Lady Rapunzel Tremaine, also known as Victoria Belfrey after the Dark Curse, is a character featured in the seventh season of the ABC fantasy-drama series Once Upon a Time. She is a composite character, based on both Rapunzel and Lady Tremaine from Cinderella, and is the second iteration of each character. She is portrayed primarily by Gabrielle Anwar, and Meegan Warner in her younger form.
History[]
Young Rapunzel Tremaine
While Rapunzel aids an ailing husband and her two starving daughters, she stumbles upon a garden. She takes radishes, in order to help feed her family, but is confronted by Gothel, who is impressed with the selflessness the young woman displays. Rapunzel makes a deal to do "anything", in order to save them, but she has unknowingly given her freedom to the witch and is trapped within a tower, isolated.
Six years pass, and Rapunzel's hair has grown to an enormous length. She uses this, as a rope to safely escape the tower, to her freedom. She follows lanterns in the sky, which were lit by her children, to commemorate the anniversary of their mother's disappearance, until she stumbles upon their new manor, and is reunited with her daughters, Anastasia and Drizella. Rapunzel finally reunites with her husband following years apart but is heartbroken to learn that he believed her to be dead, remarried, and has gained a new stepdaughter, Ella.
Rapunzel tries to adjust to her new way of life, now working as a maid, and tries to reconnect with her daughters. While Anastasia is ecstatic to have her mother return in her life, Drizella, is less thrilled, lacking a bond, due to having been so young when Rapunzel left. Gothel reappears to Rapunzel and offers her a poison to give Cecelia, Marcus' new wife, but Rapunzel refuses to do so.
Sometime later, it is Drizella's birthday party, and Rapunzel is working. When she overhears Drizella call Cecelia "mother", she is left enraged and places the poison into Cecelia's drink.
Time passes, and Cecelia leaves, due to the effects of the poison, while Rapunzel reconciles her relationship with her husband.
One day, Rapunzel and Marcus, watch Anastasia, Drizella, and Ella, building a snowman. Ella walks towards a frozen lake, in order to retrieve a hat, which blew off from a gust of the wind. Anastasia follows her, and the pair both fall through. Marcus dives in and brings back a body, but Rapunzel is angered and terrified to learn it is Ella and not her daughter. Anastasia is eventually recovered, but left on the brink of death, so Rapunzel takes her to Gothel, who uses her magic to preserve Anastasia's final breath and keep her body in a frozen stasis. Gothel plans to trap Anastasia in her tower, but Rapunzel manages to take Gothel's potion and entraps the witch instead. Rapunzel then vows to reawaken her daughter.
Over the following years, Rapunzel's anger for the rest of her family grows and she blames Ella for Anastasia's state. She grows a dark reputation, and eventually, becomes known as Lady Tremaine. She is unable to forgive her husband for saving Ella first and has him killed. Rapunzel also dubs Ella, "Cinderella", and has her placed into servitude as she once was.
A ball is announced by the Prince of the Kingdom. A Fairy Godmother appears before Cinderella, and gives her the means to attend. After Ella leaves, Lady Tremaine captures the Fairy Godmother.
Lady Tremaine captures the Fairy Godmother.
While Cinderella's Fairy Godmother is rendered unconscious, Lady Tremaine shackles her wrists and steals her wand. Later, after the Fairy Godmother comes to, Lady Tremaine explains that she stole the wand as a teaching moment for her daughter Drizella. She tells Drizella never to rely on magic, as magic is not power since it can be taken. Lady Tremaine then turns the Fairy Godmother to dust. At the royal ball, Lady Tremaine sneaks up behind the prince, and kills him, after Cinderella fails to do so. She tells Cinderella that the Prince rejected Drizella, then promptly frames Cinderella for the prince's murder. She watches as Cinderella and Henry Mills fight off the prince's guards and Cinderella escapes the castle. Lady Tremaine and some of the palace guards then track down Henry in the forest, and take him to her home, imprisoning him in Cinderella's old room. She gives instructions to Drizella to kill Henry. The next morning, as Lady Tremaine discovers Henry's abandoned shackles, Wish Realm Hook visits her, saying that he can help get rid of Henry if she helps him in return. He asks her to make him look like the other version of himself so that Emma Swan will fall in love with him. Tremaine agrees to help him, and with the help of Fairy Godmother's wand, transforms him into a spitting image of the other Hook.
She initially tried to use Henry's and Drizella's heart to awake her daughter but failed to do so. Upon the birth of Lucy, Lady Tremaine gives a drop of her blood to the heroes in order to use blood magic to turn Drizella to stone, which lasts for eight years before she is freed by Gothel. After the Dark Curse is cast by Regina upon Gothel and Drizella poisoning a captured Henry to make her cast it, Lady Tremaine is sent to the Land Without Magic.
Victoria with Jacinda.
After a new curse is cast, Lady Tremaine lives in Hyperion Heights, a new fairy tale town located in Seattle. Due to the curse, she is known as Victoria Belfrey, an urban developer who plans to buy up the lands and buildings of the neighborhood to develop them, as a gimmick to bring in more people from outside of Hyperion Heights. She also managed to retain her memories as Lady Tremaine, remembering her life in the Magical Forest, though she is also given fake memories by Drizella to make her think that she cast the curse. Her daughter, Drizella, known as Ivy Belfrey in Hyperion Heights, works as her assistant. Victoria wants to take custody of her step-granddaughter, Lucy, so when Lucy runs away from home to find her father, Henry, Victoria decides that Jacinda is no longer capable of taking care of her and removes Lucy into her home. She enlists the help of Detective Weaver and Detective Rodgers to dig up evidence on Henry to try and get him away from her family, as she feels he is a nuisance. After they come up with nothing, Victoria gives the detectives one of her bracelets to plant on Henry and frame him for theft. At Lucy's ballet recital, as Victoria is about to close the performance, she is interrupted by Weaver and plays along with thinking her bracelet was stolen. She is then shocked when Henry is confronted, and instead of revealing her bracelet, reveals his keys. She is unaware that Rodgers never actually planted the bracelet on Henry.
Ivy cradles a dead Victoria.
Victoria hopes to strip Lucy's power of being the truest believer in order to revive her daughter Anastasia and is holding a witch as a prisoner at Belfrey Towers to force her into carrying out her plan against her will. Victoria later hires Ralph to burn down Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack to destroy Jacinda and Sabine's chances at becoming successful at selling Sabine's popular beignets. Victoria is later arrested for kidnapping Eloise Gardener by Detective Rogers. Through a deal, Detective Rogers helps her locate the Once Upon a Time book, which she uses to tell Lucy about her past to retrieve Lucy's lack of believe's tear. Successful in it, Victoria uses it and awakens Anastasia. Unfortunately, Weaver tells her that by reviving Anastasia there are consequences, as she can be able to revive Lucy after being convinced that she is the Guardian, but Gothel thwarted those plans, eventually taking Victoria prisoner as payback. Ivy later finds Victoria at the bottom of the well when Ivy is double-crossed by Gothel. Victoria then escapes with Ivy's help and decides to use a resurrection amulet to wake Lucy up. Working with Gothel, Victoria learns that the resurrection requires a life, which Gothel plans to use Ivy. Victoria sacrifices herself in order to save Ivy, doing so successfully wakes Lucy. Victoria is later buried in Hyperion Heights cemetery, and Ivy finishes what she started by successfully rescuing Anastasia from Gothel.
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