Relationship Spotlight: The Knave of Hearts & the Red Queen (Once Upon a Time in Wonderland)

In light of recent aggravating plots on Once Upon a Time, I’ve been reassessing its spin-off.  I don’t know that Once Upon a Time in Wonderland’s best matches that of the main show, but its lows aren’t exactly in a league of their own.  At any rate, Wonderland has definite qualities, one of which is this relationship (Knave/Red Queen spoilers to follow.)

With the Knave and the Red Queen, there are a few permutations to explore.  There’s Will and Ana, the original Enchanted Forest couple.  Rich in love and not much else, Ana dreamed of better things, and her dreams grew so large, her love for Will couldn’t anchor them.  Her dreams made them cross worlds, and when Wonderland wasn’t everything it promised, dreaming soured into wanting.  She couldn’t bear to lack what others had; in her quest, her fury to have, a king offered her wants and dreams, a whole world of having, and all it cost her was her love.  Will couldn’t stand being bartered away, discarded for courts and courtiers and baubles.  His pain tore him to so many shreds, he couldn’t see how quickly and completely she regretted her decision.  He couldn’t live with the wound, and he couldn’t live with how much he still loved her in spite of everything, so he made a bargain with a monarch of his own, a queen who offered him oblivion.  And all it cost him was his heart.  She pulled it from his chest, separating him from his love, his anguish, and his free will.  As long as she own his heart, she commanded him, but even when Alice recovered it for him, he couldn’t carry it within him.  He remembered the pain, and he preferred the empty place where it ought to be.

These are the flashbacks that unroll throughout the series.  They’re the characters we come to understand, but not the ones we meet.  We meet the jaded, sardonic Knave and the icy, aloof Red Queen.  The Knave is Alice’s ne’er-do-well comrade who only feels the surface of things (even now, his friend doesn’t know he’s still without his heart,) and the Red Queen is the cold ruler in league with a sorcerer to break the laws of magic, both relentless and ruthless in her pursuit of her goals.  But while Jafar wants the power of a genie without the rules that constrain them, there’s only one law of magic the Red Queen wants to break:  she wants to change the past.

Okay, so breaking the laws of magic isn’t cool (especially when your plan puts the same abilities in the hands of a dangerous megalomaniac with a grudge,) but it’s telling that the Red Queen isn’t seeking to force the Knave to love her, another piece of verboten magic she stands to gain.  She doesn’t want to negate her past actions – she wants to fix them, to keep herself from trading love for dreams.  Even though, as usual, she’s so blinded by what she wants that she can’t see the fallout (I repeat, breaking the laws of magic isn’t cool,) this distinction makes all the difference.  The Red Queen aims to return the days she spent without the Knave, to be Ana and Will again, to keep his heart from being broken so completely that he can’t bear to have it in his chest.  I know I quoted “Moments in the Woods” yesterday, but it still applies – she wants an “or,” not an “and,” and therein lies the hope for them.  It’s not wealth and power and position and Will, it’s just Will.  Not that I endorse living wholly for one other person (we’ve been over this,) but it’s not about the dreaming or the wanting.  It’s about realizing one wasn’t worth the other, and taking back her mistakes.  Although the revelation isn’t enough to make Will wipe the slate clean, I think it’s what makes the slightest crack in his walls, just enough to let a reconciliation in slowly, by degrees, as they both remember who they were and start to see who they can be now.