Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-25355646-20150103235209/@comment-5106672-20150204200613

Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: You can see it on her face whenever she talked about Leopold and her marriage. He may not have raped her in the traditional "I'm going to hold you down and force myself on you while you scream for mercy" way, but he definitely had sex with her, which I highly doubt she wanted or even initiated. That is the very definition of spousal rape, which has been illegal for over 40 years now... So yeah, Leopold raped Regina.

The only thing I can see in her face is dissatisfaction, which is something we can all agree she felt about her marriage, one way or another.

With this said, Screwball Ninja wrote an essay about that and since she expressed my exact thoughts on the matter, I am going to only write down the most important part: Once Upon A Time is a narration. When the addressee of a narration needs to assume or know something, the narration itself tells them. It might be a hint or downright give away, but it is there. We have had two or three instances of Regina openly showing discomfort over feeling forlorn after her marriage and feeling trapped alone inside the palace; we have had none even hinting at domestic abuse. One would argue that once you set in motion a plan for "the other man" (i.e.: the Genie) to kill your husband, if you had something as motivational as marital rape to get him to do your dirty work, you would use it. Has any of that been hinted either to the Genie or to Tinkerbell? N O P E. Therefore, as of the OUAT canon narration goes, no rape has happened – indeed it was hinted that Leopold shoewd little to no interest in Regina, quite the opposite.

Oh, also neither Eva nor Cora ever hinted anything about Leopold being abusive in any way.

Oh, btw, the narrative reasoning above does apply to Belle, too. Have either pre-marital sex or virginity been directly implied? Nope. Has Belle's tendency towards keeping her virtue intact been implied in any way? Nope. Has a certain degree of physical attraction between the two of them been implied? Hell yes, with all the smooches and cuddles and carresses and Belle acting quite seductive (chastely, but seductive nonetheless) towards Rumple. Has a certain physical (as in spatial) closeness which could give the occasion been implied? Yes, they slept in the same bed at some point. So, if the narrators wanted us to think that virginity till marriage was important to Belle, they would have dropped a hint.