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almost everyone agrees that the dark one is the worst ever. after all, they grew up fearing him. the evil queen is remembered as a good person by some until the dark one taught her to be magical.
so…
Rumpelstiltskin’s misdeeds:
1) killed Mila
2) turned a guy into a snail and stepped on him
3) killed his mute servant
4)killed these people who collected kids for the ogre wars
5) turned Gepeto’s parents into puppets
6)taught Cora to be bad
7)taught Regina to be badRegina’s misdeeds:
1) she killed her own father for revenge
2) killed a whole town because they didn’t tell her where snow was
3) killed her mother a few times (but we can’t blame her for that)
4) kidnapped Belle
5) controlled and then killed the original sheriff
6)tried to kill snow again and again
7) prepared a sleeping curse for EmmaOK this list is not complete. but who is worse? and who is more redeemable?
[adrotate group="5"]I think of Regina as worse because she blamed a little girl for everything. I personally don’t know how anyone could hate such a sweet kid! And also Rumple actually did things methodically and with reason. Regina’s reasons don’t actually make sense.
Regina has been shown doing more bad things, for less understandable reasons.
In addition to what Marty wrote above–
She has harmed and threatened if not outright ordered children killed several times.
She sent kids into the house of the Blind Witch so she could get the cursed apple.
There were kids in the village she had slaughtered. There were kids that she separated from their parents with the curse.
Even after her “fresh start” she was still evil.
She kidnapped Owen and killed his father.
She tried to kill people by sending them across the curse barrier (encouraging them to leave SB, when knowing about the effects).
She framed MM, and had expected that Katherine, a woman who thought of Regina as a friend, would be killed for that. Gold only had her kidnapped, which was not what she expected.
She tried to kill Henry’s relatives.
She tried to seduce her step-daughter’s husband, who at the time thought he was her “friend’s ” husband. It didn’t work, but she had tried.
She erased Henry’s memory.
She tried to activate her fail-safe to wipe out the entire town. She was stopped by GOAT who actually did it.Against all that bad, we have only a little “good”. She unblocked the well when Gold blocked it. She tried to help Emma to get the True Love Potion to save Henry. She almost sacrificed herself to save the town from the fail-safe. She loves Henry. She once saved Snow White’s life at risk to her own. She stopped the Danielstein monster. She didn’t crush Snow’s heart when tempted by Snow’s pleas to kill her.
I’m not sure she has earned her redemption yet but we’ll see. Most of what drove her was madness from the loss of True love, but at some point it seemed like it was just a habit to crush others to get her way.
“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
Both of them are ruthless when they want something. I dunno that you can really list each of their crimes and directly compare them to get a winner (or should that be loser). Each of them have their own justifications and motivations for the evil they do.
Regina is more trigger happy and needs to be held accountable for that, but would she have committed all of those deeds if not for Rumple manipulating her into turning dark in the first place? It’s a complicated web of evil.
I will say this though…Regina’s list of crimes includes a significant amount of child harming/killing, (which is why I just can’t accept that she’s suitable mother material), but Rumple used his powers to save a significant amount of children from dying in a war.
Regina plotted the murder of Snow’s father. She didn’t kill him directly, but she manipulated the genie into doing it. But she’s still responsible for his death. And she played the part of the grieving widow so well, until she was alone and was like, my Revenge is almost complete.
I tried to work out which person had killed the most at one point. Cora and Regina both have “A whole village” on screen at this point, though, which is really hard to count; I put down 30 though I think that might be low in both cases.
At any rate, that gives Cora about 35 shown killings, Regina 38, and Rumple 13 (and I gave Rumple and Snow credit for Cora’s death–it was complicated–but not Regina since she didn’t intend it that time). Rumple’s also attempted 10 more times to kill someone (though I’m counting transformations and sleeping curses in this category), and Regina’s also got 10 attempts (though I think this may be low).
I also looked at whether these things happened pre or post curse, since I think that character development is important to factor in here. Cora’s the only person that Rumple has successfully killed post-curse; Regina’s killed Graham and Kurt since casting the curse. (Though she presumably killed Kurt about a week after killing her own father pre-curse…)
Rumple’s attempts post curse: Moe (don’t think he intended to kill him but easily could have), August (who he only let live because he might get Emma to break the curse), Regina (via wraith), Cora (with possible collateral damage of Emma & Snow), Smee (ratted but allowed to live), Hook, Keith (again, don’t think he intended to kill him, but cane of feels…), and possibly Henry (I think he was toying with the idea but wouldn’t have let Henry die in the end). Of these, he definitely intended for Regina, Hook, and Cora to perish; the others were more complicated (as most things are with him). (And with Hook and Regina, as with August and Smee, I think it’s really really important that he -chose- to let them live ultimately.)
Regina’s post-curse attempts include Emma & Henry (the latter accidental) via the sleeping curse; Snow via sending her outside the town line in S1 and taking her heart in S2; Kathryn (which is an interesting case where Rumple thwarted her–choosing to let Kathryn live and even saying that killing was easier in the EF); David in their battle in 201; and Cora (and collateral damage of Emma & Snow) at the well (though her choice to turn it off mitigates this slightly). Could possibly include the whole town when she gets the beans and the failsafe, and the random townspeople she’s happy to fling magic at when she tries to get Henry in 202.
Though killing people isn’t necessarily the worst of either of their crimes (I think that Rumple’s manipulations to get Regina to cast the curse were particularly wicked at times, though what Cora did to Regina is, in the balance, worse to my mind, and Regina’s decisions to tear apart families like Hansel & Gretel, Kurt & Owen, and Jefferson & Grace, stand out as particularly awful on her part), it seems like a relevant factor.
Honestly, in the balance of things, I find Regina to be more evil because her motivations feel more petty to me and she isn’t being controlled by an evil curse. However, I can totally see the argument that Rumple is partially responsible for turning her to evil (I still give Cora more blame here–Rumple several times offered Regina a choice, while Cora never did), and thus more evil himself. She also shows more disregard for the feelings of anyone who isn’t her or Henry than we’ve seen from Rumple (most of the time–and the three times post-curse I most wanted to shake some sense into him for just throwing everyone else under the bus, he was legitimately suffering fresh grief–losing Belle to the line, losing her to Lacey, and then losing Bae altogether), who even expressed some sympathy to Regina for Cora’s death (as ineffective as it was coming from him).
But they’re such different people that although it’s natural to want to draw comparisons between them, weighing their evilness is tricky tricky stuff. Looking at how they’ve hurt each other isn’t even easy (yeah, I did a chart for that, too; I’m crazy). As I stated before, Rumple manipulated Regina rather cruelly to get her to cast the curse (fake-reviving Daniel, nudging her to embrace her evil queen identity–mitigated in my mind by the fact she had just killed an entire village, which he pointed out, protecting Snow from her and then goading her about not getting an invite to the wedding, requiring her to kill the thing she loves most to get the curse to work, and so on…), but Regina managed to use Belle in pretty cruel ways to get back at him (and as a Belle/Rumbelle fan, I find some of that hard to forgive). I tend to think that losing Belle is what made Rumple go a little insane as it got closer to the curse, and losing her again certainly didn’t help him be his best self in Storybrooke.
In the end, though both are motivated by love and have a goal of being with the people they love, they do have different approaches–Regina’s more of a hothead who does things as inspiration hits, while Gold manipulates people over the long term and is a lot cooler about it until someone hits his emotional triggers. Regina also tends to assume that everyone -should- love her while Gold is convinced nobody should love him, which means that Regina operates from the assumption that what she wants is right while Gold operates from the perspective that convincing people they’re getting what they want will get him what he wants. (The logic being that since Regina believes everyone should want her happy, it doesn’t matter if they are as long as she is, while Gold believes he can get his way by figuring out what other people think will make them happy as he doesn’t expect them to care if he’s happy or not, save for his ability to destroy them.)
Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing
I think they are two incredibly complicated individuals who have managed to rationalize their actions and I’m not sure if a list of their worst deeds can say “who is worse” because they are both flawed in different ways. Rumple wanted to not be a coward so he collected power and manipulated people, Regina wanted revenge and power so she terrorized and murdered people.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Oh my goodness, must we go through this yet again! Every character on this show is not perfect, but really if you ask me, it all leads back to the Blue Fairy who’s the wickedest of them all, and under her is Rumpelstilskin, under him is Cora, and under her is Regina, who is the least wicked.
The reason I say this, is because if the Blue Fairy had minded her own business, and not help send Bae to another world, then Rumple wouldn’t have manipulated countless lives (Yes, he manipulated, killed, destroyed for over three centuries, way more than Regina, count that in the record).
We have no idea how Cora’s life could have been, Rumple more than likely manipulated it for her family to be poor, so he could seek her, hence when he told Regina: “There’s a lot of history between me and your family, past and future.” Cora could have been filthy rich had Rumple not meddled into her family’s business, and there’s proof he’s stolen a family’s wealth before, wanting to bankrupt King George. Cora could have been rich, still married Henry, probably truly fell in love with him, and loved Regina, who could have married Daniel, but that was not the case, due to Rumple’s meddling.
Cora, having ripped her heart out, in all honesty, cannot be blamed for the murders she committed. It’s exactly when people are under hypnosis, they don’t know what they did till they wake up. Yeah, she ripped it out herself, but remember, she was just a girl who was hopelessly devoted to Rumple, just like so many of you here, who wish to name all Regina’s wrongdoings, but give limited on Rumples. The centuries of murdering and lying just to get to this point, even though we haven’t seen, people, we know he did it!!! He was the Dark One! I love Rumple as much as the next person, but we must tell the truth! Cora was redeemed when Regina placed her heart back, because that’s when love entered her again, which is why her heart was not black as coal, because she was still pure in heart.
Now onto my favorite character Regina, yes she’s made mistakes, but who hasn’t. At least, she’s working hard to redeem herself! Let’s go to the very beginning, Regina was the most pure hearted person ever shown on the show, even more pure than Snow, because Snow started out selfish in the beginning. Regina fell in love with childhood friend Daniel, stable boy. Then Cora (without her heart), put in motion a series of events, which led to Snow being rescued, and we know the story. Now, true indeed Snow did tell the secret, but it was on “good” intentions, still questioning on that, so even though Cora pulled the trigger in killing Daniel, Snow loaded the gun by telling her the secret. It’s just like when you’re dating the bad boy, and your baby sister squeals on you, getting you grounded, same scenario. Snow holds 50% of the blame, and Cora holds the other 50%. Regina took a downward spiral, being surrounded by the people who hurt and betrayed her, no one to turn to, except, Rumpel, who took those moments of misery, and pain, to install darkness and hate, and especially when RUMPLE, whale, and Hatter tricked Regina with the Daniel incident, when he could have brought Daniel back, and Regina could have been finally happy, but they took that from her, thus creating the Evil Queen finally. Yes, Regina did destroy lives, killed ONE village, and carried on about a decade of wickedness, compared to Rumples over THREE Centuries, c’mon people. Not to mention, she did not kill David when she could have, because I believe she saw a similar situation, Snow falling for shepherd turned prince, like she fell for stable boy Daniel. She didn’t even want to kill Snow, like she could have on numerous occasions, because ever since 2×20 Evil Queen, she couldn’t do it, so she’d rather make her suffer than kill her, because somewhere Regina still loves Snow, and Snow has proven she still loves Regina. Now as for the curse, Rumple created it, he needed to make a monster out of Regina, so she can cast it, by granting Snow and David that immune curse, which they will never receive again, because he doesn’t need their help anymore. Now as for Henry Sr., who seemed to be a worthless father who didn’t stand up for Cora, I would have been satisfied with seeing him die to Cora by defending Regina, rather than standing on the side lines. So killing him should have been easy. Now through the curse, Regina made sure everyone was satisfied, with good jobs, earnest living, a fresh take on life, because everybody wasn’t pampered princess like Snow, she took away both good and bad memories, some overlapped the other, and granted new lives, fresh starts, like Ruby said in 2×11, despite why Regina did it, she actually blessed them with a chance to start fresh in a new world, with technology and indoor plumbing, even Granny said cooking here is better, so Regina actually instead of cursing them, she blessed them. She separated Owen because again, she was desperate for love, and saw that Owen wanted to stay, and decided to remove the problem, but she saw her mistake, and had to kill Kurt who witnessed everything. Now, she was a true mother to Henry, and will always be his FIRST mother, and true she teamed up with Cora, but what choice did she really have, because Cora would have went through with her plans anyway. But she teamed up with Cora, after the fact that the Charmings made her a pariah in her own town, and they realized their mistake a moment too late, and Snow added flames to the fire when she told her that “Emma doesn’t have to run nothing by you.” I would have teamed up with Cora after that, and lets not forget she had to kill Daniel herself, and save Emma and Snow from the well. Let’s not forget the fact Snow is 100% responsible for killing Cora! Imagine had she just gave Cora’s heart back, Cora wouldn’t care about power, because in those last seconds she was redeemed, and truly loved her daughter. Regina would have enacted the self destruct, only after she had nothing else in Storybrooke, but her son, but no, she was willing to sacrifice her life for her son, and to make up for the mistakes she’s made. In that moment, she wasn’t the Evil Queen, she was just The Queen, who was determined not to let her family perish. David hit a good spot with her, when he told her that they were still family.
So in conclusion of this very long note, I say if you’re going to tell either character’s tragic tale, please give them some honor, and get it correct. But as far as who’s the more evil, I really don’t feel like getting in the midst of war with all of you Dearies, but as dedicated Evil Regals, we must defend our Queen. We can go on for days till Season 3 on page 14 on who’s more evil, but I just want everyone to take into account, Regina’s near 40 years (reign as Evil Queen, 12 in Enchanted Forest, 28 in Storybrooke), and Rumples 300+ years (reign as Dark One, 300+ in Enchanted Forest and Storybrooke). Let the numbers speak for themselves, but if you really want to place the most hate and evil on, it’s the Blue Fairy! Have a great day!"If you go as far as you can see...you will then see enough to go even further." - Finn Balor
@Keb wrote:
I tried to work out which person had killed the most at one point. Cora and Regina both have “A whole village” on screen at this point, though, which is really hard to count; I put down 30 though I think that might be low in both cases.
There are at least 50 bodies in the scene where Snow and Regina come across the dead villagers. Might be a couple more than that, it’s hard to tell with everyone lying all over each other, but I definitely counted at least 50.
Honestly, in the balance of things, I find Regina to be more evil because her motivations feel more petty to me and she isn’t being controlled by an evil curse.
I do admit that I find it easier to justify Rumple’s misdeeds because “the Dark One made him do it.” One could argue that it was his choice to become the Dark One, just like it was Regina’s choice to turn to magic, and that’s a fair enough point. But I see Regina’s magic addiction and Rumple’s Dark One curse as being different, and she has more control over her actions than he does. The Dark One curse is a parasite that crawled into his blood and biologically altered him and overtook his soul, and his only way to escape it is to die. Regina on the other hand, has had the free will to make good choices, but has consistently made bad ones instead.
Regina also tends to assume that everyone -should- love her while Gold is convinced nobody should love him, which means that Regina operates from the assumption that what she wants is right while Gold operates from the perspective that convincing people they’re getting what they want will get him what he wants. (The logic being that since Regina believes everyone should want her happy, it doesn’t matter if they are as long as she is, while Gold believes he can get his way by figuring out what other people think will make them happy as he doesn’t expect them to care if he’s happy or not, save for his ability to destroy them.)
This is an excellent summation of their differing attitudes!
@WickedRegal wrote:
The reason I say this, is because if the Blue Fairy had minded her own business, and not help send Bae to another world, then Rumple wouldn’t have manipulated countless lives (Yes, he manipulated, killed, destroyed for over three centuries, way more than Regina, count that in the record).
Concerning Blue, I keep holding out hope that there’ll be a nefarious twist to her story. My current line of thinking is that she was working as an agent for PP.
Concerning Rumple, we haven’t seen what he did for all of those 300 years, so to automatically say that because he’s been around longer, he automatically has a much higher death count is just an assumption. Obviously, he did enough that he got a reputation, but his title and appearance also helped with the reputation.
What we do know is that he got his powers in the first place to stop a war and save countless people, and he did it. We know that he was willing to help whole communities be protected from the destruction of the Ogres, as long as they could pay the price, because that’s how he met Belle. Rumple may kill individuals as he sees fit, but when it comes to mass killing, from what we’ve seen, he used his power to prevent that sort of thing from happening. Regina on the other hand, used her power to have whole villages slain in cold blood because she was having a bad day.
We have no idea how Cora’s life could have been, Rumple more than likely manipulated it for her family to be poor, so he could seek her, hence when he told Regina: “There’s a lot of history between me and your family, past and future.” Cora could have been filthy rich had Rumple not meddled into her family’s business, and there’s proof he’s stolen a family’s wealth before, wanting to bankrupt King George. Cora could have been rich, still married Henry, probably truly fell in love with him, and loved Regina, who could have married Daniel, but that was not the case, due to Rumple’s meddling.
Again, this is an assumption. Sure, maybe it’ll turn out that he did play a role in the state of Cora’s family and poor status, but if so, we haven’t been shown evidence of it yet, and the topic of this thread is based on things we have actually seen each of them do.
Now onto my favorite character Regina, yes she’s made mistakes, but who hasn’t.
You won’t find a single Dearie anywhere who doesn’t think that Rumple has made all kinds of mistakes. Neither he or Regina are saints.
Now, true indeed Snow did tell the secret, but it was on “good” intentions, still questioning on that, so even though Cora pulled the trigger in killing Daniel, Snow loaded the gun by telling her the secret. It’s just like when you’re dating the bad boy, and your baby sister squeals on you, getting you grounded, same scenario. Snow holds 50% of the blame, and Cora holds the other 50%.
I’d personally say more like 99% Cora’s fault and 1% Snow’s unintentional fault.
Regina took a downward spiral, being surrounded by the people who hurt and betrayed her, no one to turn to, except, Rumpel,
She had her father. He may not have been assertive enough, but I’m sure that throughout her entire life, Regina knew he was there, wanting her to make the right choices. Moments before his death, he was still trying to convince her that it was possible. He was always there beside her, it was her choice to not listen to him.
who took those moments of misery, and pain, to install darkness and hate, and especially when RUMPLE, whale, and Hatter tricked Regina with the Daniel incident, when he could have brought Daniel back, and Regina could have been finally happy,
Rumple can’t bring back the dead. I don’t dispute the fact that he was diabolical in his manipulations of her at that time in her life, and yes, he totally used her misery, but he couldn’t have brought Daniel back for her, even if he’d wanted to. Dead is dead.
Not to mention, she did not kill David when she could have, because I believe she saw a similar situation, Snow falling for shepherd turned prince, like she fell for stable boy Daniel. She didn’t even want to kill Snow, like she could have on numerous occasions, because ever since 2×20 Evil Queen, she couldn’t do it, so she’d rather make her suffer than kill her, because somewhere Regina still loves Snow, and Snow has proven she still loves Regina.
I do agree that Regina still has a remnant of the kind hearted person she used to be. It’s just that I think it’s buried way down deep, so that it’s been barely a faint glimmer ever since she went dark. At times we’ve seen it try to break through, but it always gets shoved back down again.
Now as for the curse, Rumple created it, he needed to make a monster out of Regina, so she can cast it, by granting Snow and David that immune curse, which they will never receive again, because he doesn’t need their help anymore.
Rumple undoubtedly manipulated that situation to get Regina to cast the Curse, but we don’t know for sure where the Curse came from yet, or if he actually created it himself.
Now through the curse, Regina made sure everyone was satisfied, with good jobs, earnest living, a fresh take on life, because everybody wasn’t pampered princess like Snow, she took away both good and bad memories, some overlapped the other, and granted new lives, fresh starts, like Ruby said in 2×11, despite why Regina did it, she actually blessed them with a chance to start fresh in a new world, with technology and indoor plumbing, even Granny said cooking here is better, so Regina actually instead of cursing them, she blessed them.
While I wouldn’t go so far personally as to use the word “blessed” (because I think it’s pretty horrible that none of them really knew their true selves, so I just can’t classify their existence as being a “blessing”), for sure, they weren’t all completely destitute, and yes, people like Red could certainly see some perks to the situation. What I take away from that is actually feeling sad for Regina, because all of that evil she did, with the motivation to destroy everyone’s lives…she didn’t really get that in the end at all, so were all the evil deeds and suffering really worth it?
She separated Owen because again, she was desperate for love, and saw that Owen wanted to stay, and decided to remove the problem, but she saw her mistake, and had to kill Kurt who witnessed everything.
She didn’t have to kill him, she could have locked him up in the hospital basement, though granted, that may have still been a fate as bad as death.
Now, she was a true mother to Henry, and will always be his FIRST mother, and true she teamed up with Cora, but what choice did she really have, because Cora would have went through with her plans anyway. But she teamed up with Cora, after the fact that the Charmings made her a pariah in her own town, and they realized their mistake a moment too late, and Snow added flames to the fire when she told her that “Emma doesn’t have to run nothing by you.” I would have teamed up with Cora after that, and lets not forget she had to kill Daniel herself, and save Emma and Snow from the well.
I didn’t always agree with the way people treated Regina during S2. As a general rule, I can see the Charmings’ point of view when it comes to her, but Snow’s line about not having to run anything by Regina when major decisions about Henry were involved was pushing it, even for me. I may not think Regina is a particularly good mother, I may not think she actually has any legal claim to parental rights because the whole “adoption” was dodgy, but she has been in the role of Henry’s mother for the majority of his life, and the other characters should be mindful of that.
Let’s not forget the fact Snow is 100% responsible for killing Cora!
I lay at least 50% of the blame for Cora’s death at Rumple’s feet. If he hadn’t have shown Snow the candle, Cora wouldn’t have died, (at least not in the way she did).
Regina would have enacted the self destruct, only after she had nothing else in Storybrooke, but her son, but no, she was willing to sacrifice her life for her son, and to make up for the mistakes she’s made. In that moment, she wasn’t the Evil Queen, she was just The Queen, who was determined not to let her family perish.
Her line about wanting to die as Regina was heartbreaking, and that whole scenario was a moment of clarity she desperately needed.
So in conclusion of this very long note, I say if you’re going to tell either character’s tragic tale, please give them some honor, and get it correct. But as far as who’s the more evil, I really don’t feel like getting in the midst of war with all of you Dearies, but as dedicated Evil Regals, we must defend our Queen.
Nothing wrong with some healthy, respectful debate, and I’d expect EvilRegals to present their point of view on this topic.
Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait. Cora is SO not blameless, and nor is her evilness Rumple’s fault. Why should we assume that he put her in poverty? Or manipulated her to love him so she’d rip out her heart? Or had no control over her actions after she removed it? Whoa.
Yes, I’m certain that Rumple’s hurt more people over the course of his life than we’ve seen on screen. My list of murders/attempteds is limited ONLY to what’s been shown on the screen. But that doesn’t mean that we should assume something for which there is absolutely no evidence. If he’d twisted things to get Cora where she was, several things about 216 don’t make any sense at all.
First of all, it makes Xavier and Eva blameless, and they shouldn’t be. They were jerks, and they didn’t need Rumple’s help to get that way. (I’m still hoping we’ll see more of the Eva/Cora relationship over time.)
Secondly, Cora surprised Rumple several times in their initial meeting, and he didn’t even know her name yet. All he had to go on was that her daughter would be quite important, and the circumstances she was immediately in–and he didn’t seem to care who the father of that daughter was, since he was perfectly happy for it to be himself a while later when she suggested it to his mind.
Thirdly, Rumple wound up screwing himself out of the deal because when Cora suggested love and running away together, he fell for it FAST. You notice it’s not him wanting to break up, it’s her ultimately choosing–and she HAD to do that before she took out her heart because taking out her heart was MAKING that choice–power over his love. She might well have been emotionally torn between her goals and loving Rumple, but she made that choice–and he was crushed by it. He totally did NOT force her to make that choice–he wanted her to choose him, though initially he didn’t think she could or would–and seemed outright shocked that she was capable of such an act.
And while, again, I expect to see more of what unfolded between them after that, she betrayed him in that moment in a way that makes me suspect they were never more than frenemies afterwards (much like his relationship in Storybrooke with Regina–he may well have taught her more or worked with her on occasion, but what little we’ve gotten about their relationship suggests love turned to hate pretty quickly). That means that every choice she made after that was likely outside of Rumple’s influence. Cora’s an independent operator. She chose to abuse Regina and Henry until the former sought out Rumple and the latter became a cowering shell of a man. She chose to kill Daniel (and had to get the info from Snow, so she wasn’t seeking Rumple’s help on this, either), and force Regina into marrying Leopold (and in the latter case, Regina ultimately decided to go through with that marriage on her own–Cora was through the looking glass by then, and all Rumple did was offer to teach her more magic, he didn’t force her to go back).
I’m not denying that Rumple’s done some terrible stuff, and that there’s certainly more terrible stuff we haven’t seen on screen. I do think that Regina is redeemable and that she was heavily manipulated by both Cora and Rumple at various points in her life–I just think that she made a lot of her own choices, too, and that matters. But to absolve Cora and blame her on Rumple? No. After 216 I don’t think we can do that at all.
Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing
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