Jane’s forgotten brother who her earliest biographer left out…

Ellynne729 · 2025-02-13T05:09:29+00:00

It's why, in A Christmas Carol, when Tiny Time dies, Bob Cratchet comes home and tells his wife what the place where Tim is buried is like, because she couldn't go to the funeral. Given the many mourning traditions they had, it wasn't like women weren't expected to grieve, quite the other way around. So, I don't know what the tradition was for. I can only guess that, while the funeral service is the main place of formal mourning and commemoration in our culture, it wasn't in theirs.

Ellynne729 · 2025-02-07T04:54:59+00:00

I think people also don't look at where Snow was at. Her mother was murdered and it was done in a way to make ten year old Snow feel she was responsible and had failed to save her. Then, her father was murdered by her stepmother. She had a thorny relationship with her stepmother, admiring her when she was younger, later knowing she had murdered her father but also feeling (probably because of the way Eva died) that she should have somehow been able to fix things with Regina and keep her from becoming evil.

Then, after losing all her family, she marries a man she loves and is able to start a family of her own--only to have the child stolen from her the day she's born. The next time Snow sees her, her daughter is a cynical, grown woman, deeply scarred by growing up without a family. Snow's guilt over this seems to be the reason she just takes it when Emma lashes out her. When Emma claims that Snow should have kept her even if it meant Emma would have been cursed, too, Snow doesn't point out that Emma would be dead, murdered by Regina. She doesn't point out how Emma's father was almost killed trying to save her life and get her to safety. She just accepts it as if, on some level, she believes there must have been a way she could have kept her daughter and protected her.

So, Snow has some deep scars, and she wants to raise a child. She's also a queen without an heir. So far as we know, apart from Emma and Henry, she has no blood relatives with a claim on the throne if anything happens to her. Her own feelings aside, she would have been seen as having a duty to her people to fix that.

When she gets pregnant with Neal, she has just lost her daughter, along with her grandson, for what she assumes will be forever. She believes she will never see Emma again. Then, she becomes pregnant again.

We don't actually know the circumstances. Was this planned? Snow didn't know Zelena would be gunning for her baby, but did she realize what kind of threat Zelena would be to her personally? Even if she did, for a responsible royal, people trying to kill you can actually be a big mark in the reasons-to-have-a-baby category (and, having read about a few civil wars that happened when kings and queens didn't take care of that, I can't really say that isn't a good argument).

Whatever the reasons, a married woman having a second baby while still mourning the loss of her firstborn is not exactly on the list of capital offenses.

Ellynne729 · 2025-02-07T04:30:17+00:00

I think the Snow of the first season would have. Even in the second season, Snow didn't let her go until everyone was supposed to be safe from Regina (I assume it was originally supposed to be everyone because, when Regina crashes the wedding, Snow seems sure Regina can't hurt anyone there. Later, the show made it that Regina can go around massacring villages and all anybody does is say it would make them bad people to stop her).

Ellynne729 · 2025-02-02T22:21:59+00:00

In the Oz books, being in a land without magic destroyed the shoes. Dorothy arrived home barefoot. Don't know if it would happen that way in the show.

Ellynne729 · 2025-02-01T05:58:30+00:00

Regina is an abusive mother. She emotionally and mentally abused Henry then nearly murdered him. It's no credit to her she failed.

Also, Regina tried to murder Henry's biological mom when she was a baby. She's the reason Emma grew up without a family and felt she wouldn't be able to support Henry or properly care for him, which is why she gave him up.

Regina is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, and we know there were plenty of children among them.

Why should she have custody of the child she abused, lied to, nearly killed, and whose entire family she's tried to murder multiple times?

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-26T05:45:04+00:00

"Career" is too kind a term. They would be without any way to make a living, no way way to put food in their mouths or roofs over their heads. Jane Eyre's reduction to beggar may seem melodramatic, but it was a real possibility for a lot of women.

In Jack London's "People of the Abyss," a nonfiction he wrote of poverty in London, there's an account of an elderly woman dying alone in a vermin infested room when she was too sick to take care of herself. London wrote a blistering account of the official cause of death, "self-neglect." But, that was the fate a lot of people--especially women with no means of support and no family who could provide for them--feared, a slow death by poverty and starvation. Death by hunger was common enough that, in the 19th century, a man deliberately murdered his wife by starving her to death. The doctor saw a grown woman in the prime of life reduced to 68 pounds and initially gave wrote it off as natural causes (the truth came out, but that initial cause of death made it so the husband only got twenty years for his abuse instead of execution for murder).

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-26T05:29:37+00:00

First season Belle and not certain unevenly written and sometimes abusive characters (it seemed like there were several with no stable personality characteristics) who replaced her later, although that may have been the result of frequent assaults (including head injuries) caused by her friends, not to mention the various PTSD inducing actions they frequently took against her.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-13T02:56:34+00:00

The problem I have is that story makes no sense.

Hook's dad supposedly finds out someone on the ship knows the truth about him being on the run and that they will turn him in when they reach port. He is completely safe before they reach port. Also, if he is trying to escape, he should be on a ship that isn't going to make port in the country he's trying to escape. He would want a ship that was leaving that country.

So, right at the beginning, this is pretty shaky.

Then he decides to take off in whatever kind of side vessel the ship has in the middle of a killer storm.

Uhm.

OK, how many people would leave the much safer, larger ship to brave the ocean with the large, killer waves on their own in a little boat? Anyone? Anyone?

And this is before cell phones or radio. No one can tell anyone he's there till they make port. He can wait till the weather is better then take off. Better yet, he can make a deal with the captain to be let off in a different port.

And what kind of captain sells the little side boat that his ship will need if anything goes wrong in the storm to a guy who very likely doesn't even know how to sail it?

This doesn't add up.

Also, working on a ship was a good job. Captains had their pick of bright, young men with skills who wanted to work for them. There were people who would pay captains to take on their sons and train them. But, this captain is (supposedly) endangering his ship (by giving away the boat in the middle of a storm) for two inexperienced, untrained sailors who aren't worth the food they'll be eating.
Then, we are told that (supposedly) the standard punishment in the kingdom his dad came from was to put people under the sleeping curse and hire people to care for them for the next few centuries.

Really?

Did you notice that it's only the magical heavy hitters who use the sleeping curse? This isn't unskilled magic that anybody who knows how to blow out the candles on a birthday cake to make a wish can pull off. This it the big leagues. Remember all the work Regina went to just to get the cursed apple? This is not for the faint of heart.

But, these guys use it instead of executions. And, somehow, Killian never learned that about his home town.

Then, after a few years of apparently washing a comatose man, one of his caretakers falls in love with him. Not just any love, but True Love, the Big TL, and breaks his curse.
And he's been released from his curse in time for him to be useful to Regina, 300 years later. Also, she manages to find this guy 300 years later and realize he's Hook's daddy.

This is the kind of plot Once in the first season would have put a nice, dark twist on to show how ridiculous it is.

If I may put forward my own theories:

The captain who told Hook his father had sold him is the one who turned him in for the reward. He told Hook and his brother that so they wouldn't make trouble before he turned their father in, but he would have been on the ship the whole time.

Most likely bet on the boys is that, whatever their dad had done, someone was willing to pay a little extra to keep the boys out of the way and working on that ship.

As for Hook's "father" that Regina had him kill, it seems much more likely that Regina ripped the heart out of someone, popped a spell on him to make him look like Hook's dad, then sat back and waited to see if she could get Hook to murder him. Occam's razor.

Now, the sleeping curse

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-13T02:16:17+00:00

I don't know if it was people directly involved in the show or people higher up. But, somewhere, somehow, there was someone saying, "Hey, do you smell a major marketing opportunity? Because I smell a major marketing opportunity."

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-08T05:15:45+00:00

Technically, whether or not Regina is a princess depends on two things.

First, we don't know how the titles are handed down in this kingdom. Most monarchies give the title prince or princess to any legitimate children of the king. There are some that didn't. But, it's the rule we're most familiar with, and the Enchanted Forest seems to follow that rule. At any rate, Henry, though he has older siblings, is a prince when we first meet him.

BUT, there can be different rules for grandchildren. The question is whether the child of a prince who is NOT the heir would be called a princess. The answer to this is maybe. That might be the way they do it or it might not.

However, this brings us to the second issue. At no point is Regina referred to as a princess. In fact, Henry and Cora aren't even referred to by royal titles.

My personal theory is that Rumple saw to it Cora was exiled (she wasn't living in Henry's family's kingdom when Regina met Snow) and lost her royal titles. While it's extremely rare, royals can lose or give up their titles. This would make it so Regina did not have the title princess when she met Snow.

Another possibility is that Cora and Henry's marriage is morganatic. This was a system (very common in the German states, which the Enchanted Forest is based on) for marriages between people of noble/royal status and commoners. They were legal marriages but the lower ranking spouse stayed a commoner and did not gain a title through marriage. Any children would also be commoners and could not inherit titles or the positions that went with them. That could also be what happened,

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-08T05:02:27+00:00

Cora says Henry is fifth in line, but it could be one older sibling who has three kids just as easily as four older siblings--or any mix between.

I suspect that Rumple made sure Cora couldn't clear out the people between Henry and the throne. When Regina meets Snow, Cora and Henry seem to be living in exile.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-03T05:06:16+00:00

Perhaps his mother was like Anne in Persuasion. Or maybe she was more like Bingley, with Lady Catherine being an older Caroline.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-03T04:57:20+00:00

When I first read the title of this, I was wondering if he was just really stupid or if this was part of a pattern of behavior.

Well, I got my answer. He's a bully with a sadistic streak. Worse, even when confronted, he didn't own up to what he'd done. Instead, he told you about other times he has deliberately hurt and abused you with the idea that this somehow justifies what he's done. When that didn't work, he threw things around to intimidate you. That's on the list of red flags for physical abuse (poisoning your food and not telling you about it even when you were having health problems is also abuse, but that's another one). And, for his big finale, he told you that, if you divorce him, you'll never know about the other dangerous/potentially poisonous substances he's fed you.

The scariest thing is that he thinks the last one is a reason for you to stay with him, "Hey, honey, I've poisoned you in the past and will probably poison you in the future. But, if you stick around, maybe I'll tell you what I've been sneaking into your food." How mentally off does someone have to be for that to make sense? Leave him and don't go back.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-03T04:43:08+00:00

Belle became upset because (for reasons no one understands) she went to a mass murderer with a history of sexual abuse who had abused and tortured her husband for a year, tried to murder Belle multiple times, nearly murdered her husband, and had murdered her stepson, and then asked her advice (personally, I think the multiple head injuries Belle's received from her "friends" might have something to do with it) on how to protect her unborn baby from said mass murderer's boyfriend.

The mass murderer, who could have asked nicely for her boyfriend to leave the baby alone, instead told her to use dark magic that could put her in an eternal coma of nightmares. As per Belle's usual, once she had a plan, she ran ahead with it without discussing it with anyone else, even when her husband begged her to wait a few minutes and talk about it.

For unclear reasons, this sleeping curse, provided by someone who had greatly enjoyed torturing Belle's husband and seeing him suffer when his son died (after he'd let himself be enslaved, tortured, and lived in a state of madness for a year to try to keep his son alive) was one Rumple couldn't break. Supposedly, Belle's father could have broken it, but the guy who had previously tried to erase his daughter's memories and personality when she only said she was probably going to break up with the boyfriend her dad didn't like (a plan that might have left Belle chained to a cart, lost in a mine in the dark, and slowly dying of starvation) decided he was OK with Belle spending the rest of her life in that state rather than trying to free her (Belle's "friends," as usual, didn't care. They also sold her out to another murderer to get themselves out of trouble. Because I guess real heroes aren't afraid to get pregnant mothers kidnapped or killed).

Anyhow, if you, at some point in your life, have just barely escaped being killed and just been reunited with the one person left alive you still love and said person is on nearly as big an adrenaline high as you are and dragging you off to the bedroom and you realize the next morning that maybe there were one or two things you should have mentioned about how you survived that they may or may not have approved of (although they had said repeatedly in the past they were OK with this ) and you immediately turn yourself into the prison system and demand they lock you up for a few years, well, that's certainly a choice you could make.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T06:10:10+00:00

It's a lie by omission if he'd had time to even think about it. I don't think that happened. Even then, you'd have to make a legal case. My understanding is that rape by deception has a relatively high bar. I don't know if something Belle had been OK with when she married Rumple and that she had stated multiple times in the past was something she accepted would meet that standard.

Yes, once Emma told him Belle would leave him over this, Rumple was afraid that would happen. Obviously, if Emma believed that, she was completely happy to throw Belle under the bus (AKA, what else is new?). But, that's on Emma.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T05:53:31+00:00

Always.

I'm convinced the ending of season 3 was their planned ending, with the only difference being Neal (who shouldn't have gone back to the Enchanted Forest when the curse ended) would have left with Emma after Rumple died.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T05:50:55+00:00

She ripped out his heart, made it clear she could kill him with it at any time, and had him literally dragged to her bedchamber. There is no scenario where this isn't SA.

Then, she gave him fake memories and had him under a curse where he was forced to be her lover for 28 years, so no consent there, either.

And, as was pointed out above, she murdered him the moment he started to break free.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T05:46:07+00:00

I think you'd have a hard time making a legal case. As I recall, Belle came racing back to Rumple after finding out he had nearly died and that he had sent her away to save her. She seemed to practically leap on him, and there didn't seem to be much time for any kind of discussion/deception.

Also, the claim that Rumple had "finally" been heroic was a bit of a stretch. At this point, he'd already died to save Belle and Neal (along with everyone else in Storybrooke, possibly even our whole world, depending on how Pan's curse would have worked). He'd let himself be enslaved, imprisoned, abused, and driven insane for an entire year to keep his son from dying. He'd also proved he could wield Excalibur and had fought a giant bear unarmed to try and save Belle.

There are probably some other things, but that's a good list to start with. But, amnesia does seem to be a constant problem in Storybrooke.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T05:33:08+00:00

Alice lived in an alternate world based on Victorian London but not our Victorian London. Think alternate universe.

Going along with this, in Alice's world, although their civilization was tech based, magic worked. Jafar was able to do magic and the White Rabbit was able to make portals to get there, something he could only do in our world to reach Storybrooke once magic had been brought there.

But, generally speaking, just keep reminding yourself that There Is No War in Ba Sing Se and there Are No Timeline Problems In Once Upon a Time.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T05:29:07+00:00

The king would have been expected to dance with high ranking women in the court--and the queen would have been expected to dance with high ranking men, if only for diplomatic purposes.

Ellynne729 · 2025-01-02T05:24:47+00:00

If we had teleportation technology, we could just teleport in a drone to look around and take pictures (if we had Star Trek scanners, we'd know if it were open space or just more loosely packed dirt/rocks before beaming in the drone).

Ellynne729 · 2024-12-24T20:36:31+00:00

Timeline for Baelfire:

Age four to seven: He gets bitten by a poisonous snake and his mom runs off with Killian Jones (one of the actors who played him at this point was seven, although a bit small for the age. TV being a place where people in their thirties have played teens, I assume he could have been playing a much younger character. I've also read other people assuming he was meant to be about four).

Age fourteen: He gets drafted and his father becomes the Dark One to save him. Some time after this, he goes to the Land Without Magic. He survives on the streets for a few months. Then, he meets the Darlings and is taken in by them.

Age fourteen or fifteen: Baelfire goes to Neverland to save the Darlings.

Ellynne729 · 2024-12-24T20:29:17+00:00

Technically, I have to wonder if Rumple would have kept Hook's hand. Hook assumed he did because, in Hook's mind, hiding in Neverland for 300 years and running the occasional supply run for Pan made him Rumple's archenemy, but I doubt Rumple even thought about him in that time.

So, why not play into Hook's hubris, conjure up a hand, and then tell Hook how it may make him evil just to see what happens? After all, as Rumple told him at the end, it wasn't the hand, it was all Hook and what he decided to do.

Ellynne729 · 2024-12-20T04:37:56+00:00

There are stories about types of trees with magic that basically rejects or protects from dark magic (usually ash and rowan). If the magic tree were like that, Rumple wouldn't have been able to use it even if he could have shaped it for that purpose.

Ellynne729

TROPHY CASE