Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-26443838-20151009221621/@comment-25926288-20151010220537

M.J. Daniels wrote: Zelena's time travel spell can be explained. The items she collected to cast it represented love, wisdom, courage, and innocence respectively. Glinda states that they are all symbolise elements of magic, explaining why Zelena was able to break the Laws of Magic and travel back in time; she literally controlled magic itself.

The examples you mentioned, in my opinion at least, are all loopholes to the Laws of Magic. The Curse of the Empty Hearted needs the heart of the person you hate most to create a false illusion of love. In Jafar's case, he broke the Laws and was able to make Anastasia fall in love with him without any sacrifice or price. About the changing the past thing, my guess is that Jafar didn't want to bother actually going back when he could simply alter Alice's memories.

This is all my reasons as to why the Laws of Magic are actual restrictions, because there seems to be no consistent magic system in Once. Truth there! But HJafar's was an illusion of love since Will and Ana had a True Love's kiss and broke it. TLk can break any curse. I assume it does what Cora's spell did, just easier.

Also, I don;t think he could actually time travel because if he changed Alice's past, Jafar probably would have won or he would wipe himself out of the timeline (unless he merged with a future Jafar).

Simple truth though is that it is sort of OP and these laws are trivial when it comes to the power of the plot. Guess they could turn themselves into the sun based on their rules, lol.