Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5205908-20150112195458

Since the beginning the series has two principles that we are almost constantly reminded of, first being "villains don't get happy endings(or win)," the other being "magic always has a price." Has anyone thought maybe these two are actually related?

Magic by itself isn't evil or good, but its nature, that it takes something from the users tend to make some people thinks its evil. The price for people that are born with magic like Ingrid, Emma and Elsa seem clear, because they are different, they tend to feel not belonging anywhere, even amount their own blood family and in Emma's own words she doesn't get a day off(although that's not completely true.) and there always a villain showing up in her life. For people who do use it for evil or malicious purpose, turning it into "Dark Magic" the price seems worse as it eventually lead to their demise, ultimately resulting in the "villains don't get happy endings." Or they might still get their own verions of happy endings, but likely similar to Ingrid's case, they only get to experience happiness the moment before their death. This relation of principle seems obvious from the pattern that all villains of the series are magic users, it might be the reason why Peter Pan is twisted into a villain and Captain Hook somewhat a anti-hero. Because Hook is never a magical story character, so they can't use price of magic to take away his chance of happy ending in the show.

But it's interesting that fairies don't seem to suffer any price for using magic yet, unless we are supposed to believe good magic don't have a cost. If it is the prices of magic that keeps causing conflict between characters, maybe stopping using magic forever what will take to truly get the happy endings for everyone. 