Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20161205015930/@comment-24674051-20170109183416

I see where everyone is going with Emma and Regina, and I agree to a point. Emma would have every right to dislike (in the strongest possible terms) Regina for what she did to Snow. And had Emma known THIS Regina first, that is very well what could have happened.

But that was the not version of Regina that Emma got to know first. Emma met Regina 28+ years later. Yes, Regina was still the Evil Queen. But the 28 years in Storybrooke, and 10 of those spent raising Henry, had already started to change who she was. Emma fought and defeated that Regina (the one villian that we can actually say that Emma defeated), then got to know her better, and became friends with her. She saw Regina of Today, redeemed and working with Snow and her. She knew what Regina would (or at least could) become. And that probably has a very large impact on how you perceive a person's past actions.

And let's be honest here. Emma knew who Regina was and what she had done in the EF. She knew that Regina had spent years hunting down Snow. AND, given that Emma was herself responsible to changing the timeline, I can imagine that Emma, while maybe feeling some animosity towards Regina, was also casting blame upon herself for the seeming death of her mother.

In the same vein, Regina killing WR Snow and David was perceived as dark by Emma. (ok, Emma's comment was a bit flippant, but it still did acknowledge the darkness of the act). and I felt that Regina acknowledged the darkness as well, and was not very happy with the outcome (and I think she may have a couple of nightmares to deal with from that, whether we see them on screen on not). But, at least at that time, both Regina and Emma were (in my headcanon at least) working under the premise that the WR was not an actual place, and that the people there (other than Regina and Emma) were not 'real'. In fact, Regina's interaction with WR Rumple pretty much confirms her perception of the WR.

Yes, Henry and Robin both had emotional impact on Regina. But at least in Henry's case, I felt that Regina, while knowing the story was not real, was enjoying the thought of Henry amounting to something important and becoming a knight. It was a happy thought, at least up to the point before he came to kill her because of the deaths of Snow and David. Robin, on the other hand, hit her out of left field (so to speak), because she was still emotionally reeling from Robin's demise, and seeing him (or at least a vision of him) alive rocked her to her core. At that moment, even if she was still working under the premise of the WR being not real, she suddenly was faced with the fulfillment of HER wish of Robin alive, and that moment was enough of a distraction to leave the girls where they are.