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worsetodieThis is here to address some assumptions I make about Rumpelstiltskin in the series and also answer some common questions about why I make certain decisions while playing him.
1. Sexual Orientation/Did Rumpelstiltskin sleep with Cora?/Has he slept with Belle?
2. Rumpelstiltskin and Children
3. Rumpelstiltskin and Drinking
4. Rumpelstiltskin and Belle/Rumpelstiltskin and Lacey
5. Post-TLV Developments
1. Sexual Orientation/Did Rumpelstiltskin sleep with Cora?/Has he slept with Belle?
I've always assumed that Rumpelstiltskin was at least a little bisexual, maybe borderline "heteroflexible" as the internet has coined recently (meaning "I'm straight but shit happens"). In general people in and from the Enchanted Forest don't seem to have a problem with same-sex couplings, but it doesn't come up often. I just think Rumpelstiltskin needs a romantic attachment to a person first, and incidentally the only people he's ever been in love with were women.
I think that Rumpelstiltskin, in general, just doesn't make a point to have sexual relations with people he's not in love with already. I know he has this weird thing about only seeming to apprentice attractive young ladies in Enchanted Forest flashbacks, but I think this might actually partially be his misguided attempt to catch lightning in a bottle twice, because that was how he "met" Cora, and he has no fucking game (or at least he doesn't seem to think he does). I don't think he's slept with a single one, including Cora. (I think they were going to when they ran away together. He had PLANS that night, ya'll.) I don't think he and Belle have gone that far, either, because I don't think she's initiated. More on this in her section.
Do I think that shit hasn't happened? No. I'd say he's been to bed with people he didn't love maybe a few times. But it was rare. It was mutually about getting off, and then it was over. He doesn't find it as fulfilling.
2. Rumpelstiltskin and Children
I have always played Rumpelstiltskin as having a soft spot for children, but he's hesitant to make strong bonds with any because Dark One and because he would feel like he was betraying or replacing Baelfire. That fear and utter loyalty to his son has prevented one characteristic of his from fully flourishing and overcoming the darkness in him: he's a father. He loves being a father, but so long as his guilt and other emotions continue to be twisted by darkness, it's something he only sparingly acts upon or often acknowledge. When he does act on it, he's distant, like it's something he's not permitted to have full contact with, and it makes him rather melancholy at times.
By extension, something Rumpelstiltskin doesn't lightly do is mess with children in his dealings as the Dark One. There are few exceptions to this that were only made because they were key to the curse eventually happening the way it needed to. Gepetto had to live the life he did to grow up to be the man that would make the Wardrobe. He originally wanted Cinderella's baby because he needed a child conceived by true love for the curse to be broken. He stayed on it because of his obsessive need to stick to his contracts. Charming and his brother, Prince Evil Tightpants, had to be involved with the King for things to eventually go the way they needed to. He accepted he would have to eventually kill a child in order to go on living himself. These are rare exceptions in over 300 years of living.
Beyond that? He doesn't make deals with children because he recognizes their inability to truly consent to a contract, and he thinks very little of people who take advantage of them. This includes Peter Pan. Remember there was a whole generation of children from his village who would for the rest of their lives associate the Dark One with an avenging spirit who stepped onto the battlefield and made the fighting stop, so that he could lead the children who were forced to take up arms back to their families.
3. Rumpelstiltskin and Drinking
Rumpelstiltskin doesn't drink, as a rule. My headcanon is that he never has when he's been in his right mind, and likely not even then. The only time you see him even holding a drink in the entire series is when he's trying to trick Lacey into drinking the blue fairy's potion, because she drinks like a fish. He never drank a drop, himself.
He doesn't drink because his father did. Copiously. He never touched the stuff because he knew it would just be further excuse for people to judge him, and he wanted to be a better man than he was. It's that simple.
4. Rumpelstiltskin and Belle
Purely my headcanon, Rumpelstiltskin took Belle as payment for his aid because even though she shouldn't have been someone else's to sell, that's how her father and her fiance viewed her already. Her marriage was to be a strategic one, and wealth-related. He did it purely to hit Maurice where it hurt, because ending a war for him needed to come with some substantial loss to him. He very likely would have tired of her eventually and sent her back away once he felt like he had gotten enough work out of her for it to matter. Likely.
I don't actually know if his prophetic powers told him anything about Belle or her destiny with him. I don't think it did. I think those powers only show him what they think he needs to see, and canon evidence has kind of supported that. He might have known enough about her to know she was unhappy and wanted to do something to help her country. This was likely all.
As for the appropriateness or inappropriateness of their relationship, I think the age issue will always be there, forever, because he's many centuries older than literally everyone. There's no getting around that. Someone essentially keeping a person as their indentured servant and beginning a tryst with them, where that power dynamic is still in play? Absolutely inappropriate, but not at all what happened, either. Rumpelstiltskin initiated nothing with regard to their relationship, beyond the first arrangement that she come and work for him. When he thought that she might be falling in love with him (and in realizing he liked her a good deal as well) the first thing he did was end the contract and set her free, because he knew that shit would be inappropriate and not at all how Belle deserved to be treated. That was more important than pursuing a relationship with her.
Beyond that, every step of their relationship has only been taken when she's initiated. She came back after he sent her away. When the curse was broken, he offered her clothes and a place to stay, but as things became turbulent, he gave her a place to stay and found her a job so that she wouldn't be dependent on him. When she tells him it's over, he keeps his distance and doesn't do anything with her until she comes to him and says it's okay. Her consent is extremely important to him, and remember that her own place and a job became things that were necessary especially after her father showed he was not willing to allow her that freedom himself.
I don't believe they've had sex yet. I think he expects she's waiting for marriage, and he doesn't see why it should be any other way if that's what she wants. He agrees, and in the series, I'm sure he would marry her without a prophecy looming.
4b. Rumpelstiltskin and Lacey
I think the reason Rumpelstiltskin couldn't get through to Lacey the way Charming did for Snow when she was cursed is that while Charming loved Snow no matter what her demeanor, Rumpelstiltskin could not bring himself to love Lacey. In fact, I think he detested Lacey and ONLY kept her close in the hopes that something would trigger Belle's memories (and also because people like Nottingham, who knew EXACTLY WHO THEY FUCKING WERE, were looking to take advantage of her). I don't think Regina did this intentionally; I think she just made Belle into what she always assumed she was: a trollop who against the warnings of friends and family chases after powerful men who will only lead them to ruin. (Because I'm sure Regina's never forgotten how quickly Rumpelstiltskin "replaced" her when she stopped learning from him because she wouldn't kill. I think this colored her perception of him for a long, long time.)
There are a million reasons that Rumpelstiltskin could not bring himself to like Lacey, and it wasn't just that she wasn't Belle. She deliberately dumbs herself down, relishes and even encourages violence against other people if it means he (or whoever she chooses) will fight over her (likely in some misguided perception of aggressiveness and territorial behavior as a guarantee of some sort of safety), and seems hesitant to think deeply about many things in general. She addresses the subject of his son with visible discomfort, for instance because that's drama well above and beyond what she wants to deal with. She also has no respect for the importance of little things in the way that both Belle and Rumpelstiltskin do. Rumpelstiltskin, specifically, holds a lot of regard for material possessions because he admires craftsmanship and because he only has inanimate objects to tie himself to the people he's lost. Relics, if you will, and Lacey time and again displays a complete lack of regard for these, even when (I am almost certain) he has explained why they are important.
Lacey is also pretty much never sober anytime we see her. She drinks heavily and apparently favors Rumpelstiltskin considerably when he starts keeping liquor in his home and shop specifically for her. (And because it's Rumpelstiltskin it's probably the good stuff.) This is positively repugnant to him, but he can't afford to let her out of his sight for too long.
They have also never had sex, but I do believe Lacey has tried to initiate sex with him on more than one occasion. Because she has been intoxicated (and because he doesn't think it would be right in any sense of the word to do so, even if she were sober), he's found ways to avoid it.
5. Post-TLV Developments
Rumpelstiltskin's experiences aboard the Barge did introduce some interesting changes to his character, the first and most important being that he's a little less freaked out by dying now. He's returned to his own timeline to finish out the events of season 2 and the first half of season 3 sort of assured there would be something afterward, and that's important. He accepted he had to see that prophecy through to the end and went back to do so, and I've been purposefully vague on how different events played out, if they were at all. He chased a phantom of his son through Silent Hill; a little death just doesn't scare him as much as it used to.
His dealings with Peter Pan in other games have since been a lot less tense, at least for him. Knowing his fate and understanding Pan a little better led him to addressing him with a certain amount of unnerving calm. He doesn't know if he forgives him. He just gets it, and he gets that he's afraid to die.
Maybe he thinks someday Pan will end up on the Barge and find his own way.
Coming to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
boomtown, he accepted his death and that he would never go back to his own world, not permanently at any rate. He therefore chose to try to make a life there. He worked, he interacted with people, he waited. He waited because people familiar to him do appear, at on one occasion one of those familiar people was his son, still the same age he was when he let him go through the portal.
Once or twice since then he's fluxxed out and lived out more from his timeline. He's died again. The events of season 3 fully transpired -- almost to the very end of it. His son died in his arms, and the woman responsible, from his standpoint, still lives, because he was stopped from taking vengeance. He's returned to Boomtown a little more determined to stay there and wait for his family to come to him.
Secretly, he hopes Baelfire will come back, and then perhaps they can make a go of it together, and his poor son will at last have a chance to have a normal childhood. He now hopes for this more than anything, and waiting for him might stop him from ever choosing to leave again.
This post will be updated regularly as more questions come in or I think of more canon assumptions to address.
1. Sexual Orientation/Did Rumpelstiltskin sleep with Cora?/Has he slept with Belle?
2. Rumpelstiltskin and Children
3. Rumpelstiltskin and Drinking
4. Rumpelstiltskin and Belle/Rumpelstiltskin and Lacey
5. Post-TLV Developments
1. Sexual Orientation/Did Rumpelstiltskin sleep with Cora?/Has he slept with Belle?
I've always assumed that Rumpelstiltskin was at least a little bisexual, maybe borderline "heteroflexible" as the internet has coined recently (meaning "I'm straight but shit happens"). In general people in and from the Enchanted Forest don't seem to have a problem with same-sex couplings, but it doesn't come up often. I just think Rumpelstiltskin needs a romantic attachment to a person first, and incidentally the only people he's ever been in love with were women.
I think that Rumpelstiltskin, in general, just doesn't make a point to have sexual relations with people he's not in love with already. I know he has this weird thing about only seeming to apprentice attractive young ladies in Enchanted Forest flashbacks, but I think this might actually partially be his misguided attempt to catch lightning in a bottle twice, because that was how he "met" Cora, and he has no fucking game (or at least he doesn't seem to think he does). I don't think he's slept with a single one, including Cora. (I think they were going to when they ran away together. He had PLANS that night, ya'll.) I don't think he and Belle have gone that far, either, because I don't think she's initiated. More on this in her section.
Do I think that shit hasn't happened? No. I'd say he's been to bed with people he didn't love maybe a few times. But it was rare. It was mutually about getting off, and then it was over. He doesn't find it as fulfilling.
2. Rumpelstiltskin and Children
I have always played Rumpelstiltskin as having a soft spot for children, but he's hesitant to make strong bonds with any because Dark One and because he would feel like he was betraying or replacing Baelfire. That fear and utter loyalty to his son has prevented one characteristic of his from fully flourishing and overcoming the darkness in him: he's a father. He loves being a father, but so long as his guilt and other emotions continue to be twisted by darkness, it's something he only sparingly acts upon or often acknowledge. When he does act on it, he's distant, like it's something he's not permitted to have full contact with, and it makes him rather melancholy at times.
By extension, something Rumpelstiltskin doesn't lightly do is mess with children in his dealings as the Dark One. There are few exceptions to this that were only made because they were key to the curse eventually happening the way it needed to. Gepetto had to live the life he did to grow up to be the man that would make the Wardrobe. He originally wanted Cinderella's baby because he needed a child conceived by true love for the curse to be broken. He stayed on it because of his obsessive need to stick to his contracts. Charming and his brother, Prince Evil Tightpants, had to be involved with the King for things to eventually go the way they needed to. He accepted he would have to eventually kill a child in order to go on living himself. These are rare exceptions in over 300 years of living.
Beyond that? He doesn't make deals with children because he recognizes their inability to truly consent to a contract, and he thinks very little of people who take advantage of them. This includes Peter Pan. Remember there was a whole generation of children from his village who would for the rest of their lives associate the Dark One with an avenging spirit who stepped onto the battlefield and made the fighting stop, so that he could lead the children who were forced to take up arms back to their families.
3. Rumpelstiltskin and Drinking
Rumpelstiltskin doesn't drink, as a rule. My headcanon is that he never has when he's been in his right mind, and likely not even then. The only time you see him even holding a drink in the entire series is when he's trying to trick Lacey into drinking the blue fairy's potion, because she drinks like a fish. He never drank a drop, himself.
He doesn't drink because his father did. Copiously. He never touched the stuff because he knew it would just be further excuse for people to judge him, and he wanted to be a better man than he was. It's that simple.
4. Rumpelstiltskin and Belle
Purely my headcanon, Rumpelstiltskin took Belle as payment for his aid because even though she shouldn't have been someone else's to sell, that's how her father and her fiance viewed her already. Her marriage was to be a strategic one, and wealth-related. He did it purely to hit Maurice where it hurt, because ending a war for him needed to come with some substantial loss to him. He very likely would have tired of her eventually and sent her back away once he felt like he had gotten enough work out of her for it to matter. Likely.
I don't actually know if his prophetic powers told him anything about Belle or her destiny with him. I don't think it did. I think those powers only show him what they think he needs to see, and canon evidence has kind of supported that. He might have known enough about her to know she was unhappy and wanted to do something to help her country. This was likely all.
As for the appropriateness or inappropriateness of their relationship, I think the age issue will always be there, forever, because he's many centuries older than literally everyone. There's no getting around that. Someone essentially keeping a person as their indentured servant and beginning a tryst with them, where that power dynamic is still in play? Absolutely inappropriate, but not at all what happened, either. Rumpelstiltskin initiated nothing with regard to their relationship, beyond the first arrangement that she come and work for him. When he thought that she might be falling in love with him (and in realizing he liked her a good deal as well) the first thing he did was end the contract and set her free, because he knew that shit would be inappropriate and not at all how Belle deserved to be treated. That was more important than pursuing a relationship with her.
Beyond that, every step of their relationship has only been taken when she's initiated. She came back after he sent her away. When the curse was broken, he offered her clothes and a place to stay, but as things became turbulent, he gave her a place to stay and found her a job so that she wouldn't be dependent on him. When she tells him it's over, he keeps his distance and doesn't do anything with her until she comes to him and says it's okay. Her consent is extremely important to him, and remember that her own place and a job became things that were necessary especially after her father showed he was not willing to allow her that freedom himself.
I don't believe they've had sex yet. I think he expects she's waiting for marriage, and he doesn't see why it should be any other way if that's what she wants. He agrees, and in the series, I'm sure he would marry her without a prophecy looming.
4b. Rumpelstiltskin and Lacey
I think the reason Rumpelstiltskin couldn't get through to Lacey the way Charming did for Snow when she was cursed is that while Charming loved Snow no matter what her demeanor, Rumpelstiltskin could not bring himself to love Lacey. In fact, I think he detested Lacey and ONLY kept her close in the hopes that something would trigger Belle's memories (and also because people like Nottingham, who knew EXACTLY WHO THEY FUCKING WERE, were looking to take advantage of her). I don't think Regina did this intentionally; I think she just made Belle into what she always assumed she was: a trollop who against the warnings of friends and family chases after powerful men who will only lead them to ruin. (Because I'm sure Regina's never forgotten how quickly Rumpelstiltskin "replaced" her when she stopped learning from him because she wouldn't kill. I think this colored her perception of him for a long, long time.)
There are a million reasons that Rumpelstiltskin could not bring himself to like Lacey, and it wasn't just that she wasn't Belle. She deliberately dumbs herself down, relishes and even encourages violence against other people if it means he (or whoever she chooses) will fight over her (likely in some misguided perception of aggressiveness and territorial behavior as a guarantee of some sort of safety), and seems hesitant to think deeply about many things in general. She addresses the subject of his son with visible discomfort, for instance because that's drama well above and beyond what she wants to deal with. She also has no respect for the importance of little things in the way that both Belle and Rumpelstiltskin do. Rumpelstiltskin, specifically, holds a lot of regard for material possessions because he admires craftsmanship and because he only has inanimate objects to tie himself to the people he's lost. Relics, if you will, and Lacey time and again displays a complete lack of regard for these, even when (I am almost certain) he has explained why they are important.
Lacey is also pretty much never sober anytime we see her. She drinks heavily and apparently favors Rumpelstiltskin considerably when he starts keeping liquor in his home and shop specifically for her. (And because it's Rumpelstiltskin it's probably the good stuff.) This is positively repugnant to him, but he can't afford to let her out of his sight for too long.
They have also never had sex, but I do believe Lacey has tried to initiate sex with him on more than one occasion. Because she has been intoxicated (and because he doesn't think it would be right in any sense of the word to do so, even if she were sober), he's found ways to avoid it.
5. Post-TLV Developments
Rumpelstiltskin's experiences aboard the Barge did introduce some interesting changes to his character, the first and most important being that he's a little less freaked out by dying now. He's returned to his own timeline to finish out the events of season 2 and the first half of season 3 sort of assured there would be something afterward, and that's important. He accepted he had to see that prophecy through to the end and went back to do so, and I've been purposefully vague on how different events played out, if they were at all. He chased a phantom of his son through Silent Hill; a little death just doesn't scare him as much as it used to.
His dealings with Peter Pan in other games have since been a lot less tense, at least for him. Knowing his fate and understanding Pan a little better led him to addressing him with a certain amount of unnerving calm. He doesn't know if he forgives him. He just gets it, and he gets that he's afraid to die.
Maybe he thinks someday Pan will end up on the Barge and find his own way.
Coming to
boomtown, he accepted his death and that he would never go back to his own world, not permanently at any rate. He therefore chose to try to make a life there. He worked, he interacted with people, he waited. He waited because people familiar to him do appear, at on one occasion one of those familiar people was his son, still the same age he was when he let him go through the portal. Once or twice since then he's fluxxed out and lived out more from his timeline. He's died again. The events of season 3 fully transpired -- almost to the very end of it. His son died in his arms, and the woman responsible, from his standpoint, still lives, because he was stopped from taking vengeance. He's returned to Boomtown a little more determined to stay there and wait for his family to come to him.
Secretly, he hopes Baelfire will come back, and then perhaps they can make a go of it together, and his poor son will at last have a chance to have a normal childhood. He now hopes for this more than anything, and waiting for him might stop him from ever choosing to leave again.
This post will be updated regularly as more questions come in or I think of more canon assumptions to address.
