Board Thread:Show-Related Questions and Answers/@comment-5834856-20140423092224

Watching the last three minutes of 318 a question came to my mind:

Regina: Hope isn't easy when I know she holds my heart. (...)

Mary Margaret: Sooner or later, your heart will find its way to happiness.

Regina: That doesn't feel possible.

Mary Margaret: It is. I know you, you feel things deeply, with or without it, you feel things with your whole soul.

_____

I have to say I loved the result of this conversation. And yet back in Season 1 EP 107 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter right at the beginning we have this scene:

Sheriff Graham: I'm sorry. I just...? Emma: (angrily) What? You what? Sheriff Graham: I need to feel something. Emma: Listen to me, Graham. You are drunk and full of regret. I get it. But whatever it is you are looking to feel, I can tell you one thing.You're not getting it with me.

At the end of this episode it becomes clear that Graham is seperated from his heart because it is in Regina's vault. Moreover, he's under Regina's spell.

___

The Episode The Miller's Daughter:

After her heart was reunited with her body (resulting in her death) Cora confesses with her last breath that "you (=Regina) would have been enough".

Until now, the creators established that you have at least difficulties or cannot feel love at all, if you don't have a heart. Yet, Regina seems perfectly able to feel love with Robin. Mary Margaret offers an explanaion for that.

You feel with your whole soul. But what's the difference between Regina and her mother or Graham? Why do Cora fail to feel love? Why is Regina able to do so? What does soul mean?

I know Regina is also quite aware that Robin is her soulmate because Tinkerbell showed her that. Pixiedust never lies.

By the time Cora gave birth to Regina she had removed her heart for a long time. Regina removed her heart two weeks ago. Meeting Robin for the first time in Storybrooke Regina had her heart. Meeting him for the first time in the Enchanted Forest (EP 303) her heart was where it should be. Same with their second first meeting in EP 313). Regina's heart wasn't seperated from her body.

Consulting with friends here's what I figured out:

In order to create a bond / relationship with someone, you defenitely need a heart. Removing a heart after this essential bond was build doesn't have such destroying effects because now you you can use your Soul (your volition) to cache it somehow. You felt this emotions and your soul remembers them.

Do you agree? Can you think of other explanations? 