Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20170410010002/@comment-25926288-20170416014253

I'll go with what we know.

1. Regina was a helicopter mom as her mom was. Relatively rigid, overprotective, and over-involved in their child's everything. People like this exist. Are they terrible? No, not necessarily.

2. Henry was in a faze, unaware of the strange things going on. Upon entering 5th grade, Henry noticed the weird curse-like state of Storybrooke. Regina lied to him to cover that up. Henry kept on pursuing, so she sent him to Dr. Hopper so he could convinve Henry that those ieas make no sense.

3. Regina's state of love was ambiguous. She used him as a tool to manipulate Emma and it's obviously wrong.

4. She state she loves him, tries to change for him and fails. She realizes that she should let Henry go. (and he went with David, later, Emma.)

5. She tries again, stumbling over her efforts. She realizes she has to change for Henry.

6. She goes to Neverland, because she realizes she has to fight for Henry.

7. During the Missing Year and so on, she realizes what life is like without Henry.

8. She give True Love's Kiss to Henry.

If you think going from twistedly loving Henry to truely loving Henry isn't development, then there's no way to have a reasonable discussion with the canonical points presented. One can argue it should have been different or that it wasn't subjectively good, but development is development.

Regina not wanting Henry to see her in a weak state, while bad, isn't inhumane. He's staying with Emma and when Henry comes over, she welcomes him in. She didn't shut to door on him or ignore him. Often writing makes question chioces when they have her say things that sort exclude Henry from her happiness in a signifcant way, but I don't hold it against her no more than I don't for Emma. Some people think Emma is spending little time with Henry and focusing solely on Hook. Writing may make that seem that way, but to the character I don't hold that against them for a piece of terrible writing.

Hailing Regina as the worst mother (except Black Fairy) just lacks balance. You have to include the good with the bad as that is what makes an experience. Cora is worse as she did things that Regina never would do. Cora manipulates physically and emotionally her children, was willing to rip out Regina's heart, gave up her child for her own selfish ambitions, and she did that all the way up to her time in the UW. Now, technically, she is one of the worst mother simply because we've seen more of her and most weren't seen as mother for a long time. The only fair comparisons we have for worst mothers are Milah, Snow, Emma, and Cora because noone else have been given significant (and meaningful screentime) as a parent. Thus, it's a really low bar given we haven't had many (unquestionably) good mothers with significant screentime and development. (The only one I can think of is Ruth)