Rumple & Regina

[Slurpeez]

There are several similarities between Rumple and Regina. The first is how Rumple warned Prince Charming in episode 17 to prevent Snow White from tarnishing her heart by killing the EQ. That is very similar to the scene in episode 8 Desperate Souls when Rumple became as dark as the Zoso, whose life he took with the blade.

Rumples: You better be quick, because if she kills the queen, she becomes as evil as the woman whose life she takes.
Prince Charming: She could never become that evil.
Rumples: Evil isn’t born, dearie, it’s made! If Snow starts down that road, you’ll never get her back.

The second commonality is that both Regina and Rumple confided to David/Prince Charming how evil isn’t born, it’s made. We know that Rumple wasn’t always evil and that he was simply a desperate soul trying to protect his son from inscription into a futile war. We have yet to see Regina’s back-story, but in episode 18, we're going to find out that she hasn't always been evil either. Instead, there was something that set her on the path of evil, and that it may tie back to her mother's influence. I wonder if Regina took the life of her mother, who is supposed evil, and thus become like the woman whose life she took (as Rumple warned Snow White would do if she killed the EQ).

In another segment from episode 17, we saw Regina said “evil isn’t born, it’s made” to David. I wonder if that will eventually help trigger David’s memories of FTL when Rumple said the same thing. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for David to figure it out, but sadly, he didn’t.

David: [Snow’s] a good person. I know her.
Regina: Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just want to. Everyone has a dark side, David.
David: Sure, but having a dark side and doing something so evil, that’s a different thing. That’s not what she is.
Regina: Perhaps, but I always believe that evil isn’t born, it’s made.
Regina: [smirks] Well, if she didn’t do it, then who did? … Evil doesn’t always look evil. Sometimes it’s staring right at us, and we don’t even realize it.

Both Regina and Rumple were good people initially who ended up on the path of evil. For Rumple though, he only killed the Dark One as an act of desperation to save his son, so perhaps he will find redemption in the form of loving Belle. With Regards to Regina, I have a feeling she may have started down the path of evil for less honorable reasons than did Rumple. We’ll have to wait to find out more what caused Regina to embark down that path to ultimately see if she can be redeemed.

[hjbau]

I don’t accept that Rumpel wasn’t evil before he became the Dark One. We just haven’t seen enough. I agree that evil isn’t born, but is made, but i still that that Rumpel was more evil before then the queen will seem before whatever happened to her. I do think that it is likely Regina killed her mother.

[midnight dreary]

@hjbau wrote:

I don’t accept that Rumpel wasn’t evil before he became the Dark One. We just haven’t seen enough. I agree that evil isn’t born, but is made, but i still that that Rumpel was more evil before then the queen will seem before whatever happened to her. I do think that it is likely Regina killed her mother.

Why do you think Rumpel was evil before he became the Dark One? I know there’s still a lot to learn about him, but as far as the origins of his evil, I’m pretty sure it began when he became the Dark One. We have to remember that most of these characters started out as humans. And yes, humans do horrible things, but I doubt Rumpel did anything that terrible before he became the Dark One. He was poor, desperate and in his own words a “coward.” In the OUAT, evil is defined as something unspeakably horrible or violent, and to be honest, I don’t think pre-Dark One Rumpel fits that definition. Even during the war, Rumpel couldn’t have been evil because he ran away from warfare. So, he didn’t even get to kill anyone.

[hjbau]

It just seems like he had already became a bad person by that point. He was cowardly during the war and ran. And he decided to kill the dark one on the word of some man he had met for five minutes. He burned that castle down just so that he could gain power. I know that people say that is because he was trying to save his son, but Bae was willing to go and fight so i don’t really accept that.

And also while we don’t know for certain, it was my impression that Rumpel may have done something to Bae’s mother, killed her, or he may have simple stole Bae from his mother. We don’t know. There was just nothing about Rumpel that was oh this is a good guy and a lot that was this is not a good guy, in my opinion.

[midnight dreary]

I don’t really view Rumpel abandoning the war as am act of cowardice. The Ogre wars had been raging for decades and had claimed many innocent lives. To be honest, I think Rumpel did the right thing in fleeing. Why remain in a war that’s claiming the lives of so many people? And speaking to you as the sister of a man who’s been sent into combat on numerous occasions, I sympathize with Rumpel’s decision. Most people have no idea about the truly shocking horrors that war brings. Killing, torturing, always being on the run, always fearing for your life…it’s not something that most people can fully comprehend. We’ve been brought up to believe that if we abondon a war (no matter how dumb it is) that we’re cowards. This isn’t always the case. The Ogre wars had gotten so bad that innocent children were being recruited to fight in die in it. Why wouldn’t Rumpel run away from that? I would. These wars are the Fairytale land equivilent of World War II.

Rumpel has nothing to be ashamed of.

[hjbau]

Like i said we will see. It really depends on the situation and i don’t know enough about it to make that call. All i am saying is that Rumpel just doesn’t come off as a sympathetic character even before he was the Dark One. He was actually more sympathetic in Skin Deep then he was in Desperate Souls, in my opinion. And if he killed his wife, if he stole Bae from her, which we don’t know, then that is a whole different thing. And we don’t know how Rumpel ran. If he just slipped away at night and left the wars or if he abandoned his fellow soldiers when he could have done something to help save them. We just don’t know.

[Slurpeez]

@ hjbau: You’re right in saying we don’t know enough about Rumple’s back-story before he became the dark one to know his true human character for certain (I think we’ll get more of that in episode 19, The Return). Based on a few things though, I think human Rumple was innocent of a crime like murder. He was too much a coward to fight in a war, let alone kill his own wife. In episode 8, the duke’s guard said Rumple’s wife couldn’t stand the sight of him for being a coward, and the implication is that she left her husband for another man. When Bae questioned his father, he said she was dead, but he said it mournfully, like his heart had been shattered. Also, the guard taunted that Bae was probably not his true son, because unlike Rumple, he wasn’t a coward and he even wanted to fight. In ep. 12, Rumple said to Belle that he lost both of them, though he didn’t say how. I have a feeling that he mourns his loses, and that he didn’t murder them. In fact, I think he’d do anything to get them back.

"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

[hjbau]

I don`t know. We know thw queen killed her father and Graham and she regretted both deaths so i am not sure that the fact that Rumpel regrets the death proves anything. Anyways that is not how i read that scene with his son where he says the mother is dead. I read hesitation there from Rumpel as if he was hiding something. That was the scene that made me wonder if he killed his wife. Like maybe he found out she was with someone else and killed her or killed her for leaving him and that leaves the posssibility that Bae is not really Rumpel`s son. We are going to get more information in The Return though it may not be about the back story. We will see.

[killianhookfan]

I have to come to Rumple’s defense here (as silly as that sounds since he’s a fictional character!). While we don’t have all of his backstory yet, from what we have seem so far I get that Rumple was only a “Desparate Soul” who was doing everything he could to protect his son, the only thing he felt that he had left in his life. I just went back and watched clips from Desparate Souls. First, Rumple was so scared of the Dark One that he told that Dark One (disguised as a man at this point) that he would be too terrified of him to steal the dagger and control him. So when the old man tells him then he should take the power from the Dark One you have to remember what Rumple saw the Dark One do – he basically acted like a satanic stun gun to the parents of the little girl the soldiers took to fight in the Ogre Wars, and this was right after they had LOWERED the age of the children they were taking to fight in the Ogre War AGAIN. So when Rumple is talking to Bae about what would happen if he steals the dagger and kills the Dark One he says that he would then have the Dark One’s powers but that he could use the power for good instead of evil – and that he would not only save Bae from fighting in the Ogre Wars but he would free ALL the children who were currently fighting in the Ogre Wars.

Yes, he burns the palace to get the knife but he does this because he views the palace as being responsible for sending children to die in the Ogre Wars, so he feels that what he is doing is for the greater good. Then when he kills the Dark One – he is horrified when he discovered that he hasn’t killed some evil “monster” but was tricked into killing a human being and was tricked because being the Dark One is a curse that he is now stuck with. You can see when he is beginning to morph into the Dark One that he is terrified because of what is happening to him. This clearly is NOT what he was expecting and I believe he regretted it as soon as he did it but it was too late.

One other thing I noticed – When Bae asked his father is it was true that he ran from the Ogre Wars, Rumple gets very quiet and reflective and says in a whisper “I had no choice.” This leads me to believe that perhaps he wasn’t necessarily a coward who ran but maybe he to leave the Ogre Wars because Bae mother abandoned him. It’s possible that Rumple didn’t want Bae to know that his mother abandoned him so he pretended to be a coward who ran and went along with the coward story to make people think it was really HIM who she abandoned. By telling Bae that his mother was dead he wouldn’t have to grow up with the burden of knowing that his mother abandoned him. Over time Rumple would have become the town outcast because of his reputation but I think that is something he would have been willing to do.

And while Rumple is clearly Darker now, I still think there is a big difference between Rumple and the Dark One before him. Rumple makes deals with people and always warns them that all magic comes with a price BEFORE he makes the deal The Dark One simply used his power to hurt people and exert control. Rumple is clearly out for himself but he only gives people what they want – even if he knows it will cost them dearly. I think that ultimaley Rumple’s goal is still to use his power for good – it’s just a long and complicated road to get to that good.

[hjbau]

I think the original Dark One was being controlled by whomever had the knife so he seems less responsible then Rumpel who seems to be in control of his deals and is doing evil things just for his own reasoning and is in control. We didn’t see the original Dark One kill anyone except himself. I think that Desperate Souls is terribly written, but i don’t think that it seemed like that was the first time Rumpel killed someone. He too easily decided to kill the dark one and catch the castle on fire and he didn’t seem to hesitate when it came to it.

And i don’t know what is going on in the Ogre Wars. It may have been that they were going to be overrun and they really needed the soldiers. It may be that the something shady was happening by them taking the kids. And i don’t really get why they would take the 14 year old child and not instead take her parents, but that is one of the badly written issues, so maybe something shady was going on there. I just think that we live in a different time where sending a child to a war seems unthinkable, but children were sent off to do dangerous things all the time in the past. It is another thing that we don’t really have enough information. I think what we know is that Rumpel was generally considered a coward by most of the people and we know that Bae was willing to go to war and that it was Rumpel that wanted to run. And i am not saying that war is good, but i could see a time when it is fight or wait and get overrun and it may have been to that point. We don’t know.

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