King Leopold

"I seek nothing more than the happiness of all who set foot in my kingdom."

- King Leopold to the Genie

King Leopold is a character on ABC's Once Upon a Time. He débuts in the eleventh episode of the first season. He is portrayed by guest star Richard Schiff, and does not have a Storybrooke counterpart.

King Leopold is based on the King from the fairytale, "Snow White".

Before the Curse
Long ago, King Leopold marries a princess of a northern kingdom, Eva. Together, they have a daughter, Snow White. During Snow White's coming-of-age party preparations, King Leopold is away on business. Behind the scenes, the ambitious Cora seeks to make the queen's seat vacant so her own daughter, Regina, can take it. By unknown means, she poisons Eva. As the queen's condition depletes over mysterious sickness, the royal doctor orders the palace servant Johanna to bring the king to his wife's bedside, though she has no idea how to inform him.

Eva passes away shortly after, and a funeral is held in her honor. Following this, King Leopold grows lonely without a companion and also wishes to find a woman worthy enough to become mother to Snow White. With his knights and daughter, he traverses the lands in search of a new wife. One day, he and his men stop in the woods. Again, Cora has the advantage in speeding up her grand plan. She purposely startles Snow White's horse and sends the animal trampling away furiously. Unable to get off the horse, Snow White yells for help. Nearly, Regina is alerted to the girl's cries and jumps on her own horse to pull Snow White to safety. Snow White becomes grateful towards Regina for saving her life. Later, King Leopold gains word of Regina's feat. Impressed, he decides she fits the criteria of the kind of woman he needs for his daughter.

King Leopold visits the manor of Regina's parents Cora and Henry. Cora prepares her daughter for the king's visit, though Regina has no idea of the special reason behind it. King Leopold explains how he lost his wife many years ago and ever since then has been scouring everywhere for a woman who can take her place as Snow White's mother. Because Regina treated Snow White kindly, King Leopold believes she is suitable for the role, and asks for her hand in marriage. Stunned, Regina is unable to respond and glances at her father for help. He, too, is unable to speak up. Instead, Cora accepts the proposal in her stead.

The arranged marriage upsets Regina as she is secretly in love with the stable boy, Daniel. She wants to be with him rather than becoming queen, so they plan to run away and start a new life elsewhere. By accident, Snow White discovers Regina's relationship with Daniel, but promises to keep it to herself. She is goaded by Cora into revealing the secret. Cora takes matters into her own hands and kills Daniel to keep Regina from having a different future. The wedding preparations continue with the fitting of the dress where Snow White guiltily reveals she told Cora about Daniel in fear Regina herself would lose her mother. Deep down, Regina blames Snow White for Daniel's death, though she does not make it known. She also suspects her mother of orchestrating the horse incident to gain the marriage proposal, though Cora denies having any part in it.

Years later, King Leopold walks along the shoreline of a river and stumbles across the Genie of Agrabah's magical lamp. As he rubs the dirt off of it, to his surprise, a genie appears and says that he can grant him three wishes, but warns the king that the wishes cannot be undone and all magic comes with a price. The Genie tells the king that he has had found no happiness granting wishes and he only only desires his freedom. The king tells the Genie that he has all he would ever wish for and only wants the happiness of all who live in his kingdom. Therefore, King Leopold first wishes the Genie free, and then uses his second wish to give his third wish to the Genie, to be used for whatever the genie desires.

King Leopold then takes his new friend to the palace, where the Genie meets Regina, Leopold's second wife, and Snow White. At his birthday party, the king praises his daughter as being like her mother, "the fairest of them all". The Genie comforts an unhappy Regina who tells him of her husband's neglect. A few days after, Leopold calls the genie to his room and tells him that he has found his wife's diary and knows her heart belongs to another man who had given her a mirror as a gift. He wants the Genie to find this man for him, but, unbeknownst to Leopold, the Genie is that man.

The Genie, in turn, is told by Henry, Regina's father, that Regina has been locked inside her room under Leopold's orders. The Genie manages to get inside with a box that Henry brought him to give Regina, and discovers a poisonous snake, the Agrabahn viper, in that box. Regina lies to him that she is going to commit suicide using the snake to end her unhappiness, but the Genie stops her and suggests killing Leopold with it instead, which was always Regina's plan to get the Genie to kill her husband.

Later that night, she has the Genie go into King Leopold's room with the viper and put it in the sleeping King Leopold's bed. King Leopold wakes up just as the snake is about to bite him. The Genie apologizes and confesses his love for the queen. Before he dies, King Leopold regrets that he had ever made his first wish, which ironically the Genie himself had warned King Leopold, that "all wishes come with a price."

Regina tells Snow White that she would not stop until she had revenge. She had never wanted to marry the king, and that Daniel, the man she loved, died because Snow did not keep her secret. Snow White reminds her that, in this battle between them, Regina had killed Snow White's father. As they had both lost one that they loved, could they not call an end to their animosity, but Regina refuses.

Trivia

 * The name "Leopold" is of Germanic origin derived from the words "leud" and "bald" that respectively mean "people" and "bold".