Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24304025-20140527003203/@comment-5655661-20140810201148

Utter solitude wrote: I don't know if I'd call her "poor" in any sense. I would assume the house they lived in was part of the royal estate, and she lived very, very comfortably. Just because she can make gold, doesn't mean she did or should have. I always assumed she put all her efforts into making Regina a queen.

^ This. Cora didn't care for fortune she only wanted power (and maybe a little revenge against Eva) and thus she did everything she could to make her daughter a queen which would give her enormous power given how great manipulator she was.

And she wasn't poor by any means, not everyone has to live in a castle to be considered rich or royalty.