Regina Mills


 * This article focuses on Regina Mills. For Snow White's stepmother, see Queen Regina.

"I've always believed that evil isn't born... it's made."

- Regina to David Nolan

Regina Mills is a major character on the television series Once Upon a Time. She débuts in the first episode of the first season. She is played by starring cast member Lana Parrilla and is the Storybrooke counterpart of Queen Regina. Regina is the mayor of Storybrooke and also the adoptive mother of Henry Mills, the first and only child of Emma Swan, with whom she is a bitter rival. She is closely affiliated with Mr. Gold.

Season One
Regina first meets Emma Swan when she brings her adopted son, Henry, home to Storybrooke. She thanks Emma for returning him to her, then asks her if she would like a glass of apple cider. They have a quick discussion about Henry, and Regina becomes concerned once she realizes that Emma is Henry's birth mother.

The next day, Henry leaves, and Emma once again brings him to Regina's house. Regina tells him to get inside and thanks Emma again. Emma grins and starts telling her about Henry. The mayor cuts her off midway and warns her to stay away from Henry, which catches Emma off-guard.

That day is the beginning of their rivalry. Regina goes out of her way to have Emma arrested, revoke her privileges (like putting a boot on her car), and making her feel like she is not the best choice to be Henry's "real" mother. With each attempt, Emma becomes more intent on staying in Storybrooke.

After another threat, Regina finds Emma in her backyard cutting down her childhood apple tree with a chainsaw. When confronted, Emma tells her to leave her alone because the mayor had no idea what she is capable of. She tells her that if Regina threatens her again, she would come back for the rest of the apple tree.

After John Doe is found and returned to the hospital, Regina shows up with a blonde woman who is revealed to be Kathryn Nolan, John Doe's wife. John Doe's real name is revealed to be David Nolan. The reunion of Kathryn and David stirs something within her and she tells Emma that she is willing to look past all previous encounters and forgive everything, to Emma's disbelief.

Later, at a party celebrating David's return, Regina finds an upset Kathryn hiding out in the kitchen. After some prodding, Kathryn admits that she's afraid that despite her best efforts, David is drifting farther and farther away from her instead of the two growing closer. Regina encourages her to go after David, telling her about her previous love and how she lost it because she didn't fight for it. It is at that party that the two become friends. However, David went to visit Mary Margaret instead.

Regina quickly grows suspicious of the two, and when David runs into her on his way to visit Mary Margaret, she purposefully gives him the wrong directions. As a result, he goes into Mr. Gold's shop and remembers his past life - that is, his life with Kathryn, before he became John Doe.

It is revealed that she is having an affair with Sheriff Graham, which Emma discovers. Graham ends up falling for Emma and kisses her, which make his memories of his fairy tale life surface. Graham goes to Regina and kisses her after confirming that Henry is asleep.

That night, he wakes up in her bed after a nightmare and tells Regina about his recurring dreams; dreams that feature a wolf, Mary Margaret, and a forest. She tries to convince him that is a dream, but he disagrees with her and tells her that it feels like a memory. Graham decides to go get some air, where he meets the wolf in his dreams.

The next day, he enlists Emma's help and she reluctantly agrees to help him "find his heart." Henry tells Graham that Regina took his heart and hid it in her vault, so he and Emma are led by the wolf to the cemetery where her Vault of Hearts are supposed to be kept.

Regina catches them snooping around her father's tomb, and Graham proceeds to end his affair with her. Regina is devastated and, after a brief discussion with Emma, fights her. Emma is pulled away by the sheriff and the two leave. Regina, meanwhile, puts her flowers on her father's grave, pushes the tomb aside and descends into her Vault of Hearts. She takes out Graham's heart and squeezes it to dust, killing him and revealing that she has retained her memories from Fairytale Land.

Two weeks after Graham's death, Regina fires Emma Swan as deputy and appoints Sidney Glass as Sheriff of Storybrooke. Emma challenges this action, and the two end up in an election for sheriff. Emma wins after exposing Mr. Gold for setting up a fire that had endangered both hers and Regina's lives previously, which causes the mayor to fire Sidney from his position as editor of Storybrooke's Daily Mirror.

A few days after that, Regina comes to Mr. Clark's store after he reports Henry shoplifting. She realizes that Henry didn't steal the candy and pins the blame on two orphans, Ava and Nicholas Zimmer. She instructs Emma to take them home, which she does. Then she and Emma have an argument after both of them find out that the two are orphans. She wanted to send them to a foster system in Boston; Emma wanted time to find their father.

Regina forces the deputy to take them to Boston, but just as they are leaving Storybrooke, Emma's car breaks down. She calls Michael Tillman, the orphans' father, and he comes and, after much pursuading, takes the two children home with them.

The next morning, a mysterious stranger is fixing his bike in front of Regina's house. Henry questions him and is spotted by the mayor, who becomes anxious about his sudden appearance in Storybrooke. She orders Emma to gather some information on him. Then she runs into Mary Margaret and tells her to stay out of Kathryn Nolan and her husband's personal lives. The next day, she witnesses Mary Margaret and David Nolan kissing in the street.

Later, she and Emma get into another argument in the diner, leaving Emma upset at the table. Sidney Glass suddenly sits across from her, obviously drunk, and proposes that the two join forces to show the town what Regina's true nature is like. He reveals that he was fired after he lost the election, and has hated her ever since. Emma is hesitant and doesn't want to collaborate with him.

Later, she witnesses Regina tearing down Henry's castle for "safety concerns" and grows angry. She calls Sidney and says that she agrees with him; the mayor needed to be exposed. The two meet up in a tunnel, where Sidney reveals that $50,000 is missing from Storybrooke's treasury. They later bug her desk, discover plans for a new "house" that Regina is building in the middle of the woods, and expose Regina at the town hall meeting.

The "house" was actually an up-to-date, modern playground for children Henry's age. Emma and Sidney leave the meeting, dejected and humiliated; Regina confronts her outside of the town hall and threatens her with a restraining order if she doesn't stay away from her or Henry.

Emma goes back to the diner and is joined by Sidney. They agree to become allies and clink beer glasses, vowing that they will expose Regina next time. However, only a few hours later, Sidney is replaying their conversation to Regina, who praises him on his efforts. The whole thing had been a hoax to embarrass Emma.

With Emma out of the picture, Regina focuses on a more important enemy: Mr. Gold. She deliberately corners him, hoping to ask him some questions, but Mr. Gold repeatedly dodges her with a well-placed "please", which was the enchantment Rumplestiltskin asked to have in his new life in exchange for telling her how to work the Dark Curse. Whenever Mr. Gold ends a command directed at Regina with "please", she has no choice but to obey him.

Regina has her suspicions about who Mr. Gold really is, and comes up with a plan to corner him. After witnessing him take away Moe French's flower delivery service truck due to not paying the rent on time. Seemingly as payback, Mr. Gold sees some of his things missing, and suspects Moe French stole them. Mr. Gold enlists the help of Emma to get his things back, but he expresses extreme dissatisfaction when he notices one of the items in particular is missing.

Mr. Gold takes it into his own hands to sort out the problem, and confronts Mr. French by tying him up. Simultaneously, while berating him about someone he only names as "she", he beats Moe French into a pulp until Emma storms in. She arrests him for physical battery when she sees his anger towards Moe stems far deeper than just over a missing item. Mr. Gold is placed in the Sheriff's office jail cell. Regina visits, and distracts Emma by giving her free time with Henry so she can be alone with Mr. Gold.

Only then does Regina come clean about having subtly suggested to Moe French about stealing some of Mr. Gold's precious belongings to get back at him. But she also says her intention in doing so is because she wanted to know something. Regina asks for his name, and he says it has always been Mr. Gold in his entire lifetime.

But when she questions, "What about places elsewhere?" Mr. Gold pauses, and declares, "Rumpelstiltskin", showing that he, too, harbors memories of his life in Fairytale Land. Regina mockingly hands back the chipped teacup he was searching for, which was Mr. Gold's motivation in beating Moe French because the item is very important to him.

Mr. Gold tells her nothing has changed from the previous world, and that he is still more powerful than she is. Ironically, Regina does have one upper hand he doesn't know about. After leaving, she goes to the psychiatric ward of Storybrooke's hospital, where she checks up on Belle's Storybrooke counterpart, a mental patient. She is the girl Mr. Gold met in his previous life as Rumplestiltskin, and his chipped teacup is his only lasting memento of her. Mr. Gold believes her to be dead since Regina--as Evil Queen--had told him the girl killed herself.

A few days later, she gives Henry a video game from the 1990s as an apology for tearing down his "unstable" playhouse. Henry is unenthusiastic, but accepts her apology, and their conversation is stopped short by Kathryn. Henry leaves and Kathryn tells Regina about David's leaving up with her, to which Regina replies "that homewrecker."

Confused, Kathryn asks what she means, and she reveals that Mary Margaret and David had been having an affair. Kathryn becomes furious and accuses the mayor of lying to her, which was something that friends didn't do, and leaves her office.

After she confronts Mary Margaret, she returns to Regina and apologizes for her behavior. She tells her that she was accepted into a law school in Boston and casually drops hints about the Dark Curse - how she'd always been afraid to leave Storybrooke, how she and David never really felt right to her, etc. She also reveals that she'd left a letter for her ex-husband to find at her house, encouraging his and Mary Margaret's relationship.

Regina becomes alarmed and, after Kathryn leaves for Boston, enters her house using her skull keys located in her desk. She takes the letter and burns it. Kathryn disappears the moment the letter is gone. Emma Swan later discovers Kathryn's car wreck and determines her to be missing. At first, all evidence points to David Nolan, Kathryn's estranged husband.

Regina confronts Emma over David's arrest several times. At the beginning of the investigation, Regina implies that she will have her fired if she discovers that she is shielding David from the justice of the law. When David is found in a trance-like state, Regina is called, as she is still his emergency contact, and demands his arrest.

However, Emma defies her and sends Ruby, her newfound assistant, to the Toll Bridge in search of more evidence. Ruby discovers a box with a human heart in it. Emma runs some tests, which confirm that the heart belongs to Kathryn and that Mary Margaret's fingerprints were on it.

After Emma takes mug shots of the schoolteacher, she is interrogated by the sheriff with Regina as the third party to make sure she remains unbiased. She goads Mary Margaret and Emma takes her outside to confront her. Regina hints that Mary Margaret was very capable of murder, and leaves.

Shortly after this, she makes a deal with Mr. Gold—she will keep him out of prison for beating Moe French if he swears that he will get Mary Margaret out of Storybrooke. Mr. Gold agrees. They plant a key to the cell in Mary Margaret's cell, and she escapes. However, Emma goes after her and returns her before the deadline of eight o'clock, to Regina's dismay.

She manipulates Mary Margaret into agreeing for an interview with the District Attorney, Albert Spencer. However, Albert tricks Mary Margaret into accidentally giving a false confession of killing Kathryn, and they schedule for the trial to be the next day. Regina visits Mary Margaret in the dead of night, only to find her sobbing on her cot.

When Mary Margaret notices her, she bursts into tears again because Regina was convinced that she was guilty, and apologizes for anything she might've done to her. Regina refuses to forgive her, and Mary Margaret loudly insists that she is innocent. When she says that she didn't kill Kathryn, Regina assures her that she knows she didn't, leaving Mary Margaret in a stunned silence.

The next morning, Emma Swan knocks on her door and asks to search her garage. Regina reluctantly leads her to the garage, where the shovel that she used to plant the jewelry box containing the heart by the Toll Bridge was located. However, when Emma approaches the shovel box, she discovers that the shovel is gone. Dismayed, Emma leaves a triumphant Regina behind to go back to the sheriff's office, where she discovers a bug planted by Sidney Glass.

The day of the trial, she fingers a makeshift ring and whispers, "We got her, Daniel. We finally got her." However, the trial is halted by the emergence of Kathryn Nolan.

Personality
Very much like her fairy tale counterpart, Regina is ruthless, cunning, and downright evil. She appears to care nothing for others' feelings, but she seems to care for Henry. When she killed her father and Sheriff Graham, she cried, implying that she has very mixed feelings about killing them both.

When someone she dislikes interferes with her life, she will often have the sheriff arrest that person. She has control over everyone in the town, and almost every citizen is afraid of her, except for Mr. Gold and Emma.

Trivia

 * Regina named Henry, her adoptive son, after her deceased father, who was her valet.
 * She retains a small amount of magic from her time in Fairytale Land
 * The door to her secret collection of human hearts acts is hidden in her family crypt, inside a false tomb dedicated to her father.
 * Like her fairy tale counterpart, Regina owns a tree with red apples.
 * Regina lives at Number 108 on Mifflin Street.
 * Nearly every room in her house has a mirror, in reference to the Evil Queen's Magic Mirror, who was able to look through other mirrors to spy on people.
 * Though she claims her apples are honey crisps, this is not possible because honey crisp trees could not be more than 10 years old, since the apple was still under patent with the University of Minnesota. Honey crisp apples also tend to be more yellow than red.
 * There is a ceramic horse sculpture on Regina's mantel above her fireplace. This is likely in homage to the prized steed of the Evil Queen, whose heart she tried to use to enact the Dark Curse.
 * Regina is actually Henry's great-grandmother by marriage, as she was Snow White's stepmother.
 * "Regina" is Latin for "Queen" and 'Mills" sounds very much like "Mal-" which is Latin for "Evil". This means "Regina Mills" could be taken to actually mean "Evil Queen". It has also been stated that Regina's mother was the daughter of a miller.
 * As Evil Queen, she possessed a silver chest, which she has retained in her house in Storybrooke.
 * Her house in Storybrooke is white complementary to her Castle that was black.
 * Even though she is a villain, Regina has shown that she truly loves her son: she was genuinely worried when Henry was trapped in a mine during That Still Small Voice and did everything in her power to bring him back to safety; even volunteering to go down the mine herself.
 * She retains the ring her true love, Daniel gave to her.

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