Board Thread:Wiki-Related Discussion/@comment-24301813-20180430044748/@comment-33801955-20180430153940

If you mean powerful in a sense who has more magical power, then it's rather hard to tell. Ingrid maybe managed to freeze everything with the wave of her hand, but well, we have never seen the whole aspect of Gother's magic.

If by powerful you mean who would win a magic fight, then I'd go for Gothel. Just because Ingird managed to magically hold Regina and Emma in 4th season doesn't mean she is more powerful than either of them, or better fighter. Neither Regina nor Emma did even fight Ingrid (and let's not forget Emma wiped the floor with Ingird in 4x3 and Ingrid did not even attempt to fight her, same as Emma did not attempt to fight Inrgird in 4x5 when Inrid helr her and Regina). Regina merely said one sentence and Ingrid attacked. Emma did not attack Ingrid then, simply asked her to stop and was held by Ingrid too. And even if Ingrid had more magical power than either Regina or Emma, that doesn't mean she would win a fight against either of them. That was shown in the past: magical power is not all what it takes to win a fight. It's mostly about how a person reacts, how fast they act (like Zelina acting fast to deflect a traffic light Regina threw at her in 3x16), if they dodge, block a spell, wave a hand to remove a fireball (like both Zelena and Evil Queen did to Regina), or how fast they raise a hand to attack (like Zelena did in 3x19 when she paralyzed Regina, or later throw her away cause she needed to only wave her hand to throw her, while Regina was focused on doing rather complicated movement to separate Henry from Zelena) or how you attack (Regina proved to be less formidable opponent than Evil Queen, as she usually creates a fireball, but insteads of throwing it, she just holds it giving her opponent time to attack her or prepare their defence, while Evil Queen did not waste time, made a fireball and immediately threw it at Zelena and sent her flying in 6x9). The only good time Regina did good was in 6x19 when she threw Zelena against a wall with telekinesis: fast and simple, as it is rather hard to deffend against it when compared to a fireball you can dodge or remove with wave of your hand. Another example is Emma vs Gold in 5x11 (I think it was there, once Emma stopped being the Dark One and found out Gold is Dark One again, she attemped to use magic on him, but Gold was much faster and paralyzed her).

Also, in 7x15 we saw Drizella magic choke Gothel (using Regina's appearance), but this hardly proves Drizella is magically more powerful than Gothel, or could win a fight against her).

To put it shortly, in this case I'd say Mother Gothel would win a fight against Ingrid, as she has more experience and while she spent some time locked in the tower, she also lived far longer than Ingrid and I believe had thus more time to learn and practice.

Someone might say that there were inconcistencies in the story when it comes to magic, its rules and who is more powerful or better fighter. I simply decided to ignore these mistakes coming from the script and simply focus on the story itself, as if there is logical explanation behind it all (hopefully anyway).