Loved your essay on Regina's feeling about Belle. any thoughts on how Snow feels about Belle or headcanon why they never became real friends?
ETA: This is the Regina and Belle essay anon referred to!
Some of that I semi-covered in my fic Life in Black and White. But have an essay anyway, because it’s been two seasons since then and I have feelings. Please take this with a pinch of salt: the show’s characterisation isn’t remotely consistent, and so it’s hard to pull the strings together into a coherent argument.
So generally, Belle and Snow come from a similar place. They have the same black-and-white start point - understandable given the general FTL culture of light vs dark - and they’re both Disney princesses. They both believe in love overcoming all, and any scene where they do connect is based on that.
They’re also both a little obsessive about their faith in heroics. But their definition of a hero, and how they try to live up to it in their daily lives, is where they fatally diverge. Ultimately, Belle believes in individual moral judgements, where Snow believes in the judgement of a group.
Belle’s point of view is fairly straight forward. She believes a hero saves everyone, and relies their own individual judgement on the best course of action. That best course of action should harm as few people as possible, and benefit as many as possible. Self-sacrifice is encouraged if it saves someone else. Belle is can be stubbornly morally upright, and unwilling to bend or see another point of view. When she makes her moral judgement, she’s hard to dissuade, and has utter faith in her convictions. Only with the Gideon situation are we seeing that bend, love for her son being more important to her than being a hero or morally right all the time. But in her defence, she’s too smart to believe anyone is purely good or evil. She believes everyone should try and be good, not that people fall into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories from which they cannot deviate. She’s willing to judge based on the choices someone is making now, not on past behaviour - at least as far as morality goes, if not in terms of personal relationships.
Snow, on the other hand, believes a hero is loyal above all else, and defends their home and their loved ones first and foremost. Snow is more than willing to sacrifice someone who falls outside of those she personally values, if it will save someone who falls within that inner circle. She relies heavily on the moral judgements of others, her team, and is susceptible to group-think. Her team isn’t just her loved ones, though - unlike Rumple, who will make choices based on their effect on him and his family alone. Snow’s team is the ‘heroes’, with all the moral judgement that term implies. However, that label is not earned via self-sacrifice or moral strength, nor is it lost through vice or hurting others. No, the ‘heroes’ are those who work with Snow and Snow’s family. Morality, for Snow, is based on obedience to the group’s moral judgement. Anyone who works opposed to the group’s interests - such as Rumple, frequently - is a ‘villain’, and will be treated as such until they come into conformity. Anyone already firmly in the group - i.e. her family, and extended family - gets a very liberal carte blanche. Anyone outside gets little consideration at all.
Now, often there is a genuine moral aspect involved: the ‘heroes’ will be fighting at least nominally to protect others, and the ‘villains’ will threaten the safety of everyone, not just Snow’s family. However, consider Gideon. Gideon only threatened Emma’s life, and he did so because he professed a belief that by taking her powers, he could save hundreds of children. Snow never seemed to question Emma’s willingness to kill Gideon for a moment, despite the moral issues at stake. Emma, the ‘heroes’ group leader - the Saviour - had decided to kill Gideon. She didn’t stop to question whether there was a better answer. Neither did she consider the question of saving the Dark Realm’s other lost children. The ‘hero’ group’s judgement was that it was right to kill ‘villainous’ Gideon to save Emma. Morally, therefore, that conclusion was correct.
For Snow, a decision is heroic by virtue of its decider being a hero; one does not become a hero by making heroic decisions. This is the same reasoning that allows her to excuse Hook’s actions carte blanche - he is a ‘hero’ now by virtue of working with her family, so his decisions are all heroic by virtue of that status. The cart essentially goes before the horse.
However, for Belle one becomes a hero by making heroic choices, and one can lose that status by no longer making those choices. That’s what fuelled that horrid confrontation with Rumple in 6A - ‘that’s being too weak to be good’. She believes that everyone has the ability to make good choices, and bad ones. Her blindspot tends to be accepting that sometimes the cost of making the good choice is just too high, or that others’ morality can differ from hers without being invalid. It’s stubborn, sometimes even destructive, but it’s grounded in a deep moral conviction and an admirable desire to do right by everyone, not just her loved ones. Her decisions are always on her own moral judgement, whether they be right or wrong.
Best example: think of the Bear and the Bow. Belle is with the heroes until they will sacrifice Rumple. She refuses to stand by them then, and not just because Rumple is her husband, but because he is a victim of Emma’s machinations and now left weak and alone. Once she opposes the ‘hero’ group’s judgement and goes to find Rumple herself, she is outside Snow’s willingness to help or protect her. Snow doesn’t offer to help, and they have no more contact that episode. Belle then helps Rumple, until he’s willing to skip town and leave them to face Emma alone, despite his having helped create the problem they’re now facing. Whether or not you agree with her choice to walk back to town alone, she made it based on her own moral reasoning: it wasn’t right to abandon Rumple in the woods, and give Emma a free pass while vilifying Rumple despite their both having been the Dark One. But it also wasn’t right for Rumple to skip town and refuse to help, abandoning everyone else without his help or expertise. In both situations, Belle made and followed through with her own moral judgement, despite the opinions or wishes of those around her, even her loved ones.
Being a hero for Belle is about stepping up and doing the right thing regardless of the cost, and it’s an option open to anyone at any time. Being a hero for Snow is about being a part of a group of ‘heroes’, and conforming to their reasoning while protecting the group members at any cost.
That’s why they don’t have a better relationship: Snow’s a conformist, Belle’s an individualist, and that’s like oil and water.
TMI Tuesday - ask me anything!
