Henry Mills/Swan/?
and the most interesting family tree ever
All right. I'm obsessed. I've been watching too much Once Upon a Time and now I keep analyzing and re-analyzing it in my brain. After all, there are so many things to analyze! On the upside, it motivated me to write my first blog post of the week before Friday this week! (Well, at least I started Wednessday. I was almost ready to post this last night, but I decided to take another day to fully explore everything. Yes, I know, it's Friday again, and this is still my first blog post, so the exclamation point no longer applies. But I was so close to posting this last night!) I think one of the easiest ways to analyze many of the relationships in the show is to analyze Henry's unspeakably convoluted family tree (because almost everyone in the show is somehow related to Henry). That boy has just about the weirdest, coolest, most messed up yet epic family tree you could ever dream up. I'm not sure of his last name, actually. I suppose it's probably Mills, because he was raised by and is legally the child of Regina. I think that's right. Oh, by the way, in case you didn't read my previous blog post on Once Upon a Time, I'm just putting a disclaimer right up front that this thing is going to be rife with spoilers, and so you should probably just not read it unless you've watched as much of the series as I have. Presently, I have one episode left of season three, part one (which would be episode eleven). For some odd, crazy reason, I somehow decided at the beginning of the week to save it for Friday. Why did I ever decide that? (But hey, that's tonight now. Heheheheeheee....)
But anyways, Henry and his lineage. So, we have Henry Mills. He was raised by his adoptive mother Regina Mills, also known as the Evil Queen of the fairy tale land, the woman who cursed nearly all of said land, bringing it more or less into our world. In doing so, she created a hole in her heart, which Henry filled, and he is the only person she has truly loved since she killed her dad to enact the curse (we'll get to her dad in the grandparents' layer). She isn't necessarily the most adept parent, and she has been rather strict and at times has come off as uncaring, but she does truly care for him, and he is really all she has. She has sacrificed a lot to care for and protect him. Regina is not married (see later note on King Leopold) and so technically Henry has no adoptive dad, but Regina has had several different "romances" of varying degrees. She controlled both Sheriff Graham/the Huntsman and newspaper writer Sidney Glass/the Magic Mirror/the Genie with false romances, but she didn't truly love either, and of those two only the Mirror voluntarily loved her. She did truly love Daniel, a stable boy, but he was killed by her mother many years before Henry was born. Actually, Daniel was killed when Henry's grandmother (Snow) was still a young girl, as a matter of fictitious fantastical fact. If Tinkerbell is correct, then Regina was meant to fall in love with Robin Hood, in which case he is perhaps closest to being the adoptive dad figure for Henry. If Regina and Robin did get together, it would make Robin's son Henry's half brother and the deceased Marian Henry's step mother. Sort of. Oh, and I nearly forgot one of the most important ones: Regina was forced to marry Snow White's dad, King Leopold, by both her mother and societal expectations. So, yes, she was married, though not of her own volition, before she convinced the Genie, with whom she sort of had an affair, to kill Snow's dad. Can't believe I forgot that! And that's important, too, because she is Snow's wicked stepmother. Which means she will be popping back up in the great-grandparents' layer.
Next we have Henry's birth parents. His birth mother is Emma Swan, the unwitting magical connection between the fairy tale world and the 'real' world and the breaker of the curse (which she does by kissing Henry's forehead, which is true love's kiss--it's nice that they included that, because true love can be found between parent and child and not just between romantic couples). She's a woman who's been somewhat confused and lost her whole life, but when Henry finds her and brings her to Storybrooke, things get better not only for the town but also for her. In a way, Henry fills her heart almost in the same way he does for Regina. Emma's heart's not empty in the same way Regina's is, but she's more lost as to who she is in life and what she's doing.
Then we have Henry's biological dad, who was revealed in one of the most epic moments of the series so far to be not just Neal, Emma's old partner in crime from her misdirected youth, but also Baelfire, the long-lost son of Rumpelstiltskin (once again, we'll get to him in the grandparents' layer). Goodness, that was such an epic moment! Oh, that moment when Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin has cashed in the favor Emma owes him (which he held onto for nearly two seasons, since season one, episode four) and had her track down his son, and then she finds him and there's this huge moment when everything clicks into place and she realizes that Neal, the man who heh-hem led to Henry, is actually Rumpelstiltskin's long-lost son, Baelfire. It's just like, everyone looks at each other and realizes everything and how they're all connected and a family and it really couldn't have been a better moment of realization for all four of them (Emma, Bae, Henry (who doesn't get it at first because he was under the impression that his dad was dead), and Rumpel). Plus, they get to be a family! And it makes for a really neat branch on Henry's tree. I think we all love that moment dearly.
Henry's dad Bae grew up in the fairy tale world but had a childhood he worked hard to forget because it was kind of ruined by his dad Rumpel becoming the Dark One, which kind of led to his dad manipulating and even murdering random people (well, basically anyone who threatened his son in any way). When he and Emma first got together, he didn't have any clue who she was. It was just "fate" (a term used by the characters to refer to the cunning plots of some very clever writers who carefully weave their wondrous, intricate tale) that two magical people from the same magical world happened to find each other when they were accidentally both stealing the same car.
Because I went through all of Regina's relationships in her paragraph, I suppose I ought to go through all of Emma's and Neal's as well. I think their lists are a little shorter, but still worth mentioning. It is particularly worth mentioning that Emma had a brief... something... with Captain Hook. Well, he was basically hitting on her, practically since they met, and she was ignoring him until after he saved her dad's life, after which he was able to convince her to kiss him once. Hook is now madly in love with Emma, which he admitted in the Echo Caves (where everyone had to admit a deep, dark secret in order to get Neal out, and Hook's was that Emma was the first woman he had loved since Milah, Rumpelstiltskin's wife. Which, by the way, means Hook will also crop up in the relationships of the grandparents' layer.). This makes him Henry's mom's... vague associate? Well, anyways.
And because I mentioned Emma's little mini-relationship, I should probably also mention Neal's "fiancé", though she's actually less relevant despite having been with Neal longer than Emma was 'with' Hook. Tamara was just a dirty snake of a woman who felt no love for Neal and was manipulating him the entire time she knew him to get what she wanted, a chance to destroy magic, and the whole time she was also closely seeing someone else, a dude named Greg. She's sort of Henry's wicked not-quite-stepmother, or the closest thing he has to a classic wicked stepmother. She also kidnaps Henry and somewhat unwittingly gives him to Peter Pan (who we will see in the great-grandparents' layer. There's good reason to work through all this mess.) The lost boys shoot her with an arrow to take Henry because she and Greg aren't happy when they find out they don't actually get to destroy magic. She's laying on the beach slowly and painfully dying when Rumpel comes up and questions her about Henry. Afterwards he kindly puts her out of her misery. Well, after he heals her so she can answer his questions. But really, nobody's sad when she dies. Besides, haven't people learned not to mess with Rumpelstiltskin's son by now? And Emma and Neal belong together. I know some people feel like Emma and Hook should be together, but I disagree. Emma and Bae are Henry's parents, after all, and they just need to be together. They're meant to be, in my opinion. So, I think that's all the relationships Henry's biological parents have had that are mentioned in the show.
Which brings us to the grandparents' layer, where the real mess starts to show up. You didn't think that the parents were the most convoluted part, did you? Well, if you did, you didn't realize that the parents' layer was just setting up for the intricacies of the grandparents' layer. I suppose we should go in the same order we went with the parents, though it is tempting to start with Emma this time, because we find out about her parents being Henry's grandparents first. Na, we'll start with Regina, to help things stay in some vague semblance of a logical order.
So, Regina, Henry's adoptive mother, was the child of Cora, a wicked woman of magic--more wicked than Regina--who clawed her way up from being a miller's daughter to becoming queen through her cunning, her literal heartlessness, and a deal or two with Rumpelstiltskin. Regina's dad was the not exceedingly intelligent but rather kind prince who was promised to Cora by his dad if she could spin a tower-full of straw into gold in a night. Regina loved her dad dearly, and in fact he was pretty much the only person she loved after Daniel died and before Henry became Regina's, though she kind of treated him as her servant. She sacrificed his heart to unleash the curse and in doing so created the hole in her heart which was later filled by Henry. Oh, and did I mention she named Henry after her dad, the late Prince Henry (well, I guess king, because Cora became queen and all)? So, Henry senior was the hole in Regina's heart and Regina named her child Henry (junior) because he filled the same spot her dad left open. So Henry's mom killed his grandpa and then named her child after his grandparent she killed. 'Nyways.
Cora obtained Prince Henry, the man she never loved but took to gain power, in the classic tale of the miller's daughter and Rumpelstiltskin, that tale I think we were all waiting to see for pretty much the whole series up until then. I had begun to wonder if the closest we were going to get to the original Rumpelstiltskin tale was that episode where Cinderella promised him her child, but I was glad they brought in the tale more truly this way, though I was mildly disappointed when Rumpel told Cora his name practically right up front rather than making her guess (which was really the whole point of him having such a lengthy and odd name in the first place of the tale), but the relationship they had more than made up for that in terms of coolness of the storyline. That's right, Rumpelstiltskin had a relationship with Cora, the mom of Henry's adoptive mom. Which means that, because I'm doing all relationships, Rumpelstiltskin gets to be in Henry's grandparents' layer twice. While Rumpel was teaching Cora to spin straw into gold, they fell in love. Cora didn't really know any magic before she met Rumpel, and he taught her magic, but really, in a way, she was more evil than even Rumpel, even though he was (and still is, though now he's less dark) the Dark One.
The deal Cora made with Rumpel promised, in keeping with the classic tale, that she would give him her firstborn child in exchange for him teaching her to spin the straw to gold (though I still haven't figured out why Rumpel wants to collect babies. He wants his son back, yes, but I don't know why he wants all these random people's children). However, after their romance, Cora planned to not marry Prince Henry and to instead run off with Rumpel out of love, and as a romantic gesture, Rumpel amended the deal to say that it was his own child she would owe him. Cora was truly in love, but she was also overcome with a dark, yearning love for the power of which she had been deprived as a poor miller's daughter. (Both Cora and Rumpel had a good bit of trouble with nobles looming over them. Then both of them killed the nobles who had loomed over them, and each took power in their own way.) Because of her desperate lust for power, Cora magically tore out her own heart so she couldn't feel her deep love for Rumpel. She chose not to elope with him and so instead married the prince she didn't love for power, and these became Henry's grandparents via Regina. Rumpel would have been owed Regina as his daughter through the deal if Cora had not tricked him and invalidated the deal, so he is almost Henry's grandpa that way, but he's more so Henry's grandpa the other way. In a way, Rumpel sort of still got Regina, because she became his magical student. He seems to be in constant pursuit of her and they are both constantly trying to manipulate one another and get the better of each other. They're continuously trying to spite each other.
Anyways, while I felt bad for Rumpel getting stood up and all, in the end I'm rather glad he did because he's so much better with Belle. Cora shared his darkness, but Belle brings out his light. While I came to understand Cora's reasons for her malevolence through this episode, I still wasn't really sad when she died, because she truly sank her own ship, sawing hole after hole in its deck with her own hands. She had opportunities to make better choices but she didn't, and her choice to become heartless and her choices made out of that heartlessness led her to her depressing, lonely, and cruel life, and it was really no one's fault but her own. It's just unfortunate how her bad choices hurt Regina and Henry sr., and briefly Rumpel, but he got even in a way that I didn't necessarily approve of but one that worked to get what needed to happen done, because we need Mr. Gold to stay alive and we needed Cora to die. It was a little sad, though, for that split moment when Cora had her heart back in when she realized that it would have been enough to have love in her life and not gobble up power like a ravenous wolf. Her choices particularly hurt Regina because not only did Cora make her childhood beyond miserable and kill her true love, she also turned her daughter evil and caused her to cause hurt and pain and in so doing hurt and damage herself, and it took her a very long time to repair her life and she's even still trying to repair and improve things, and really some things in her life might be irreparable. But, yeah, Cora was, well, heartless.
Well, that's one set of grandparents covered. Now for the other... well, just two more sets, really, because I don't know anything about the parents of any of Regina's "loves", not Daniel, nor King Leopold, nor the Magic Mirror, nor--oh, wait, I do know the Huntsman's in a sense. He was raised by wolves, if I recollect properly. So Henry has a few wolves very loosely involved in his adoptive grand-parentage. Hey, maybe he's even related to Red Riding-hood, for all we know. I also don't know anything about Robin Hood's parents.
So, now we come to Emma's parents, who were lost to her until the curse was broken at the end of season one, when, much to her surprise, she found out that they were Snow White and Prince Charming. As it so happened, she had already been living with her mom. And they also happen to be about the same age as her, as a result of the curse. Henry's got some of the youngest grandparents ever, who are still in their twenties. Actually, they're thinking about having another child, which would be Henry's aunt or uncle if they did.
Several of these people are of the age that they could still have children if they wanted, and many of them are thinking about it. Hey, even Rumpelstiltskin, who's, like, hundreds of years old or something, is still thinking about it, being as he's not aged since his (first) son was in his early teens. Oh, and his son, Neal/Bae, Henry's dad, is also like hundreds of years old because he stayed young in Neverland. Henry has a lot of old/young/abnormally aged relatives. But we're still on Princess Snow and Prince Charming, or Mary Margaret and David, or Snow and David, since his real name actually is David. Henry has a lot of royalty in his blood, too. Regina's a queen by marriage, her mom, Cora, was also a queen by marriage, her dad was a king by birth, Emma's hereditarily a princess, Snow White is a princess who should have been a queen--and was briefly, after she married Charming--Charming/James/David isn't actually a royal by blood, but his brother was adopted by king George, and he took his place after he died---then Rumpelstiltskin was never actually royal, per say, but he did live in a pretty awesome castle, Charming was betrothed to Abigail, the daughter of King Midas... But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, we have Princess/Queen Snow White, and Prince/King David "Charming", and they are the first grandparents Henry ever knows of or meets, because his adoptive mother's dad was dead and her mom was still in the fairytale world until she came through a portal to attempt to take over everything and got killed by Rumpelstiltskin, Henry's other grandpa.
Henry's family kills each other a lot. His mom, Regina, killed the Huntsman, Henry's almost-adoptive dad, and King Leopold (albeit by manipulation of the genie), who was her husband and so would've been Henry's adoptive dad, and she killed Henry sr., Henry's grandpa and her dad, and she more-or-less 'killed' Snow, and she even technically killed Henry himself, because his heart did stop after he ate the apple turnover Regina had intended for Emma, and her royal guards killed Ruth, Charming's mother, Henry's great-grandma. Then we have Rumpelstiltskin, Henry's grandpa, who killed his own wife Milah, Henry's grandma, and Cora (albeit by manipulation of Snow White), Henry's other grandma, and he nearly killed Hook multiple times, Henry's almost step-grandpa, and Tamara, Bae's treacherous fiancé, and at one point, Lacey, who's like the anti-Belle (antebellum? No, just anti-Belle, hehe), convinced Rumpel to attempt to kill Henry himself, but obviously, he stopped. Then there's Cora, who killed Eva, Snow's mother and Henry's great-grandmother, and also Daniel, Regina's first love and a plausible adoptive dad for Henry, and she nearly killed King Xavier before he convinced her not to, but he's Henry's other great-grandpa. Then we have Hook, Henry's mom's associate and his almost-step-grandpa, who nearly killed Rumpel, Henry's grandpa twice over. Then we have Snow, Henry's grandma, who killed Cora, Henry's other grandma, to save Rumpel, Henry's grandpa. Yep, they're all just one big happy family.
So, anyways, we have Snow White and David Charming and they're the most warm-and-fuzzy of Henry's grandparents, probably, but somehow what was meant to be their paragraph kept getting preempted by a plethora of digressions. So, here is a new paragraph to help me focus. They probably also do the most grandparently things with Henry, like when Charming starts giving Henry "prince lessons", because Henry's a prince, and even when Snow was being Henry's teacher under the curse, she made birdhouses and such with him, which is rather grandmotherly.
As to their relationships, neither of them ever really, truly loved anyone besides one another, but since I'm nitpicking every relationship I can think of, here goes. When Rumpelstiltskin made a deal with David to have him impersonate his twin brother James, he became inadvertently betrothen to Princess Abigail, the daughter of King Midas (which puts another famous gold-maker in the family). While they never actually married, after the curse struck, and after David awoke from his coma (which he was in because Regina's guards nearly killed him, too), Regina made it so that David was married to Kathryn, which was Abigail in the 'real' world.
During this curse-stricken time, Snow had her own thing, which was perhaps a little more than Emma's thing with Hook but which was less than Neal's thing with Tamara. The thing that makes her thing really weird is not only that she had a thing while she was married though she didn't know it and she never would have had a thing if she had known that she was married, but also her thing is extra weird because it was with Dr. Frankenstein. I can't say I particularly like him. Well, actually, I just plain don't like him. I mean, the whole "I want my name to be associated with life!" thing was nice, but just, the way he went about it, and all that, it's just... creepy. He's really a pretty creepy dude. He got his brother killed, accidentally, yes, but unnecessarily still, and then he let his brother's zombie kill their dad. But he does bring some not-at-all-much-needed-but-still-rather-interesting diversity to Henry's family tree. He is, after all, the only character, albeit only marginally included, from the Black and White World, or whatever you want to call his little realm.
So now we get to move on to the character who is probably my favorite of Henry's grandparents, Neal/Bae's dad, Rumpelstiltskin! Yes, I guess we touched on him before, because of his relationship and near-elopement with Cora, Regina's mother, but this is where he fits most concretely into Henry's tree. This is where he is actually Henry's relation by blood, because he actually parented Bae, who actually parented Henry. In this same way, Milah would be Henry's biological paternal grandmother.
While Belle is probably the main driving force in Rumpel's self improvement (one could say that, at times, Belle, and even Lacey, has more power over the Dark One than his dagger, for good, or, in the case of Lacey, for evil (after all, Lacey very nearly drove Rumpel to kill Henry)), and Bae is a factor as well, Henry also significantly contributes to Rumpel becoming a good, kind, and caring man. Rumpel does genuinely care for his grandson Henry, despite the fact that all the while he's wrestling with the prophecy stating that Henry is to be Rumpel's undoing. I wonder if that prophecy's done yet or not. You could make the argument that Henry's already inadvertently been Rumpel's undoing in several ways. Really, the term "undoing" is very vague. It could be said to refer to Rumpel getting trapped in Pandora's box, or to Henry's being part of Rumpel's family leading him to be good and use his evil magic less and in better ways, thus making him less so "the Dark One", or to Rumpel's quest to save Henry causing Rumpel to stop constantly thinking only of how to save himself and making him willing to actually sacrifice himself, making him less the coward he always was, which is part of his former identity, or just simply Henry being Rumpel's emotional undoing because he, like Belle, made Rumpel feel and care and make a choice to follow love more than his own powers.
Rumpelstiltskin/Gold's most significant romantic relationship is without question Belle. In fact, I think they might get married at some point in the show. If Belle and Rumpel do get married, which I very much hope they eventually do, and even have a child, which I also think would be lovely, then Belle would be Henry's kind step-grandmother and their child would be Bae's half-brother or sister and Henry's half/step (I'm not sure which) aunt or uncle. In this case Rumpel's second child would only be a few hundred years younger than his first. Gotta love magic!
Then, we have Milah, Rumpel's wife. She ran off on Rumpel with a pirate while Bae was young, and this pirate is named Captain Hook. In case you forgot in the fifteen or so paragraphs in between, Hook was listed in the Parents & Such paragraphs as Henry's biological mom, Emma's vague acquaintance/thing, and here he is once more, in the grandparents' section, as Milah's... boyfriend is the nearest term. Or "affair" if you prefer. I should also note that Hook is among the characters who is a few hundred years old, having been in Neverland a while, and he actually even knew Rumpelstiltskin before he became the Dark One, which was quite some time ago. They weren't very nice to each other, to put it lightly. To put it not lightly, when Hook first took away Rumpel's wife Milah, he challenged him to a duel over her, which was cruel and unfair because Rumpel was hobbled and could hardly stand on his own without his cane, much less have half a flaming snowball's chance at winning in a sword duel against an able-bodied pirate. Rumpel, like any sane, not-honor-obsessed, healthily afraid man, refused, and Hook, cackling malevolently, ran off with Rumpel's wife. Later, after Rumpel became the Dark One, he, like any insane, magical-power-obsessed, rather unhealthily vengeful (but still loveable,) man, came after Hook, challenged him to a duel Hook couldn't possibly win against a magical, unkillable being, and Rumpel was about to rip out Hook's heart and kill him when Milah awkwardly walked in. After some thought, Rumpel left Hook be, then ripped out his not-legally-but-practically ex-wife's heart and crushed it in front of the man who stole her to make him live with the pain of losing her, and it worked, because Hook was empty and lonely for many years, much like Rumpel.
I think that covers all of Henry's known grandparents. So, before moving on to the further-intricate layer of Henry's great-grandparents, I think we all need a quick, short recap. So. Henry's adoptive mother, who raised him, is Regina. He has no definitive adoptive dad, but sort of's include King Leopold, Sheriff Graham, Sidney Glass, Robin Hood, and Daniel (in no particular order). His birth mother is Emma Swan and his birth dad is Neal/Baelfire. His biological grandparents are Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumpelstiltskin, and Milah. His adoptive grandparents are Prince Henry and Cora. That's just in brief, minus the extraneous relationships. So now, for his great grandparents, following the previously established order.
Cora's mother is not yet identified, so far as I know, and her dad is known only as the Miller. Henry's first great-grandpa is a lazy drunk, as far as we've seen, and he leaves Cora to deal with his messes. He seems careless. His family is impoverished and makes their living selling flour to the royals, and Cora detests this life--she is filled with bitterness. Then we have Prince Henry's parents. We also don't know his mother, but we do know his dad. Henry sr's dad is the King to whom Cora boasts of her ability to spin straw into gold. He is named King Xavier and he is quite manipulative and devious. After Cora makes all the gold in the tower and earns the hand of Henry sr and makes her plot to run off with Rumpel, she goes to Xavier to rip out his heart and kill him (a two-step process), but he tricks her with his words. It is from him that Cora and later Regina got their line, "love is weakness". He convinces Cora to rip out her own heart so she can have the power and wealth of being Queen. If one really wanted to play the blame game, one could trace much of the evil in the antagonists of the series back to Xavier in this moment. Going all the way back, Xavier, Zoso, and Rumpelstiltskin's dad can be pinned as the three primary sources of evil of which we know in this series, though obviously things go even further back, and we can't just blame these three figures, though it is tempting. But one of the huge themes of the series is that no villain is purely evil and that everyone has motive and some good inside them that has been twisted and hidden by something. Still, thus far, Henry's great-grandparents aren't really that great. It doesn't get much better, I'm sorry to say.
Well, in the interest of fully exploring all extremely tangential relationships, I can go on with the huntsman's family briefly here. In the grandparents' section, I cited that this 'love interest' of Regina's was raised by wolves. I don't precisely know who the wolves' parents were, in case you were wondering, but I'd wager it was more wolves. (To quote Rumpelstiltskin in one of his very sweet, earlier romantic moments with Belle, that one was a quip, dearie ;)
Next, we have Snow White's parents. They are perhaps the best documented of all Henry's great-grandparents. Snow's mother was Queen Eva, who grew into a kind, gentle, fair, and much-loved queen, teaching her daughter to always do the good, right thing and to strive to be "guided by love", yet who I think was also the same as Princess Eva, the snarky, stuck-up young woman who meanly tripped Cora when she was carrying sacks of flour into their castle, causing Cora to lose wages her family desperately needed and humiliating her in public, which did not sit well with Cora's ego. Really, this early Eva could be traced as a cause in the evil that filled the main antagonists of the series along with Xavier. She learned from her mistakes, though, and became kind and gentle, teaching her daughter Snow the same after she rudely snapped at their servant, Johanna, who became something of a mother to Snow after Eva died. Despite this change, Cora never stopped hating her, and eventually she murdered her and tried to corrupt her daughter Snow in the process. In a way, she succeeded, though her success was much delayed, and it lead to Cora's own death. You see, Cora tried to corrupt Snow by giving her a candle that could trade one life for another, which she could use to save her mother, but in doing so she would murder someone else. Snow doesn't give in to the evil and use it on her mother, but many years later, after the breaking of the curse, she uses the candle to trade Cora's life for Rumpelstiltskin's, putting a dark blemish on her heart. Henry's family has a lot of conflict within itself. Then, Snow's dad was the benevolent but perhaps misguided and somewhat oblivious/rather insensitive King Leopold. He was basically a kind man, as we can see when he frees the genie, but he is insensitive, for example, in the way he speaks of his deceased wife in front of his new wife, making Regina feel much less special to him, which she is, but he shouldn't rub it in her face like he does. Oh, but by the way, here's Regina again. That's right. She's not just Henry's adoptive mother, she's also Henry's step-great-grandmother, because she's married to his great-grandpa. Yup. Told you Henry's family tree was convoluted.
On Charming's side of things, we again get the two-family effect brought by adoption. David was raised on a humble sheep farm by his mother Ruth. I don't think his dad is ever named, but we know he was Ruth's true love, and that he died while David was young. David isn't necessarily adopted, per say, but he's... taken to be a replacement child in some form. Well, a long time ago, King George made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin because his wife (who I believe is also unnamed and is dead by the time the action starts) was infertile, and so Rumpel went to David's family farm. His parents gave up his twin brother James to be the king's son in exchange for the success of their faltering farm. So then, when James dies, King George gets Rumpel to make another deal, and so David comes in to be the replacement James. Thus, Henry's great grandparents here are Ruth and her deceased husband, as well as King George and his deceased wife. This is also why David is mainly known as Prince James, even to the dwarfs, because that's who he's had to impersonate. Which means when he becomes King, he will be King James. I wonder if Once is going to go there, but I think it's probably too historical for them to do. That would make him a real-world king of England, but he's not in the real world.
From David's forced betrothal to Princess Abigail, Henry gets to have King Midas thrown into the tangential relationships of his family tree. Strictly speaking, he's not exactly Henry's great-grandpa, but he's the dad of the betrothed of Henry's grandpa, so that's a relation of some sort. Plus, this way, Henry gets to have two family members capable of magically producing gold--Midas and Rumpelstiltskin. Oh, wait, and Cora can, too. Or could. Before Henry's biological paternal grandpa (Rumpel) goaded his biological maternal grandma (Snow) into tricking his adoptive mother/step-great-grandmother (Regina) into killing her by replacing her heart, who was Henry's adoptive maternal grandmother (Cora). Cause that's just how things go on Once.
Lastly, we have the person we were probably all the most surprised to find out was related to Henry. Peter Pan. I think every single person watching the show was just thrown off their seats in awe when it was revealed that Pan is Rumpel's dear old dad. I mean, maybe you had half an inkling when the two of them showed up in Neverland, but I sure didn't. I think that as the shadow was pulling poor little adorable kid Rumpel away and as Rumpel's dad started to transform and was shrouded in a cloud of dark magic, my mom said something to the lines of, "he's not Peter Pan, is he?" but that was the soonest we guessed. My mom is very clever that way; she definitely put it together before I did. But man, when you see Peter smirking up at the innocent little Rumpel, you just go, "oh my GOSH!" and it's just like... woh. It's crazy. Man, Rumpel's dad was a selfish idiot. Poor little Rumpel. Little Rumpel was just so cute, wasn't he?
At least as a grown-up he did better than his dad (though he still didn't do great, but he's improving), and now he's got his son back and they're all happy again and he's learning to be not evil like he used to be and I love them as a family, Rumpel and Bae and his hopefully-soon-to-be (definitely non-wicked; rather, kind and good) stepmother Belle. And maybe Bae's younger sibling shall come along.
But Rumpel's dad, well, he is a piece of work. Sure people in Henry's family kill each other with abnormal frequency, but Pan is the only one who has ever knowingly and intentionally tried to kill Henry himself with no regrets or hesitation and very nearly succeeded. He is a manipulative, evil, man-turned-"child"-but-really-a-hundred-year-old-teenager-or-whatever-age-he-is-or-pretends-to-be-person, and he takes advantage of Henry's innocent belief and gullibility to convince his only-slightly-younger-than-him (or so it appears, because they are actually hundreds of years apart) great-grandchild to remove his own heart and give it to him so he can continue on living, not caring that he's stealing the life of his amazing and exceptional great-grandson. Pan is almost more heartless than Cora. I mean, he still physically has a heart, so far as I know, though I guess it needed replaced, but he acts so emotionlessly. Well, he does have emotions, anger not the least of them, he's just completely and utterly self-centered. At least Cora, in her own messed up way, tried to help Regina; everything we have ever seen Pan do has been for his own benefit. He even locks Henry in Pandora's box (after his son Rumpelstiltskin escaped from having been locked there by Pan) by switching bodies with Henry. So, if Henry swapped bodies with Pan, does that make Henry his own great-grandpa??
Well, at least, as far as I can think of, the convolutedness of Henry's family tree ends here. I don't know anything about Rumpel's mom or any of Pan's relationships. It is interesting to note that we don't know Peter Pan's real name; we only know that he's going by his son's doll's name. He tries to say that it's out of nostalgia, but I think it's just a further example of his manipulativeness. I think Peter goes by the name he does purely to get in Rumpel's head. After all, it is a very devious branch of Henry's family. I think Pan is that manipulative, that he would choose a name with the sole purpose of messing with his son in mind. Well, and it might also serve to make him sound less scary and intimidating and instead more familiar and approachable to the lost boys, especially if his real name is anything like Rumpelstiltskin's or Baelfire's. Just my theories.
Well, is that really all of it? I don't know. That's all that occurs to me at the moment, at least. My goodness this is longer than I thought it would be! But that's why I love Once Upon a Time so much. It is so cleverly done and so intricately woven and so carefully and precisely written with such immense attention to detail that crazy people like me can write lengthy and superfluously detailed analyses of just one character (albeit the most central character, besides Emma) and spend this much time and write this many words on thoroughly examining all that character's vague and tangential familial relationships. But really, I think we all kind of wish we had Henry's family tree. I mean, who else gets to have the Wicked Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Peter Pan, Snow White, Prince Charming, King Midas, Dr. Frankenstein, Belle, Captain Hook, Robin Hood, the Magic Mirror, Rumpelstiltskin again, the Wicked Queen again, Captain Hook again, and even more magical and royal and mysterious and plain-out awesome people in their family tree? I mean, all of those fantastical people, somehow or another able to be put in your family tree. That's pretty darn cool. Henry is a very special little dude. I believe Pan said something to Henry that was something like this: "you come from the best of light and the worst of dark, Henry." Of course, Henry's great-grandad said this to him in an effort to manipulate Henry in order to steal his life, but it is nonetheless a fairly good sum-up. All the fairytale characters seem to be somehow related to Henry, good and bad, and it's just so expertly done by the writers of Once. It's amazing, and it's a wonderful, addicting series. I think it's obvious I'm a wee bit obsessed with it. Beyond the violet mist, we've been doing some genealogical research, finding ourselves wrapped up in the glorious piles of aged pages of historic recordbooks amidst vast libraries betwixt towering expanses shelves filled with volumes of ancient knowledge, all to comprehend the remarkable family tree of one very special young boy from another realm.
Then we have Henry's biological dad, who was revealed in one of the most epic moments of the series so far to be not just Neal, Emma's old partner in crime from her misdirected youth, but also Baelfire, the long-lost son of Rumpelstiltskin (once again, we'll get to him in the grandparents' layer). Goodness, that was such an epic moment! Oh, that moment when Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin has cashed in the favor Emma owes him (which he held onto for nearly two seasons, since season one, episode four) and had her track down his son, and then she finds him and there's this huge moment when everything clicks into place and she realizes that Neal, the man who heh-hem led to Henry, is actually Rumpelstiltskin's long-lost son, Baelfire. It's just like, everyone looks at each other and realizes everything and how they're all connected and a family and it really couldn't have been a better moment of realization for all four of them (Emma, Bae, Henry (who doesn't get it at first because he was under the impression that his dad was dead), and Rumpel). Plus, they get to be a family! And it makes for a really neat branch on Henry's tree. I think we all love that moment dearly.
Henry's dad Bae grew up in the fairy tale world but had a childhood he worked hard to forget because it was kind of ruined by his dad Rumpel becoming the Dark One, which kind of led to his dad manipulating and even murdering random people (well, basically anyone who threatened his son in any way). When he and Emma first got together, he didn't have any clue who she was. It was just "fate" (a term used by the characters to refer to the cunning plots of some very clever writers who carefully weave their wondrous, intricate tale) that two magical people from the same magical world happened to find each other when they were accidentally both stealing the same car.
Because I went through all of Regina's relationships in her paragraph, I suppose I ought to go through all of Emma's and Neal's as well. I think their lists are a little shorter, but still worth mentioning. It is particularly worth mentioning that Emma had a brief... something... with Captain Hook. Well, he was basically hitting on her, practically since they met, and she was ignoring him until after he saved her dad's life, after which he was able to convince her to kiss him once. Hook is now madly in love with Emma, which he admitted in the Echo Caves (where everyone had to admit a deep, dark secret in order to get Neal out, and Hook's was that Emma was the first woman he had loved since Milah, Rumpelstiltskin's wife. Which, by the way, means Hook will also crop up in the relationships of the grandparents' layer.). This makes him Henry's mom's... vague associate? Well, anyways.
And because I mentioned Emma's little mini-relationship, I should probably also mention Neal's "fiancé", though she's actually less relevant despite having been with Neal longer than Emma was 'with' Hook. Tamara was just a dirty snake of a woman who felt no love for Neal and was manipulating him the entire time she knew him to get what she wanted, a chance to destroy magic, and the whole time she was also closely seeing someone else, a dude named Greg. She's sort of Henry's wicked not-quite-stepmother, or the closest thing he has to a classic wicked stepmother. She also kidnaps Henry and somewhat unwittingly gives him to Peter Pan (who we will see in the great-grandparents' layer. There's good reason to work through all this mess.) The lost boys shoot her with an arrow to take Henry because she and Greg aren't happy when they find out they don't actually get to destroy magic. She's laying on the beach slowly and painfully dying when Rumpel comes up and questions her about Henry. Afterwards he kindly puts her out of her misery. Well, after he heals her so she can answer his questions. But really, nobody's sad when she dies. Besides, haven't people learned not to mess with Rumpelstiltskin's son by now? And Emma and Neal belong together. I know some people feel like Emma and Hook should be together, but I disagree. Emma and Bae are Henry's parents, after all, and they just need to be together. They're meant to be, in my opinion. So, I think that's all the relationships Henry's biological parents have had that are mentioned in the show.
Which brings us to the grandparents' layer, where the real mess starts to show up. You didn't think that the parents were the most convoluted part, did you? Well, if you did, you didn't realize that the parents' layer was just setting up for the intricacies of the grandparents' layer. I suppose we should go in the same order we went with the parents, though it is tempting to start with Emma this time, because we find out about her parents being Henry's grandparents first. Na, we'll start with Regina, to help things stay in some vague semblance of a logical order.
So, Regina, Henry's adoptive mother, was the child of Cora, a wicked woman of magic--more wicked than Regina--who clawed her way up from being a miller's daughter to becoming queen through her cunning, her literal heartlessness, and a deal or two with Rumpelstiltskin. Regina's dad was the not exceedingly intelligent but rather kind prince who was promised to Cora by his dad if she could spin a tower-full of straw into gold in a night. Regina loved her dad dearly, and in fact he was pretty much the only person she loved after Daniel died and before Henry became Regina's, though she kind of treated him as her servant. She sacrificed his heart to unleash the curse and in doing so created the hole in her heart which was later filled by Henry. Oh, and did I mention she named Henry after her dad, the late Prince Henry (well, I guess king, because Cora became queen and all)? So, Henry senior was the hole in Regina's heart and Regina named her child Henry (junior) because he filled the same spot her dad left open. So Henry's mom killed his grandpa and then named her child after his grandparent she killed. 'Nyways.
Cora obtained Prince Henry, the man she never loved but took to gain power, in the classic tale of the miller's daughter and Rumpelstiltskin, that tale I think we were all waiting to see for pretty much the whole series up until then. I had begun to wonder if the closest we were going to get to the original Rumpelstiltskin tale was that episode where Cinderella promised him her child, but I was glad they brought in the tale more truly this way, though I was mildly disappointed when Rumpel told Cora his name practically right up front rather than making her guess (which was really the whole point of him having such a lengthy and odd name in the first place of the tale), but the relationship they had more than made up for that in terms of coolness of the storyline. That's right, Rumpelstiltskin had a relationship with Cora, the mom of Henry's adoptive mom. Which means that, because I'm doing all relationships, Rumpelstiltskin gets to be in Henry's grandparents' layer twice. While Rumpel was teaching Cora to spin straw into gold, they fell in love. Cora didn't really know any magic before she met Rumpel, and he taught her magic, but really, in a way, she was more evil than even Rumpel, even though he was (and still is, though now he's less dark) the Dark One.
The deal Cora made with Rumpel promised, in keeping with the classic tale, that she would give him her firstborn child in exchange for him teaching her to spin the straw to gold (though I still haven't figured out why Rumpel wants to collect babies. He wants his son back, yes, but I don't know why he wants all these random people's children). However, after their romance, Cora planned to not marry Prince Henry and to instead run off with Rumpel out of love, and as a romantic gesture, Rumpel amended the deal to say that it was his own child she would owe him. Cora was truly in love, but she was also overcome with a dark, yearning love for the power of which she had been deprived as a poor miller's daughter. (Both Cora and Rumpel had a good bit of trouble with nobles looming over them. Then both of them killed the nobles who had loomed over them, and each took power in their own way.) Because of her desperate lust for power, Cora magically tore out her own heart so she couldn't feel her deep love for Rumpel. She chose not to elope with him and so instead married the prince she didn't love for power, and these became Henry's grandparents via Regina. Rumpel would have been owed Regina as his daughter through the deal if Cora had not tricked him and invalidated the deal, so he is almost Henry's grandpa that way, but he's more so Henry's grandpa the other way. In a way, Rumpel sort of still got Regina, because she became his magical student. He seems to be in constant pursuit of her and they are both constantly trying to manipulate one another and get the better of each other. They're continuously trying to spite each other.
Anyways, while I felt bad for Rumpel getting stood up and all, in the end I'm rather glad he did because he's so much better with Belle. Cora shared his darkness, but Belle brings out his light. While I came to understand Cora's reasons for her malevolence through this episode, I still wasn't really sad when she died, because she truly sank her own ship, sawing hole after hole in its deck with her own hands. She had opportunities to make better choices but she didn't, and her choice to become heartless and her choices made out of that heartlessness led her to her depressing, lonely, and cruel life, and it was really no one's fault but her own. It's just unfortunate how her bad choices hurt Regina and Henry sr., and briefly Rumpel, but he got even in a way that I didn't necessarily approve of but one that worked to get what needed to happen done, because we need Mr. Gold to stay alive and we needed Cora to die. It was a little sad, though, for that split moment when Cora had her heart back in when she realized that it would have been enough to have love in her life and not gobble up power like a ravenous wolf. Her choices particularly hurt Regina because not only did Cora make her childhood beyond miserable and kill her true love, she also turned her daughter evil and caused her to cause hurt and pain and in so doing hurt and damage herself, and it took her a very long time to repair her life and she's even still trying to repair and improve things, and really some things in her life might be irreparable. But, yeah, Cora was, well, heartless.
Well, that's one set of grandparents covered. Now for the other... well, just two more sets, really, because I don't know anything about the parents of any of Regina's "loves", not Daniel, nor King Leopold, nor the Magic Mirror, nor--oh, wait, I do know the Huntsman's in a sense. He was raised by wolves, if I recollect properly. So Henry has a few wolves very loosely involved in his adoptive grand-parentage. Hey, maybe he's even related to Red Riding-hood, for all we know. I also don't know anything about Robin Hood's parents.
So, now we come to Emma's parents, who were lost to her until the curse was broken at the end of season one, when, much to her surprise, she found out that they were Snow White and Prince Charming. As it so happened, she had already been living with her mom. And they also happen to be about the same age as her, as a result of the curse. Henry's got some of the youngest grandparents ever, who are still in their twenties. Actually, they're thinking about having another child, which would be Henry's aunt or uncle if they did.
Several of these people are of the age that they could still have children if they wanted, and many of them are thinking about it. Hey, even Rumpelstiltskin, who's, like, hundreds of years old or something, is still thinking about it, being as he's not aged since his (first) son was in his early teens. Oh, and his son, Neal/Bae, Henry's dad, is also like hundreds of years old because he stayed young in Neverland. Henry has a lot of old/young/abnormally aged relatives. But we're still on Princess Snow and Prince Charming, or Mary Margaret and David, or Snow and David, since his real name actually is David. Henry has a lot of royalty in his blood, too. Regina's a queen by marriage, her mom, Cora, was also a queen by marriage, her dad was a king by birth, Emma's hereditarily a princess, Snow White is a princess who should have been a queen--and was briefly, after she married Charming--Charming/James/David isn't actually a royal by blood, but his brother was adopted by king George, and he took his place after he died---then Rumpelstiltskin was never actually royal, per say, but he did live in a pretty awesome castle, Charming was betrothed to Abigail, the daughter of King Midas... But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, we have Princess/Queen Snow White, and Prince/King David "Charming", and they are the first grandparents Henry ever knows of or meets, because his adoptive mother's dad was dead and her mom was still in the fairytale world until she came through a portal to attempt to take over everything and got killed by Rumpelstiltskin, Henry's other grandpa.
Henry's family kills each other a lot. His mom, Regina, killed the Huntsman, Henry's almost-adoptive dad, and King Leopold (albeit by manipulation of the genie), who was her husband and so would've been Henry's adoptive dad, and she killed Henry sr., Henry's grandpa and her dad, and she more-or-less 'killed' Snow, and she even technically killed Henry himself, because his heart did stop after he ate the apple turnover Regina had intended for Emma, and her royal guards killed Ruth, Charming's mother, Henry's great-grandma. Then we have Rumpelstiltskin, Henry's grandpa, who killed his own wife Milah, Henry's grandma, and Cora (albeit by manipulation of Snow White), Henry's other grandma, and he nearly killed Hook multiple times, Henry's almost step-grandpa, and Tamara, Bae's treacherous fiancé, and at one point, Lacey, who's like the anti-Belle (antebellum? No, just anti-Belle, hehe), convinced Rumpel to attempt to kill Henry himself, but obviously, he stopped. Then there's Cora, who killed Eva, Snow's mother and Henry's great-grandmother, and also Daniel, Regina's first love and a plausible adoptive dad for Henry, and she nearly killed King Xavier before he convinced her not to, but he's Henry's other great-grandpa. Then we have Hook, Henry's mom's associate and his almost-step-grandpa, who nearly killed Rumpel, Henry's grandpa twice over. Then we have Snow, Henry's grandma, who killed Cora, Henry's other grandma, to save Rumpel, Henry's grandpa. Yep, they're all just one big happy family.
So, anyways, we have Snow White and David Charming and they're the most warm-and-fuzzy of Henry's grandparents, probably, but somehow what was meant to be their paragraph kept getting preempted by a plethora of digressions. So, here is a new paragraph to help me focus. They probably also do the most grandparently things with Henry, like when Charming starts giving Henry "prince lessons", because Henry's a prince, and even when Snow was being Henry's teacher under the curse, she made birdhouses and such with him, which is rather grandmotherly.
As to their relationships, neither of them ever really, truly loved anyone besides one another, but since I'm nitpicking every relationship I can think of, here goes. When Rumpelstiltskin made a deal with David to have him impersonate his twin brother James, he became inadvertently betrothen to Princess Abigail, the daughter of King Midas (which puts another famous gold-maker in the family). While they never actually married, after the curse struck, and after David awoke from his coma (which he was in because Regina's guards nearly killed him, too), Regina made it so that David was married to Kathryn, which was Abigail in the 'real' world.
During this curse-stricken time, Snow had her own thing, which was perhaps a little more than Emma's thing with Hook but which was less than Neal's thing with Tamara. The thing that makes her thing really weird is not only that she had a thing while she was married though she didn't know it and she never would have had a thing if she had known that she was married, but also her thing is extra weird because it was with Dr. Frankenstein. I can't say I particularly like him. Well, actually, I just plain don't like him. I mean, the whole "I want my name to be associated with life!" thing was nice, but just, the way he went about it, and all that, it's just... creepy. He's really a pretty creepy dude. He got his brother killed, accidentally, yes, but unnecessarily still, and then he let his brother's zombie kill their dad. But he does bring some not-at-all-much-needed-but-still-rather-interesting diversity to Henry's family tree. He is, after all, the only character, albeit only marginally included, from the Black and White World, or whatever you want to call his little realm.
So now we get to move on to the character who is probably my favorite of Henry's grandparents, Neal/Bae's dad, Rumpelstiltskin! Yes, I guess we touched on him before, because of his relationship and near-elopement with Cora, Regina's mother, but this is where he fits most concretely into Henry's tree. This is where he is actually Henry's relation by blood, because he actually parented Bae, who actually parented Henry. In this same way, Milah would be Henry's biological paternal grandmother.
While Belle is probably the main driving force in Rumpel's self improvement (one could say that, at times, Belle, and even Lacey, has more power over the Dark One than his dagger, for good, or, in the case of Lacey, for evil (after all, Lacey very nearly drove Rumpel to kill Henry)), and Bae is a factor as well, Henry also significantly contributes to Rumpel becoming a good, kind, and caring man. Rumpel does genuinely care for his grandson Henry, despite the fact that all the while he's wrestling with the prophecy stating that Henry is to be Rumpel's undoing. I wonder if that prophecy's done yet or not. You could make the argument that Henry's already inadvertently been Rumpel's undoing in several ways. Really, the term "undoing" is very vague. It could be said to refer to Rumpel getting trapped in Pandora's box, or to Henry's being part of Rumpel's family leading him to be good and use his evil magic less and in better ways, thus making him less so "the Dark One", or to Rumpel's quest to save Henry causing Rumpel to stop constantly thinking only of how to save himself and making him willing to actually sacrifice himself, making him less the coward he always was, which is part of his former identity, or just simply Henry being Rumpel's emotional undoing because he, like Belle, made Rumpel feel and care and make a choice to follow love more than his own powers.
Rumpelstiltskin/Gold's most significant romantic relationship is without question Belle. In fact, I think they might get married at some point in the show. If Belle and Rumpel do get married, which I very much hope they eventually do, and even have a child, which I also think would be lovely, then Belle would be Henry's kind step-grandmother and their child would be Bae's half-brother or sister and Henry's half/step (I'm not sure which) aunt or uncle. In this case Rumpel's second child would only be a few hundred years younger than his first. Gotta love magic!
Then, we have Milah, Rumpel's wife. She ran off on Rumpel with a pirate while Bae was young, and this pirate is named Captain Hook. In case you forgot in the fifteen or so paragraphs in between, Hook was listed in the Parents & Such paragraphs as Henry's biological mom, Emma's vague acquaintance/thing, and here he is once more, in the grandparents' section, as Milah's... boyfriend is the nearest term. Or "affair" if you prefer. I should also note that Hook is among the characters who is a few hundred years old, having been in Neverland a while, and he actually even knew Rumpelstiltskin before he became the Dark One, which was quite some time ago. They weren't very nice to each other, to put it lightly. To put it not lightly, when Hook first took away Rumpel's wife Milah, he challenged him to a duel over her, which was cruel and unfair because Rumpel was hobbled and could hardly stand on his own without his cane, much less have half a flaming snowball's chance at winning in a sword duel against an able-bodied pirate. Rumpel, like any sane, not-honor-obsessed, healthily afraid man, refused, and Hook, cackling malevolently, ran off with Rumpel's wife. Later, after Rumpel became the Dark One, he, like any insane, magical-power-obsessed, rather unhealthily vengeful (but still loveable,) man, came after Hook, challenged him to a duel Hook couldn't possibly win against a magical, unkillable being, and Rumpel was about to rip out Hook's heart and kill him when Milah awkwardly walked in. After some thought, Rumpel left Hook be, then ripped out his not-legally-but-practically ex-wife's heart and crushed it in front of the man who stole her to make him live with the pain of losing her, and it worked, because Hook was empty and lonely for many years, much like Rumpel.
I think that covers all of Henry's known grandparents. So, before moving on to the further-intricate layer of Henry's great-grandparents, I think we all need a quick, short recap. So. Henry's adoptive mother, who raised him, is Regina. He has no definitive adoptive dad, but sort of's include King Leopold, Sheriff Graham, Sidney Glass, Robin Hood, and Daniel (in no particular order). His birth mother is Emma Swan and his birth dad is Neal/Baelfire. His biological grandparents are Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumpelstiltskin, and Milah. His adoptive grandparents are Prince Henry and Cora. That's just in brief, minus the extraneous relationships. So now, for his great grandparents, following the previously established order.
Cora's mother is not yet identified, so far as I know, and her dad is known only as the Miller. Henry's first great-grandpa is a lazy drunk, as far as we've seen, and he leaves Cora to deal with his messes. He seems careless. His family is impoverished and makes their living selling flour to the royals, and Cora detests this life--she is filled with bitterness. Then we have Prince Henry's parents. We also don't know his mother, but we do know his dad. Henry sr's dad is the King to whom Cora boasts of her ability to spin straw into gold. He is named King Xavier and he is quite manipulative and devious. After Cora makes all the gold in the tower and earns the hand of Henry sr and makes her plot to run off with Rumpel, she goes to Xavier to rip out his heart and kill him (a two-step process), but he tricks her with his words. It is from him that Cora and later Regina got their line, "love is weakness". He convinces Cora to rip out her own heart so she can have the power and wealth of being Queen. If one really wanted to play the blame game, one could trace much of the evil in the antagonists of the series back to Xavier in this moment. Going all the way back, Xavier, Zoso, and Rumpelstiltskin's dad can be pinned as the three primary sources of evil of which we know in this series, though obviously things go even further back, and we can't just blame these three figures, though it is tempting. But one of the huge themes of the series is that no villain is purely evil and that everyone has motive and some good inside them that has been twisted and hidden by something. Still, thus far, Henry's great-grandparents aren't really that great. It doesn't get much better, I'm sorry to say.
Well, in the interest of fully exploring all extremely tangential relationships, I can go on with the huntsman's family briefly here. In the grandparents' section, I cited that this 'love interest' of Regina's was raised by wolves. I don't precisely know who the wolves' parents were, in case you were wondering, but I'd wager it was more wolves. (To quote Rumpelstiltskin in one of his very sweet, earlier romantic moments with Belle, that one was a quip, dearie ;)
Next, we have Snow White's parents. They are perhaps the best documented of all Henry's great-grandparents. Snow's mother was Queen Eva, who grew into a kind, gentle, fair, and much-loved queen, teaching her daughter to always do the good, right thing and to strive to be "guided by love", yet who I think was also the same as Princess Eva, the snarky, stuck-up young woman who meanly tripped Cora when she was carrying sacks of flour into their castle, causing Cora to lose wages her family desperately needed and humiliating her in public, which did not sit well with Cora's ego. Really, this early Eva could be traced as a cause in the evil that filled the main antagonists of the series along with Xavier. She learned from her mistakes, though, and became kind and gentle, teaching her daughter Snow the same after she rudely snapped at their servant, Johanna, who became something of a mother to Snow after Eva died. Despite this change, Cora never stopped hating her, and eventually she murdered her and tried to corrupt her daughter Snow in the process. In a way, she succeeded, though her success was much delayed, and it lead to Cora's own death. You see, Cora tried to corrupt Snow by giving her a candle that could trade one life for another, which she could use to save her mother, but in doing so she would murder someone else. Snow doesn't give in to the evil and use it on her mother, but many years later, after the breaking of the curse, she uses the candle to trade Cora's life for Rumpelstiltskin's, putting a dark blemish on her heart. Henry's family has a lot of conflict within itself. Then, Snow's dad was the benevolent but perhaps misguided and somewhat oblivious/rather insensitive King Leopold. He was basically a kind man, as we can see when he frees the genie, but he is insensitive, for example, in the way he speaks of his deceased wife in front of his new wife, making Regina feel much less special to him, which she is, but he shouldn't rub it in her face like he does. Oh, but by the way, here's Regina again. That's right. She's not just Henry's adoptive mother, she's also Henry's step-great-grandmother, because she's married to his great-grandpa. Yup. Told you Henry's family tree was convoluted.
On Charming's side of things, we again get the two-family effect brought by adoption. David was raised on a humble sheep farm by his mother Ruth. I don't think his dad is ever named, but we know he was Ruth's true love, and that he died while David was young. David isn't necessarily adopted, per say, but he's... taken to be a replacement child in some form. Well, a long time ago, King George made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin because his wife (who I believe is also unnamed and is dead by the time the action starts) was infertile, and so Rumpel went to David's family farm. His parents gave up his twin brother James to be the king's son in exchange for the success of their faltering farm. So then, when James dies, King George gets Rumpel to make another deal, and so David comes in to be the replacement James. Thus, Henry's great grandparents here are Ruth and her deceased husband, as well as King George and his deceased wife. This is also why David is mainly known as Prince James, even to the dwarfs, because that's who he's had to impersonate. Which means when he becomes King, he will be King James. I wonder if Once is going to go there, but I think it's probably too historical for them to do. That would make him a real-world king of England, but he's not in the real world.
From David's forced betrothal to Princess Abigail, Henry gets to have King Midas thrown into the tangential relationships of his family tree. Strictly speaking, he's not exactly Henry's great-grandpa, but he's the dad of the betrothed of Henry's grandpa, so that's a relation of some sort. Plus, this way, Henry gets to have two family members capable of magically producing gold--Midas and Rumpelstiltskin. Oh, wait, and Cora can, too. Or could. Before Henry's biological paternal grandpa (Rumpel) goaded his biological maternal grandma (Snow) into tricking his adoptive mother/step-great-grandmother (Regina) into killing her by replacing her heart, who was Henry's adoptive maternal grandmother (Cora). Cause that's just how things go on Once.
Lastly, we have the person we were probably all the most surprised to find out was related to Henry. Peter Pan. I think every single person watching the show was just thrown off their seats in awe when it was revealed that Pan is Rumpel's dear old dad. I mean, maybe you had half an inkling when the two of them showed up in Neverland, but I sure didn't. I think that as the shadow was pulling poor little adorable kid Rumpel away and as Rumpel's dad started to transform and was shrouded in a cloud of dark magic, my mom said something to the lines of, "he's not Peter Pan, is he?" but that was the soonest we guessed. My mom is very clever that way; she definitely put it together before I did. But man, when you see Peter smirking up at the innocent little Rumpel, you just go, "oh my GOSH!" and it's just like... woh. It's crazy. Man, Rumpel's dad was a selfish idiot. Poor little Rumpel. Little Rumpel was just so cute, wasn't he?
At least as a grown-up he did better than his dad (though he still didn't do great, but he's improving), and now he's got his son back and they're all happy again and he's learning to be not evil like he used to be and I love them as a family, Rumpel and Bae and his hopefully-soon-to-be (definitely non-wicked; rather, kind and good) stepmother Belle. And maybe Bae's younger sibling shall come along.
But Rumpel's dad, well, he is a piece of work. Sure people in Henry's family kill each other with abnormal frequency, but Pan is the only one who has ever knowingly and intentionally tried to kill Henry himself with no regrets or hesitation and very nearly succeeded. He is a manipulative, evil, man-turned-"child"-but-really-a-hundred-year-old-teenager-or-whatever-age-he-is-or-pretends-to-be-person, and he takes advantage of Henry's innocent belief and gullibility to convince his only-slightly-younger-than-him (or so it appears, because they are actually hundreds of years apart) great-grandchild to remove his own heart and give it to him so he can continue on living, not caring that he's stealing the life of his amazing and exceptional great-grandson. Pan is almost more heartless than Cora. I mean, he still physically has a heart, so far as I know, though I guess it needed replaced, but he acts so emotionlessly. Well, he does have emotions, anger not the least of them, he's just completely and utterly self-centered. At least Cora, in her own messed up way, tried to help Regina; everything we have ever seen Pan do has been for his own benefit. He even locks Henry in Pandora's box (after his son Rumpelstiltskin escaped from having been locked there by Pan) by switching bodies with Henry. So, if Henry swapped bodies with Pan, does that make Henry his own great-grandpa??
Well, at least, as far as I can think of, the convolutedness of Henry's family tree ends here. I don't know anything about Rumpel's mom or any of Pan's relationships. It is interesting to note that we don't know Peter Pan's real name; we only know that he's going by his son's doll's name. He tries to say that it's out of nostalgia, but I think it's just a further example of his manipulativeness. I think Peter goes by the name he does purely to get in Rumpel's head. After all, it is a very devious branch of Henry's family. I think Pan is that manipulative, that he would choose a name with the sole purpose of messing with his son in mind. Well, and it might also serve to make him sound less scary and intimidating and instead more familiar and approachable to the lost boys, especially if his real name is anything like Rumpelstiltskin's or Baelfire's. Just my theories.
Well, is that really all of it? I don't know. That's all that occurs to me at the moment, at least. My goodness this is longer than I thought it would be! But that's why I love Once Upon a Time so much. It is so cleverly done and so intricately woven and so carefully and precisely written with such immense attention to detail that crazy people like me can write lengthy and superfluously detailed analyses of just one character (albeit the most central character, besides Emma) and spend this much time and write this many words on thoroughly examining all that character's vague and tangential familial relationships. But really, I think we all kind of wish we had Henry's family tree. I mean, who else gets to have the Wicked Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Peter Pan, Snow White, Prince Charming, King Midas, Dr. Frankenstein, Belle, Captain Hook, Robin Hood, the Magic Mirror, Rumpelstiltskin again, the Wicked Queen again, Captain Hook again, and even more magical and royal and mysterious and plain-out awesome people in their family tree? I mean, all of those fantastical people, somehow or another able to be put in your family tree. That's pretty darn cool. Henry is a very special little dude. I believe Pan said something to Henry that was something like this: "you come from the best of light and the worst of dark, Henry." Of course, Henry's great-grandad said this to him in an effort to manipulate Henry in order to steal his life, but it is nonetheless a fairly good sum-up. All the fairytale characters seem to be somehow related to Henry, good and bad, and it's just so expertly done by the writers of Once. It's amazing, and it's a wonderful, addicting series. I think it's obvious I'm a wee bit obsessed with it. Beyond the violet mist, we've been doing some genealogical research, finding ourselves wrapped up in the glorious piles of aged pages of historic recordbooks amidst vast libraries betwixt towering expanses shelves filled with volumes of ancient knowledge, all to comprehend the remarkable family tree of one very special young boy from another realm.
Thanks to http://ouatv1.blogspot.com/ for minor details I couldn't recollect, such as Sherrif Graham's real-world name and Snow White's dad's name. and http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/ for other things the first one didn't have, like Snow White's mom's name and Prince Henry's dad's name, and the original Dark One's name. I believe those are all the sites I utilized for research. I may have made errors. Feel free to comment with any corrections or details I've missed!
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