i've got you tina

Hey nonnie! My answer to your question is definitely Cora. But to each their own. For me, both Cora and Zelena were cruel. Hell even Regina was cruel. All the villains were cruel tbh.

If you want to get more insight as to why I think this is, read below the cut. Please note that these are all my opinions and I’ve added in little headcanons of mine involving these two because they help me understand the characters on a deeper level. Again I don’t mean to hate on the characters because I don’t hate any of these two, in fact I love them. I love my Mills girls. But that doesn’t mean I think they’re saints. What I’m writing below is just what I think motivated them to become the villains that they were/are. This is super lenghty btw so don’t read if you get bored easily or genuinly don’t care for the characters or my opinions, I feel like I’m just gonna bore you haha. NO HATE INTENDED (I CAN’T STRESS THAT ENOUGH). I’m sorry to people on tumblr mobile this is super lengthy :/

Back to Cora and Zelena! If you look at both of them they had pretty similar motivations as to why they did what they did and that was envy.

Cora was envious of the life she didn’t have, the money she couldn’t spend, the lavish lifestyle she always wanted and the status and power she always wanted. She envied the royals she delivered flour to because she wanted that life, a chance to have status and be born royal and have power over a lot of people. Zelena is similar. She was envious of the life she didn’t have, the family she thought she deserved and a mother who would love her the way we wanted someone to love her. They were both driven by envy to do the terrible things they did to everyone around them. Cora, poisoned Eva because she was a princess who treated her like dirt during those times that all she wanted to be, all she dreamed to be was royalty, was to have power. Zelena, plotted revenge against her sister because she thought her sister got the life she deserved too.

I personally don’t know where Zelena’s storyline is going because we haven’t seen all of it yet, but from what we are being shown, it’s obvious that we are going to see her get redeemed. This is something Cora never got the chance to have because she was killed off in season 2 before she had the chance to be redeemed.

The reason why I think Cora’s more cruel compared to Zelena is because she didn’t stop at just obtaining the life she think she deserved and the status she wanted by marrying Henry Sr., she went on and forced the life she wanted on her daughter without even asking said daughter if she wanted a life of power and status. She forced the life she wanted on Regina because she knew that being married to Henry Sr. won’t be enough to get her the power she wanted. Yes, she got the status of being a princess, but she didn’t get the power she wanted. She wanted to rule over people and being 5th in line to the throne didn’t work for her. So instead, she went on and groomed her daughter to be the next queen and obtain that power for her. Because if you raised a daughter that is afraid of you, you’ll have control over her. And once said daughter gets the throne and you have control over her, then you have control over the people she rules. So she staged everything that happened to Eva and Leopold and Snow and she did get Regina the status she so wanted for herself even thought Regina has told her time and again that she never wanted that. And years after, when she had the chance to apologize to her daughter (and she did), she still didn’t learn from her mistakes from the past. Instead of teaching Regina to choose right, to choose not hurt other people to get what she wants, she chooses to help Regina get Henry through the use of magic and by putting the people important to Henry in danger, just so that she would get back into Regina’s good graces. So in some ways, even though she did it to help Regina and do something good for her daughter and something her daughter genuinely wants, she was selfish and didn’t think of what would happen to Regina if she did manage to kill Emma and the rest of the people important in Henry’s life. Henry would end up hating Regina for what she did and we’re back to Regina only having one person in her life who cares about her: Cora. And at that moment in time, that’s all what Cora wanted.

And to be honest, that wasn’t all of the cruel things Cora has done. Her cruelness (as we later found out), extended on to Zelena, who she left in the forest to be taken away by a cyclone and shipped off to some unknown realm. I quote “Poor babe, life is cruel and full of betrayal. That is my only lesson for you. And I must give you away to give me my best chance. As long as I have you, I can never be anything more than a Miller’s daughter.” As much as I want to believe that Cora did that for Zelena, what she said says otherwise. She was, at that moment, thinking of herself and her dream to be royal before she thought of her daughter, her flesh and blood. She could have sent Zelena somewhere she knew the baby would be loved and safe, but instead she chose the cyclone because she didn’t want anyone to know she had a baby out of wedlock. Strike two for Cora. Giving up her own flesh and blood only to achieve her goal and obtain power. That’s why I really hope that now that they’re bringing Cora back for the 100th ep, that she and Zelena have a scene together so that we can really see if Cora really meant to give Zelena up for her own gain. Because there’s this nagging feeling inside of me (or more like that part of me stanning Zelena) that hopes that there’s more to why Cora gave up Zelena.

And since you asked anon, I’ll give you a little insight of Zelena’s cruelty, because I have to admit, as much as I love this crazy witch, she’s almost just as cruel as her mother. But for me, in some ways she’s more like Regina than Cora. Like I said above, Zelena’s motivation as to why she keeps doing the things she’s doing to Regina is because she thought Regina got the life Zelena thought she herself deserved. She didn’t consider Regina’s life and what Regina had to go through at the hands of her mother just to end up as broken as Zelena. All Zelena saw when she was looking on Regina’s life was that Regina got everything. Regina got to be a princess (then later on a queen), she got to have a mother who groomed her to be royal and dreams her dreams for her. She had a comfortable family life, a mother and father who loved her and a man who loved her too (I’m assuming Zelena also knew about Daniel seeing as she was obsessed on getting revenge on her sister so I have this headcanon that Zelena spied on Regina’s little moments that didn’t involve Rumple or Cora). Regina also got to be tutored by one of the most powerful men in the enchanted forest, who groomed her to cast his curse. And we all know how Zelena felt for Rumple, she was practically in love with guy. So when Rumple chose Regina to cast the curse over Zelena, she grew furious. Because why the hell would you choose a sorceress who is less powerful than me?! I’m the more powerful one! I was the one that was profesized to cast the curse, not Regina! Why is she always the one who got the things I wanted! Zelena never thought of what it looked like from Regina’s perspective. All she saw, were things from her persepective. And it’s totally understandable for her to be this self centric because throughtout her life, she has never felt love. The parents who picked her up when she got to Oz didn’t love her as much as she wanted them to. I’m pretty sure her mother did, but since her adoptive mother died early, she never really got to feel the love until her adolescent years. And in my head, even tho (as a child), her mother would have showered her with affection, that did not cover up the fact that her adoptive father hated her because he “truly” saw what she was: wicked. When her father told her that straight to her face (after revealing that she was adopted, which was a pretty shitty move from her father imo. I don’t care if you don’t like her because she has magic, there are other ways to tell her the news that she’s adopted), she felt betrayed. Because after years of thinking her family was her real family and that there must be a reason as to why her father hated so much, she finds out that this reason is because she wasn’t his flesh and blood. And then she goes out on a mission to fine her own flesh and blood only to find out that those people were another round of people who didn’t love her. Strike two for Zelena on the “no one loves me” card. You can’t blame her that she went on to hate Regina because all she saw through Oz was Regina having a lot of people love her and caring for her and her future. So she ends up being extremely envious of her sister, which later on leads her on her mission to change her fate and travel back in time to get back what’s hers. Tbh, I think that was her first goal in the first place. I don’t think she wanted to destroy Regina that much because in my head, all Zelena wanted was family and for people to love her. And Regina is her sister, so she doesn’t wish anything ill towards the girl even though she had everything Zelena wanted. She didn’t even wish antyhing ill against her mother because she thought it wasn’t Cora’s fault that she gave Zelena up in the first place. So in season 3B, Zelena’s end game was to change her past so she would be the one who had Regina’s life. Regina only became colateral damage because all the ingredients Zelena needed to go back in time also involved something that belonged to Regina. And in a way, watching Regina suffer brought great pleasure to Zelen. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t think Zelena wanted to hurt Regina, she did. She wanted to hurt Regina before she went off to change her fate by going back to the past and killing Snow’s mother.

But I think Zelena had a chance to change her life in Oz, a chance Glinda offered to her to forget about her anger and envy towards Regina. She was already accepting it when she found the book of prophecies and acted on impulse. She didn’t take time to understand and take in that prophecies don’t always come true. And this act of hers lead her down a dark road, a road towards revenge against her sister. We saw that Zelena was ready to let go of her anger and jealousy towards Regina in Oz, but that book of prophecies didn’t allow her to. That was the moment that lead her to her mission on hurting Regina. Because she truly believed that she was evil, slash that, wicked enough to be the sorceress in the book, to be the sorceress Dorothy would later defeat. At that point she didn’t know that evil isn’t born it’s made. And by succumbing to envy and feeling threatened by the book of prophecies, she made herself evil/wicked. It wasn’t her powers that made her that way, but her choices. And when Regina defeated her, she became more furious because Regina won again after all these years of plotting her revenge. She still envied how easily (in her eyes because she doesn’t know what Regina has been going through for the past 3 decades) Regina got everything and yet she had to fight tooth and nail just to cast the curse to go back in time and get what she thought was her happy ending. So when Regina offered her a second chance of course she didn’t take it, she was still bitter for god’s sake. She didn’t want to become allies with this person she has hated for more than 3 decades, because it’s not that easy to forgive. Especially if all you ever felt for your sister was hate. Which leads me to why she decided to change her plan of simply killing Snow’s mother to killing Marian instead and posing as Marian to hurt Regina. Aside from the fact that Hook and Emma being pulled into that timeline ruined her plan, Zelena saw an opportunity to hurt Regina through Marian. Since Zelena was stuck with Hook and Emma in the time Regina was already the evil queen, she couldn’t very well go and just kill Regina when she was the evil queen, because it would be too easy for Regina and Zelena wanted to hurt Regina the hard way, so she chose Marian instead and came back and hurt Regina using her new love for Robin. Sadly it didn’t work out for her. And I’m pretty convinced she faked that ice spell to get Robin and Roland out of Storybrooke to get them away from Regina and then pressured Robin to choose in New York instead of what the real Marian would have done, which was to let him go back to Regina and help him find a way to get back to her. And then she got pregnant and she finally managed to hurt Regina very deeply (even more so when we discovered that Regina is infertile). But that failed when Robin and Regina proved to be stronger than ever.

From this point, I can say that both Cora and Zelena are on equal levels of cruelty, because both hurt Regina very deeply (in different ways but both involving the loves she had/has) and other people to further their plan (Snow, Leopold, Daniel and Zelena for Cora and Robin, Marian and Roland for Zelena). But what makes me believe that Cora is more cruel is because she didn’t only do cruel acts against Regina but also against Zelena. And both acts were an effect of her selfishness and her need for power. If she had not done this to both her daughters, their wouldn’t be any more evil Mills girls. Regina wouldn’t have lost her first love, thus not becoming the person Rumple would look for to cast his curse (aka the Evil Queen) and Zelena would have been loved enough for her to not seek revenge against her sister who has done nothing to her. Zelena would have grown up trained in magic and she would have used it for good, if trained by a loving and unselfish mother. Regina would have grown up with two older women loving her and supporting her with what she wanted in life and wouldn’t be pressured to be the perfect daughter her mother wanted to be queen. Cora’s acts of cruelty lead to both of her daughter’s to despise people that really did nothing wrong to them, which lead her daughter’s to do evil acts themselves.

The effects of Cora’s actions are what makes me think she’s more cruel. Even though she didn’t know it at that time that she would be the mother to two well known villains, it doesn’t excuse the fact that her actions did lead us to two very vindictive villains. Zelena and Regina were products of what happened to them because of Cora. And I just can’t believe a mother could do that to her own daughters just because of ambition.  I guess that’s what blinding me a little when it comes to Cora’s perspective because my mom is nothing like her. But I love Cora, always have. And I understand her need for power because being a Miller's daughter made her feel powerless. But to me all she did to both her daughter's was very cruel and for me the most cruel people do the most cruel acts to the people they love. Cora: 2, Zelena: 1. Thus, Cora is more cruel to me.