Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-24894881-20180818085051/@comment-25375217-20180818144800

To be fair, we've also seen a lot more of Regina during her peak. Zelena got effectively one season (3B + 4B; technically 4A, but that was all one "single" villainous act) of true villainy and then the rest of her time was spent either being picked on, pregnant, or getting redeemed. Her flashbacks in Season 5 and 6 both focus on her redeemable attributes. (Season 5 less so; but ripping the Scarecrow's brain out when we don't even know if that's fatal is significantly less dark than the things Regina did)

Regina, on the other hand, had about three seasons worth of flashbacks just to demonstrate how evil she was before they started throwing in backstories that showed how redeemable she was.

From personalities, I would think Zelena likely has more villainous acts under her belt. She's more unhinged than Regina and fully embraces her villainy for the entirety of her reign. Regina didn't consider herself the Evil Queen until well into Snow's bandit phase; Zelena's main villainy in Oz was all fed by wanting to prove she was wicked.

From that point of view, I think even if Regina performed significantly more unspeakable acts of villainy, Zelena would still be more evil -- because she performs her acts of villainy entirely with the intention of being villainous. Regina honestly believed she was the hero of the story for a significant portion of her time and most of the things she did she didn't really realize how bad they were -- that doesn't make the acts less evil, of course, but compared to Zelena, who knew her whole life she wasn't the hero and dedicated herself to playing the villain in order to change that, it makes her character less evil and a tad more morally gray. Regina represents how easy it is to go off the deep end without realizing it; Zelena represents what people are willing to do to get attention. In my opinion, that makes Zelena more evil than Regina -- she knew full well that she was ruining people's lives and did not care as long as she got what she wanted.