1. Rumple values his family and being able to do whatever it takes to protect them by using power to keep them safe, and gain justice against those who wrong them.
2. Belle is a pacifist who values peace and harmony, no matter how terribly they have wronged her and/or Rumple. Sure, she may be quite naïve, but she grew up surrounded by fantasy and heroism in her books as her closest companions. How would you react differently growing up in her shoes?
3. They obviously both truly love each other more than anything in the world, and they are learning to accept each other’s flaws. Rumple has many, and Belle does too. Rumple’s flaws also carry the weight of over three hundred years of darkness and baggage. Belle will come around soon enough, probably by the end of 5x17, but acceptance takes time. While it’s easy to accept Rumple as a character from an audience perspective, of course, it would be a whole different story if we knew him in real life as a real person. Plus, we see more of him than even Belle on screen.
4. I side with both Rumple and Belle in their arguments over their values because I ship them together. I also am tired of hearing some fans call Belle an “adulteress” for that Will thing. It wasn’t exactly the right thing to do, it was a rebound, but it didn’t make her a horrible person either. She and Rumple were separated at the time, all they did was kiss a few times, and there was no suggestion that they ever slept together.
5. Belle’s reaction to her argument with Rumple in 5x16 was perfectly natural.
6. I will always defend both of them because they are my babies. Any OOC choices they have made and/or make, and/or things they say, like “I love this dagger,” and “I don’t know if I ever want to fix this” from 3B onward are the fault of the bad writers, not Rumple and Belle. For the most part, otherwise, they were in character in 5x16, though.