatever crazy secondary curse that Peter Pan might’ve unleashed for the second half of S3. I think Regina is finally finding her redemption, and then we know Robin Hood is about to enter the picture again. So, I’m thinking things are finally looking up for Regina in terms of her getting a happy ending.

"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

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