Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4839682-20130723082014/@comment-22525977-20130926070458

Regarding Henry's therapy: Regina had no clue about the fairytale thing or that Henry knew about the curse until Emma told her in the pilot.

Henry also has legitimate behavioral problems. He steals his teacher's credit car and charges almost three hundred dollars to it so he can find his birth mother—and then he uses it for, presumably, bus fare as well as to buy a taxi to get him to where his birth mother is. He runs away from home repeatedly and, after Emma shows up at least, frequently skips school. His relationship with his mother is in shambles—and keep in mind that, until the pilot, Regina has no idea why Henry thinks she's evil. It isn't because she's a bad mother because she isn't: she very, very obviously loves her son, is very invested in his safety and wants him to succeed in life, and is well within the reasonable limits of discipline (if anything, she errs on the side of letting Henry get away with too much).

(Bear in mind that if Regina were truly the totalitarian Henry makes her out to be, Emma would be slapped with a restraining order so fast it would make her head spin. Closed adoption, remember.)

The point is, from Regina's perspective, Henry is a troubled boy who needs help that she doesn't know how to give—and she puts him in therapy, which is probably the best thing she could have done for him.

Now, if she had found out that Henry knew about the curse and put him in therapy with the intent to make him doubt his own mind, that would be horrible—it's gaslighting, it's emotional abuse—but that's not what happened. What happened is that Regina put Henry in therapy for completely legitimate reasons and when Archie found out about the fairytale thing, that naturally became his top priority—but he didn't tell Regina about it. She had to find out from Emma.

/long rant

I don't think of Swan Queen in terms of Good vs. Evil (largely because Emma is not "good" and Regina is not "evil"—they are both very morally grey, even though Regina is definitely sitting on the darker end of the spectrum). In my head it's more two people with a lot of emotional baggage finding ways to heal together. Which got shot to hell by the end of the first season, but that's what fanfiction is for.

(Now, if their relationship improves in season three to the point that they're no longer willing to leave the other to die, I'll be all over that. But I don't have much hope of that happening.)