The Dark Side of the Queen
I think by this point anyone who has read my posts know I’m a fan of Regina. But there are a couple of aspects of her character that remain ugly and hard for people to reconcile. You can love a character and not love everything they’ve done. Regina is a mass murderer and a rapist. And i want to talk about rape in the context of Regina’s character.
Let us start with a plain text reading of the show. Regina is a rapist. Whatever walking back A&E try to do, you simply can not read either her actions in the Heart is a Lonely Hunter or Land without Magic as anything other than non-consensual sex. An argument can be made that she isn’t raping him in Storybrooke, but it is also a case of highly dubious consent given that she knows he did not consent to their EF relationship and his lack of a heart. But her rape of Graham itself has broader context that helps us understand her character.
Before I get too deeply into what I think rape means in the broader context of her character I want to say something about Graham. Graham was not an innocent. Part of the reason we have such a positive view of him was because he was a sweet and thoughtful person in Storybrooke, but just like Ruby is not all of Red’s personhood, Graham is not all of the Huntsman. The Huntsman agreed, with very little reason, to murder a teenage girl. He agreed with Regina that he had no compassion for human beings. He was wrong but I highly doubt Snow would have been the first human he killed for him to be able to agree to the contract with such little thought. He didn’t kill Snow because Snow turned out to be an exceptional person. But he was no innocent.
That said, it’s not excuse or justification for her turning him into a sex slave.
So why? Well, I think the first thing we have to take as a given is that young Regina would never have dreamed of touching someone against their will. She would never have wanted to be touched that way herself. Rape is about control, and the loss of it. Regina wouldn’t have wanted to do that to someone else until she herself lost control. She wouldnt’ have treated someone else like an object until she herself was made into an object.
The subject of marital rape hasn’t been addressed on the show, and I honestly don’t think it will be. It’s an 8PM family show and it’s just not a subject I see them want to touch outside of implication. But one thing is clear. Leopold knew Regina didn’t herself consent to the marriage. He knew she was deeply unhappy in it. And I think it is entirely unjustifiable to believe that the King never had sex with his wife. For no other reason that he’d have wanted a spare to go with his heir. Regina shows, early in the marriage, all the signs of PTSD from Daniel’s murder, but I also think you can read a lot of her behavior as that of someone who has been psychologically and sexually violated.
Now Leopold likely had every right, in the culture of the EF, to force himself on his wife. Marital rape laws in our own society only date to the last 30 years or so and prosecutions under them are incredibly rare. I think most of fandom is ready to admit that Leopold was a creep–a man willing to marry his ex-fiance’s daughter less than a third his age–but I’ve also seen people willing to excuse it in the cultural context.
And if we’re going to give cultural context than I want to point out that Regina had every right to Graham’s body. She was an absolute ruler. Being taken to the Queen’s bedchamber could be an honor in that context. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral. Just because it is within someone’s rights doesn’t make it right. And just because she was raped doesn’t excuse her becoming a rapist.
This is part of a cycle of abuse. Patterns that Regina often repeats until she recognizes them and tries to stop.
Rape is about control. For Regina she has felt so out of control for so long. In so much pain, and she can’t figure out why she seems to be the only one in pain. The control issues play out in other realms of her personality. Most importantly in the reckless disregard for her own safety. Suicide is often about the victim trying to exert some control over their own life. Regina is too much of a fighter to actually give up the fight–that’s one character trait that made her attractive to Rumpel as a curse caster–but she does not behave as if she considers her own life worth saving. Both as the Evil Queen and as Regina.
This recklessness is seen in small ways–walking across an ice bridge she doesn’t know to be safe–and massive such as her repeated attempts to achieve redemption through self sacrifice. "Let me die as Regina.“ She doesn’t hide or protect herself when she knows an angry mob is likely coming for her. She goes after Snow alone on the battlefield despite having access to guards and surely knowing that it is personally dangerous.. an act that leads to her capture and near execution. The fact that this self-loathing/self-destruction continues even after she has a family is also very interesting.
I think fundamentally Regina doesn’t think her own life is worth anything. And some small part of her–perhaps even what is left of the young woman who would never murder and never rape–wants to destroy herself before she causes more pain and more hurt.
