This article is about the original variant from Once Upon a Time. For her evil counterpart, see Evil Regina. For the episode, see The Evil Queen (Once Upon a Time).
- “My life was never just one story. It was many stories. To some, a villain. I hurt people... in ways I can never make up for. To others, I'm... a hero. They've seen my strength, my ability to do the hard things, even when I thought I couldn't.”
- ―Regina Mills to Mary Margaret Blanchard[src]
Queen Regina (better known as the Evil Queen or Mayor Regina Mills in Storybrooke and Roni in Hyperion Heights) is a character who appears in ABC fantasy-drama series, Once Upon a Time. She is the main antagonist of the show before turning into the tritagonist as the series goes on.
Regina is based on The Evil Queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Background[]
Powers and abilities[]
- Magic: Regina is a powerful sorceress with magical powers sufficient to provoke terror against people. She hoped that learning magic would teach her how to bring her lover Daniel back from the dead. This, however, ultimately failed and led Regina down a dark path.
- Telekinesis: As a witch, Regina is capable of manipulating objects or people without physically touching them.
- Teleportation: Regina can move from one place to another at will, disappearing into what looks like a purple smoke formation.
- Summoning: Regina is able to summon objects or beings through the magic, often materializing it in one hand via a purple smoke.
- Pyrokinesis: Regina is able to create and manipulate fire, often in the form of a fireball, effectively using it as a weapon against her enemies.
- Transfiguration/Shapeshifting: Regina is able to turning human beings into animals or changing the physical aspect of herself or others.
- Healing: Regina has the ability to heal herself from the wounds or diseases of others or themselves.
- Heart Extraction: Regina can remove the hearts of other living beings without killing them and use them to control the owner or kill them by crushing the heart.
- Mirror Enchantments: She has the ability to see through mirrors and travel through them.
- Magical Immobilization: Regina can freeze people with just a thought.
- Locator Spells: She can cast a spell that will aid in finding something or someone.
- Protection Charm: Regina can protect a place or an object by creating a magic barrier.
- Potioncraft: She has showcased the ability to create liquid substances for various purposes by combining a set of ingredients.
Weaknesses[]
- Laws of Magic: Like any magician or sorceress, Regina is subject to the laws of magic, as a result she is unable to raise the dead, create love and time travel.
- Enchanted Cuffs: As shown (on-screen) cuffs that are enchanted to block magic have the same effect on her as anyone else.
Role in the Series[]
Before the First Curse[]
Regina and Daniel.
As revealed in the episode "The Stable Boy", that before marrying Leopold, Regina was kind and caring, and was in love with a stable boy named Daniel Colter. However, when Snow White was little, Regina's mother Cora caused her horse to go wayward, leading to her being saved by Regina and a friendship to be formed between the two. King Leopold wanted to marry her as thanks and to give his daughter a mother. Resolving to run away with Daniel, Regina made Snow promise not to tell her mother when she caught the pair kissing, but later, Snow accidentally revealed this to Cora who then killed Daniel. Regina was then forced to marry King Leopold. Though she granted the young princess a kindness by lying to her and telling her Daniel merely ran away to spare her feeling, Regina vowed to destroy Snow's happiness to avenge Daniel. Rumplestiltskin also mentored her in the ways of Magic following Cora's banishment to Wonderland, under the pretense of helping Regina exact her revenge upon Snow, but in reality, intended to have her ultimately cast the Dark Curse on his behalf. She kills the king by taking advantage of the love the Genie holds for her. This enacts the first part of her plan and makes her ruler of Leopold's realm. She then contrives ways to kill Snow — first by enlisting the Huntsman's help. However, the Huntsman is unable to kill her, and Regina punishes him by tearing out his heart and making him her slave.
She then accuses Snow of treason and places a bounty on her head and eventually puts her into a death-like sleep with a cursed apple, after confronting her in front of Daniel's grave. However, Snow is awakened and she and Prince James are happily married. On the day of the wedding, Regina vows to cast a curse on all of the inhabitants of the Enchanted Forest and take away all of their happiness so that she is the only one who is happy. She previously traded this curse to Maleficent in exchange for the sleeping curse. However, she forcibly retrieves it from her only friend when negotiations go sour. She has difficulty enacting it and goes to see its creator, Rumplestiltskin, for advice. In exchange for the information she desires, he asks that she give him a place of comfort and respect in the "new world" the curse will send them to and that she must do anything he asks when he utters "please." Agreeing, Regina learns she must use the heart of "the thing [she] love[s] most." She understands this to be her father Henry; with reluctance, she cuts his heart out and enacts the curse. Shortly after, she travels to Snow's castle, where she triumphantly exclaims to Snow White and Prince Charming that the curse is taking them "somewhere truly horrible." Her desire to "win for once" fuels her endless quest for revenge.
During the First Curse[]
In Storybrooke, she is Mayor Regina Mills. With Mr. Gold's help, she adopts a baby who she names Henry who, unbeknownst to her at the time, was really the grandson and son of Snow White and Prince Charming and their daughter, Emma Swan, respectively. However, her relationship with Henry is strained: he prefers the company of his birth mother, he constantly rebels, and he constantly lies to her to spend time with Emma. Because of this and after discovering who Emma really was, Regina is antagonistic toward her and is determined to keep Emma away from Henry, even going as far as to forbid Emma from seeing him without her permission and threatening to file a restraining order against Emma. Regina is also determined to convince Henry that his theory about the curse and the true identities of the Storybrooke residents is false, and she starts him on regular sessions with therapist Archie Hopper. When Archie's methods are too slow, Regina tries to force Archie to tell Henry that his idea is crazy; however, Archie refuses and threatens to declare her an unfit mother if she continues to meddle in his sessions with Henry. She has a sexual relationship with Graham, who is really the huntsman, but he eventually breaks up with her. Out of jealousy, she crushes his heart and kills him, revealing that she remembers her identity as the Evil Queen. Regina manipulates Emma's trust of Sidney Glass to keep an eye on Emma's activities. She also tries to prevent the relationship between David Nolan and Mary Margaret Blanchard, really Prince James and Snow White, by reuniting David and his wife Kathryn, as well as using David's and Mary Margaret's affair to discredit Mary Margaret after the Nolans' marriage falls apart, and stealing Kathryn's letter stating that she never loved David and that she is allowing him to be with Mary Margaret. Regina desperately wants to remove Emma from his life, resorting to attempting to poison her. However, Henry willingly consumes the curse instead, dying shortly after. Emma finally believes, awakening Henry with true love's kiss and breaking the curse.
After the First Curse[]
Later, Regina's mother, Cora, arrives in Storybrooke, convincing her to obtain the Dark One's Dagger in order to gain power. After Cora is killed trying to protect Mr. Gold, Henry is kidnapped and taken to Neverland by new arrivals Greg and Tamara, who were previously stopped by Regina and Emma from destroying Storybrooke. Regina travels with Emma, Mary Margaret, David, Mr. Gold, and Captain Hook, to rescue Henry from the evil Peter Pan and return him to Storybrooke. However, Pan enacts Regina's curse once more, forcing her to reverse the original curse, returning her and the remaining inhabitants to their original worlds while Emma and Henry escape to New York City.
After the Second Curse[]
Regina with her half-sister Zelena.
Back in the Enchanted Forest, Regina struggles to come to terms with the loss of Henry, though Mary Margaret and Robin Hood persuade her to move forward. Regina soon learns she is half-sisters with Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West. To save them from Zelena's threats, Regina helps Snow and David enact a new curse to return to Storybrooke before Zelena adds a forgetting potion to it. With no memories of the past year, Regina faces the struggle of Henry's lost memories of her in Storybrooke until his book restores his memories and she breaks the curse with true love's kiss, restoring the residents' memories of the past year. She meanwhile forms a bond with Robin Hood, which turns romantic after she learns he is her soul mate. Zelena later obtains Regina's heart as an ingredient in her scheme to change the past, though Regina uses her newly discovered light power to defeat her.
After Emma and Hook are dragged into Zelena's time portal, they inadvertently return with Maid Marian, who was originally sentenced to death by Regina. To the anger of Regina, Marian, Robin, and Roland are reunited, causing a schism in her own relationship with Robin. Marian is later frozen by the Snow Queen, leading Regina to try to find a cure for her to help Robin while removing Marian's heart to prevent the Freezing Curse from killing her. Meanwhile, Regina and Henry seek to discover the writer of his book, believing that the events depicted, are the cause of her suffering. Later on, Regina forgives Emma, after they confront an ice warrior generated by the Snow Queen. Eventually, Regina helps locate Emma, after she runs away when she loses control of her magic. After the defeat of the Snow Queen, Regina puts Marian's heart back in her, but when she realizes that remnants of the Freezing Curse still remains, she realizes that Marian, Robin Hood, and Roland have to leave Storybrooke. Regina later learns from Henry that the writer might be in a storybook.
Regina has become mayor again, but since then her fixation have been trying to find the Author, even as going far as joining Gold, Maleficent, Ursula and Cruella De Vil in order to seek out the writer, only to be found out by Gold as a traitor. Afterward, she is then blackmailed by Gold, who tells her that Zelena is alive and has taken Marian's place by stealing Robin Hood away from her.
Regina, Mary Margaret, David, Hook, and Emma are all in Granny's diner, where Emma is asked by Maleficent to locate her daughter. When Emma discovers Maleficent's daughter is her childhood friend Lily, Regina decides to leave with her as they realize that Lily is in New York and Regina has to go there anyway to save Robin from Zelena. The pair head into an old apartment where Lily lived, but another tenant reveals that she died a few years ago. Emma and Regina later drive until the car's tire is punctured. Regina tells Emma to go have some coffee while she deals with the tire. Emma tells Regina that Lily served her coffee when she recognizes the star-shaped birthmark on her wrist. Emma and Regina break into Lily's house, revealing that she knows about magic and Storybrooke. Suddenly, Lily breaks into Emma's car to get revenge on Emma's parents, who wronged her, but the pair catches up in another car Emma breaks into. Emma is about to shoot Lily, but Regina talks her out of it, and the two then have a heart to heart but are interrupted by Regina, who tells Emma that they need to go to Robin's house as her leverage over Gold has been taken. The three travel to Robin's House, where she reunited with Robin. She explains that Marian died through the time portal, and Zelena has been disguising as her the entire time. Zelena reveals herself to Robin, but when Regina tells him that she and Roland need to leave with her, Robin tells her he can't leave her and reveals to Regina that Zelena is pregnant.
Regina goes back to Storybrooke with everyone. She puts a magic-proof cuff on Zelena and locks her in the mental asylum until she decides what to do with her. She later recruits The Author and shows him a page of herself and Robin even though it didn't happen. He tells her that he needs savior darkness to make the ink, and so Regina stabs Lily in the hand and uses that as an alternative ingredient for the magic ink. The pair goes to the asylum, and she decides to spare Zelena. Just as she does this, The Author disappears, and she realizes she has been double-crossed by him as he is working for Gold.
Regina the Bandit.
The Author then writes everyone in an alternate universe where the sides of the characters of the Enchanted Forest have reversed. Regina is no longer the Evil Queen, but a bandit on the run, and Snow White is the Evil Queen. Henry locates her, but she brushes him off, not believing him to be her son. Henry finds his other mother, Emma, who convinces Regina to find Robin and confess her love for him, despite being engaged to the Wicked Witch of the West and her half-sister Zelena in the universe. The trio goes to the church but is met by Rumplestiltskin. He aims his sword at Henry, but Regina pushes him out the way. She is stabbed by Rumple, but Henry becomes the new Author, and he uses Regina's blood to transport everyone to Storybrooke. Regina then finds Robin, and the two walk for a date; however, they don't know that the Darkness has been released for Rumplestiltskin and tries to tether itself to Regina, making her evil again. However, Emma decides to sacrifice herself for Regina, and Emma becomes the Dark One.
Shortly after Emma vanishes to Camelot, Regina and Zelena use the Apprentice's wand to create a cyclone, one which Zelena originally intended to be used to return to Oz; however, Regina hijacks the portal and uses it to take Granny's Diner to the Enchanted Forest, where they arrive just in time to talk Emma out of killing a princess named Merida. Regina and the others help convince Emma to find another way to locate Merlin without killing an innocent person. Afterward, Emma entrusts the dagger to Regina, believing the Queen to be the only one willing to kill her if things got out of hand. Shortly after, King Arthur and his knights arrive, stating that the newcomers were prophesied to return by Merlin. As such, Arthur leads them to his kingdom in Camelot. During this time, Regina takes Emma's place as the Savior.
Regina wards off King Arthur and his knights.
During their time in Camelot, Regina and the others realize that they cannot trust Arthur, who has been driven mad by his desire to destroy the Dark One so he may reunite the dagger with Excalibur. In the episode "Dreamcatcher", Regina helps Emma free Merlin from the tree by fending off Arthur and his knights with her dark magic. However, their plan to steal Excalibur from Arthur in order to reunite it with the dagger backfires after Zelena betrays the heroes and helps Arthur tether Merlin to Excalibur. Afterward, Regina is among those held captive by Arthur, who orders Merlin to kill her and the others if Emma doesn't surrender the dagger to him. Though Emma manages to use her dark magic to free her family and escape from Arthur and Zelena, Hook is struck fatally and collapses while Emma reunites Excalibur. To save Hook's life, Emma tethers him to Excalibur and makes him a second Dark One. After Hook becomes consumed by the darkness and casts the Dark Curse, Regina and the others' memories are wiped by Emma, who seeks to take on responsibility for what has transpired and find a way to destroy the darkness within her and Hook on her own.
Emma, the new Dark One, confronts Regina.
After Hook's curse is cast, Regina wakes up with the others in Granny's Diner with no memory of what had transpired. Confronted by Emma, Regina threatens to use the dagger on her, only to discover that Emma has reclaimed the dagger. While the heroes try to deal with a Dark One Emma, Storybrooke is plagued by a Fury there to claim Robin's soul. However, Regina, aided by her friends, sends the Fury back to the Underworld. In the episode "Birth," Regina tries to protect her niece from Emma, only to learn that the Dark One was after Zelena, not her child. Confronting Emma at her mansion, Regina learns that Emma had planned to place her darkness in Zelena and use Excalibur to kill her and destroy the darkness once and for all, a plan Regina and the others cannot support. Ultimately, however, the plan backfires when Zelena and Hook recover their stolen memories, and the latter resumes his original dark plan to return the souls of the Dark Ones to life in exchange for help in killing Rumplestiltskin. Regina is among those whose souls are claimed; as such, in desperation, the Queen banishes Zelena to Oz to protect Robin's child. In the final confrontation with Hook in "Swan Song," Regina and Emma speak to Hook and remind him who he is, forcing him to reconsider his actions and sacrifice his life to destroy the darkness. However, upon learning that the darkness merely transferred back into Gold, Regina supports Emma's plan to venture into the Underworld to save Hook from Hades.
Upon her arrival in the Underworld, Regina is confronted by her mother Cora, who threatens her father Henry if Regina does not leave the Underworld. However, when speaking with her father, Regina is advised not to abandon her friends. Instead, Regina confronts her mother. Though Cora attacks him, Henry's soul can pass on to Olympus since his unfinished business has been completed. However, this fact leads Hades into claiming Regina's, Snow's, and Emma's souls.
When Zelena arrived in the Underworld with her baby, this added to more tensions for Regina, who soon discovers that Hades and her sister had met back in Oz and is being enticed by Hades to become a couple, resulting in Regina breaking Cora free from Hades' manual labor camp in order to stop Zelena. The reunion doesn't go well as planned until Cora restores a memory spell (when Cora brought Zelena to the Enchanted Forest to help save Regina after she tampered with a wand that left her unconscious, but when Cora tells them that they're sisters, Cora erased their memories of having met each other). Regina and Zelena finally made up and with that allowed Cora to move on to Mount Olympus as part of her unfinished business.
Regina and Robin try to convince Zelena of Hades' deception.
Hades attempts to trap the heroes in the Underworld by getting the Blind Witch to cast a spell. Regina and Emma break the spell, and a portal is opened, taking all the heroes back to Storybrooke. Hades also comes to Storybrooke and attempts to use the Olympian Crystal to kill Regina, but Robin sacrifices himself to save Regina and gets killed instead. Zelena arrives, and Hades tries to convince her to kill Regina using the Crystal, but she uses it to kill Hades. A funeral is held for Robin. At Granny's after the funeral, the heroes realize that Gold is tethering all of Storybrooke's magic to the Olympian Crystal. Everyone searches for the Crystal, but Emma tells Regina to sit it out, to which Regina decides to fix it on her own. Henry gets the Crystal and attempts to destroy magic in New York. Regina and Emma follow him to New York, where he succeeds in destroying magic. Henry gets all New York Citizens to throw coins in a fountain and make a wish, leading to magic being restored. Regina confides in Snow and Emma that she will never get rid of the Evil Queen. Snow comes up with an idea and injects Regina with a serum that separates Regina from the Evil Queen. Regina rips out the Evil Queen's heart and crushes it destroying her darkness for good. The heroes then return to Storybrooke. However, they are unaware that the Evil Queen is still alive and in New York.
In Season 7, after another Dark Curse is cast by Drizella, Regina becomes Roni, a bar owner who, after regaining her memories, seeks to break the curse and save Henry. At the end of season, when all of the heroes' enemies are defeated, Regina casts a final curse to bring all of the realms together to create a new kingdom called the United Realms. She is then crowned ruler of the realms and is given the title of the Good Queen.
On May 5, 2013, during the episode "Second Star to the Right", Queen Regina appeared in a commercial promoting New Fantasyland. During it, she mused over how she would change the stories of the new arrivals. At the end of the commercial, she sees a girl dressed like the classical Disney Snow White and says "Seriously?"
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Her name, Regina, is Latin and Italian for "Queen".
