OUAT 2.20 Regina - Failsafe 

"The Queen is dead".. Long live the Mental Maniacal Mommy lol.. or the mother who was a Mother!

Or ... the queen is dead ... long live the queen bitch .

It is sad, tragic, pathetic, and scary all at once. But we should also keep in mind that it is her own doing that she's in that situation.

Yup that is a normal

Lana Parillia stated that in trying to "wrap her head around" what made Regina tick, she decided to play Regina with some psychotic disassociation whenever around her mother-- he couldn't go after her mother so she went after Snow because she was the weaker of the two who wanted her. Her Magic mother (Cora) and father (Rumple) kept pushing, goading, mentally tormenting her wherein with that disassociation, she never fully held them responsible but went after those without magic to make herself more powerful. She could never go against Cora and Rumple magic to magic/power to power and yet here she really was in a mental catch 22 position. Had Cora lived she would have become the most sadistic Dark One imaginable and once again, Regina and now Henry would be prisoners. And yet with her non-Magic enemy (Snow) being the one to kill Cora, but used Regina to do it (which is even more sick, if you think about it) it's back on. Only when someone ELSE wanted Henry more than her or Emma did we find Regina willing to realize that they were all on the same page and that they HAD to work together. So in a way, Peter Pan saved ALL of them and forced Regina to live through her greatest fear--- life without Henry.. and getting him back when she broke the curse.

@@creativewriter3887 That's _exactly_ how I always read Regina in the show. She pursued Snow like a demented wolverine because Snow was a _safe target_ , while Cora is _dangerous_ , and her mother to boot, and in spite it all part of Regina loved Cora. She transferred her rage at Cora onto Snow, and this also let her hide her own power hunger from herself. Let's face it, she kept saying how much she hated being queen, but even after she had enough magic to simply leave at will, she stayed and usurped Leopold and Snow's throne. I'm sure she lied to herself about her own motives, but the fact is Regina wanted to be queen. REALLY be queen, that is, Queen Regnant, the ruler, rather than wife or stepmother of the ruler. Ironically, if she had realized it, Snow loved Regina so much that she's almost surely have been happy to let Regina run things anyway.

@@shermanlee4037 Hi! amazing analysis. It's nice to connect with other fans of the show. Yes. She never got it. In her row with Rumple, she decried not having Options and Rumple made it clear that the only option she had was to stay and simmer and train and succumb to the Darkness.. all in order for her to issue the dark curse. Regina was given only a bleak future wherein destroying everything around her was her only option. Rumple wanted her to lose everything and then issue the curse. And Cora wanted Regina to lose everything so that Regina would help her (Cora) become the Dark One. Had Regina excised herself of Rumple and Cora and actively pursued being included in the Royal Matters, things may have been different, but then again, we would not have had the story we got.

@@creativewriter3887 The thing is that, IMHO, Regina was lying to herself about her own motives on two levels. She wanted revenge on Cora and transferred that to Snow, that's how it started. But then, when he used magic for the first time, she discovered that she had inherited Cora's love of power _for its own sake_ . She admitted as much to Rumple, and that's how he tempted her into staying and studying magic with him.

@@creativewriter3887 But that love of power left her frustrated as Queen Consort, because Leopold was the ruler. I think she had started to crave being the ruler herself, not just the wife of the king or mother of the new queen regnant. So she arranged Leopold's murder, and put out the fake 'Snow murdered her father' story that pretty much nobody bought, and usurped the throne. Remember how mad she was that people preferred Snow as ruler to her? Eve Rumple was exasperated with her self-deception on that. "Maybe that's why they call you the 'evil queen'?" Notice that when Snow was just starting her rebellion, Regina offered to let her run away if she would just acknowledge Regina as the legit ruler. Regina wanted _power_ . She takes after Cora in many ways. She lied to herself about never wanting to be queen, but she was contemptuous of commoners, that even carried over into Season One in the modern world. At one point she almost lost her temper with Archie for speaking over-familiarly to his monarch...and of course Archie had no idea what set her off.

Henry knows his mom has gone wacked.

Does she even hear herself about she’s about to do?

Well, but remember that it is Regina's upbringing that has made Henry so good. So maybe she's not all that bad... And in any case Regina might be very possessive but still legally she should have the right to Henry. It's not like Emma is bad or anything but she didn't bring up Henry. So guess how much ever of a malevolent fruitcake Regina is she indeed is Henry's mother...

Oh no doubt Regina is one of his mothers, and even more, she somehow or other ended up raising him to be a hero. That, ironically, came between them later. It's an interesting question why Regina raised him in such a way that it practically guaranteed conflict between them as he got older (because the Curse guaranteed conflict, there's no way Henry could live happily under it, unless he himself was corrupted). She named Henry after the father she blood-sacrificed, and the lover Cora murdered, both good men (in their own ways). I think maybe she saw Henry as her redemption even back then.

It doesn't matter that Emma didn't bring up Henry, it doesn't matter that Regina did. It doesn't matter what the outside world's laws say on the matter, they don't apply in Storybrooke. What matters is that Regina, at this stage, is out of control and _dangerous_. Over time, if she was encouraged in this behavior, she would eventually probably even become a threat to Henry himself, as their conflicts escalated. As Henry got older, he'd either get more heroic, and that would make him and Regina enemies, or Regina would corrupt him, and to quote an old Disney special, 'the last thing a villain needs is another villain', they'd come into conflict just like Cora and Regina once did. Mommy's Little Villain would turn on her, or Mommy's Little Hero would turn on her, for different reasons but the same outcome. Getting stopped here was the best thing that ever happened to Regina, it didn't just save the town, it saved her and Henry.

@@shermanlee4037 Yeah. That part I do agree with you. Indeed that was the best thing that happened to Regina and all the others.

But one thing has to be considered, and that is that Regina wasn't a malevolent fruitcake since the start. She became one because of her experiences. So the conflict between Regina and Cora was somewhere because of the goodness within Regina. And while it could have been any of the outcomes you lay down, it could have been anything else as well because Regina was never a bad person from the inside (also quoting Disney 'Rotten to the core'). But yeah this is a very fragile probability because after all Regina had a darkness within her.

Regina is a monster. There's no use prettying it up or pretending. She's capable of changing and eventually does...but it was a close-run thing.

What parent didn't want to do that after they said something STUPID!! I think Regina figured that out by trying to be honest and then realizing how vile it sounded when it came out... So she wiped his memory... RESTART... of course her plan was to kill everyone after her toxic dose of Vitamin C.. Cora.

Lana played her with a cross between Alexis Carrington, Ann Wilson and Mommie Dearest Joan Crawford..

Yeah does she even hear the words she’s saying? She’s acting pretty entitled.

In my opinion yes, she does know what she is talking about after all she killed her on father to get what she wanted, she is crazy and sociopath, but she knows what she is doing@@anthonypena5046

@@anthonypena5046 Yeah, I think she heard the words, but at this point she doesn't care.

What makes her think getting rid of Emma, Snow, Charming, and Neal will make Henry love her and see her as a hero? That’s not a hero.

@@anthonypena5046 of course, that's not a hero. She is totally delusional, I don't think she cares if Henry sees her as a hero, she just wants to get what she wants and doesn't care. She will do whatever to get Henry and destroy the Charmings.

Regina at this point just lost her mother, who Snow manipulated I into killing. Regina, who had been trying to redeem herself (and was heading in the right direction until Cora sabotaged it), went off the deep end as a result.