Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11058666-20141228031222/@comment-26116863-20150330041414

DavidTennantismyAngel wrote: Regina is to blame for Emma's dark heart. She cast the Dark Curse, which separated Em from her parents and condemned her to a life of isolation and heartbreak. Snow and Charming are trying to cover up their dirty deeds to save face, but you can't make that out to be worse than homicide. You really can't. It is honorable that Rumple and Regina want to start over and be heroes, but you can't think it's honorable that they feel like they have to kill people in order for that to be possible. I'm pretty sure that Snow and Charming have killed a few guards in the course of their selfish pursuits. They might have had a problem with Maleficent killing the two on the bridge, but generally they don't have a problem with it. The only reason we don't care is because they are anonymous stock characters.

I'm not trying to justify Gold's murderous ways, I just think that he's not of as purely evil intent as some would make him out to be. The characters are more complicated than that on this show. He might be backsliding, but it doesn't mean that he wants to conquer the world. It's perfectly possible that he would be happy once he was free from the dagger. Also, I think that he would have to be killed, again, to get rid of his dark one powers. That didn't really work out last time he tried it, so he's trying to do the next best thing; cleaving himself from the dagger and moving permanently to a land without magic.