Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24589671-20140329051413/@comment-8345449-20140409050030

DZAV21 wrote:

Because then Snow & Charming wouldn't have met and Em & Henry wouldn't have been born. Snow and Charming are soul mates so they may have been destined to find each other one way or another. Plus, we have seen how Rumple was manipulating events in Season 1 to get them together so he would probably accomplish it even if Regina wasn't there to drive Snow out of the castle.

Emma and Neal would be a more complex case since they would presumably be in separate worlds. But then Zelena, or whoever Rumple found to replace Regina, might have still cast the curse in the alternate timeline.