Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4851603-20160424070843/@comment-5106672-20160502033728

The problem with how Regina and Henry's relationship was portrayed throughout the show is that it was not very consistent: in S1 Regina was the villain so, although they showed some of her more human aspects, she was made out to be more of a bad mother; as the show progressed and she was shown in a more sympathetic way, her relationship with Henry was softened, even pre-curse breaking (see In The Name Of The Brother and Save Henry).

I think overall we have to consider two things:


 * By Regina's own admission, she "[didn't] know how to love very well". She had had a clearly abusive upbringing, with her mother downright showing her that parental love may come with manipulation, strictness, stepping over your child's own feelings and all the such. Considering how weak of a paternal figure Henry Sr. was, that's pretty much everything Regina knew about parenting: you can love your child (which, I think, she believed or at very least hoped Cora did) but still hurt them if your bigger selfish interests require it.


 * Regina can be quite reasonable until she feels threatened: that's the moment she snaps and goes full villain mode (not so much recently, now she gets snarky). This is what happened when Emma came into the picture: that "awoke the dragon", as Archie put it, and Regina had to take care of her own bigger selfish interest, which had Henry as collateral damage because her experience as a daughter showed her that's what parenting can do.

It is also interesting to remember what Mary Margaret said at some point: Henry kind of lost it when he learned he was adopted. Add oncoming pre-puberty, he became rebellious and I think that all combined ended up staining their relationship to the point we saw in S1. If we had to hypotise a timeline it may be like this:


 * Regina immediately grew fond of Henry, to the point of endangering the Curse by erasing her memories of who Henry's biological mother was with a concrete danger it may come bite her in the butt later.


 * They had a reasonably loving relationship, including Henry's hand-made gifts to Regina (I doubt it would be meaningful to her if it were just some random school assignment done without love). She was surely a strict mother, but I doubt she were abusive.


 * Henry learned he was adopted; this made him rebellious. Regina became stricter (rightfully so – I mean, that kid stole a credit card at some point!), this made him more unhappy and prone to demonise his new not-my-mom.


 * Emma came into the picture; Regina had one clear goal (get rid of her as Henry's mother; then get rid of her ASAP as the Saviour) and went full Cora mode and used Henry, her only leverage over Emma, as a pawn once too often. This is when (most of) the actual horrible parenting took place, and it's S1. Again, that does not mean Regina didn't love him: she just didn't know how to be a good parent when the stakes were that high.


 * The Curse is broken, Regina loses it and goes right into actual magical abuse, until she realises it's really not the case to turn into her own mother full time.


 * She starts a slow slippity-sloppy rebuilding of her relationship with Henry, which culminates in her redemption as a mother figure when she saves him in Neverland and gives him up to Emma to spare him for Pan's Curse / being left alone altogether.

It is also interesting to notice that, while Henry was still cold to her for most of S2, he did care about her (much more than he showed in S1) and actually started believing in her before she did something truly redeeming. Actually, it was Henry believing in her that inspired her to hop on the redemption path. I think that's quite telling of the fact that, before everything went downhill around S1, there was some genuine love between them that allowed Henry to see the good in her and give her a chance, otherwise he would have just jumped ship with the Charmings and never shown any concern with Regina at all (let's face it, he's a selfish kid).