Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20161128015930/@comment-5106672-20161205172309

Generally speaking, blame is a big part of the grieving process: finding a fault in someone or something helps rationalise what happened, put it into a more familiar cause-effect pattern and come to terms with it. That's bargaining: if X had / hadn't done Y, maybe things would have gone differently; if I could go back and change Z, maybe this wouldn't have happened. It's easier to process than "it simply happened for reasons totally out of control". It gets messy and unrational, but it's part of the thing.

Now, in the past Regina derailed spectacularly on that step: she never got over her blame (which she misplaced on Snow rather than Cora because she's got tons of mommy issues to go along) and kept acting on it, however irrational it was, for decades. She literally went mad over that. Luckily, with Zelena she's processing her bargain stage but still acting on the affaction she has for her sister while her mind processes her grief and gets a clearer view of what went down.