Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-24055959-20131015233446/@comment-22525977-20131016201721

But Rumpel never grabbed Snow and pointed at Charming and said "That guy. That's your one true love. Go get him." They met before he started interfering in their lives, and if I recall correctly his first major interference was to give Snow that anti-love potion because she sought him out in hopes of getting an anti-love potion. Then he kept manipulating them after that until they were positioned like he wanted them to be.

Whereas the first time Regina meets Robin and sees that tattoo, what's going to be in her head is "that's the guy the pixie dust indicated was my perfect match who I'm destined to fall madly in love and be happy forever with." Sooo for her, her entire relationship with him is going to have this undercurrent of having to fall for the guy, because he's her—in her own words—soulmate. That's the part that creeps me out, not so much that they have personalities that would, in fact, get along well.

I'm actually not sure how badly Robin would react re: Dark Curse. He didn't come off that badly—he stayed in the FTR, he was never separated from his family, Marian was already dead before the curse so it's not like he'll blame Regina for that. It depends, I think, on how aware he is of the 28 years he spent frozen, and how he feels about what happened to the FTR as a result. On the one hand, if he remembers being stuck and doing the exact same thing for 28 years, yeah, he's probably pretty pissed. On the other, if the memories overwrote from day to day so it reads in his head as one day instead of twenty-eight years, then the most Regina took from him with the curse was a single day + security because ogres (although presumably those aren't everywhere and Rumpel's castle looked pretty safe). It's also possible that the FTR wasn't on a dayloop like Storybrooke, since the ogres managed to invade, so maybe people there were trapped the way Regina was—memories intact, but not aging physically—in which case, that's also a huge problem.

Personality-wise, I've no doubt they'll have chemistry, but I'm not actually rooting for the relationship for the reasons I outlined—I don't think any relationship that begins with one (or both, in the even that Regina or Tink spills about the pixie dust to Robin) partners framing it as "this is happening because fate said so" rather than "wow I really like this person" is one that I want to ship.