Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3486995-20131124234755/@comment-25926288-20150208213231

DavidTennantismyAngel wrote: Yes, let's blame Rumple for everything. *sigh* I swear, if the genders were reversed...

Imagine it. Rumplestiltskin, a young, impressionable woman is in a happy marriage with her husband, and is taking care of their new baby. The war is taking anyone as soldiers, so she signs up. She doesn't want to be branded as a coward's daughter forever. The husband doesn't want her to go, but she promises that she'll be back to take care of their child.

At the camp, she learns that you must suffer injuries so horrible, that you become handicapped, to leave. The Seer tells her that her son will die while she's away, so she cripples herself, in rather gruesome fashion.

She is sent home, and her husband is furious with her. His wife is now the town coward, which makes him look bad. He leaves to go drink at the local bar, while Rumple cradles her son in her hands, crying and saying that she'll never leave him.

Who would you sympathize with? The brave girl who hurt herself to get back home to her family, or the husband who only cares about himself and his reputation. I sympathize with both. The viewers saw Rumple's point of view, not Milah's. I say that Milah is no better than Rumple. Even with the roles reversed we have to consider their views and the society they lived in.

Sympathizing with Rumple was the point of the flashbacks, it's the point of all the centric villain flashbacks. A marriage takes two, Milah was at fault and so was Rumple. You can absolve Rumple of his crimes. He selfishly crippled himself and sentenced his family to a slightly worse fate than if he died (which we don't know if he would have). Milah tried to help with suggesting to move (like young Rumple suggested to his father), he pushed the idea aside. Milah was in the wrong too. Drinking and publicly shaming her husband and stuff.