History Characters / OnceUponATimeEnchantedForest

* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: What she receives from Hades. It is, completely, justified.

** Will ''willingly'' has her do this to him, just so he can no longer feel the crushing heartbreak of [[spoiler:Anastasia's apparent betrayal.]]

** Averted in that the Red Queen, Anastasia, who is often conflated with the Queen of Hearts in adaptations, is a separate character as in the original books, although they are connected as Cora was the one who taught Anastasia magic.

** The lies she used to [[spoiler:break up Anastasia and Will]] in ''Once Upon A Time In Wonderland'' were so good that neither of them even suspected she was lying. She's so good at lying that even ''every troper on the entirety of this site'' has no idea what was an outright lie and what was truth... or what was a mix of ''both!''

* CompositeCharacter: Cora is both the miller's daughter (from the original ''Literature/{{Rumplestiltskin}}'' fairy tale) and the Queen of Hearts from ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''. She also has shades of Koschei the Deathless, given that she's removed her own heart and hidden it for safe-keeping.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Ethnicities are never confirmed in the Enchanted Forest, but it's obvious that he and his family are meant to be Hispanic as he, his younger self, and his father are all played by Latino actors.

* WrittenByTheWinners: His explanation for why giants are thought of as selfish plunderers who grew the magic beans to steal from other worlds. Prince James and the rest of the humans who killed his Anton's family spread the story to justify their actions.

* HiddenDepths:It turns out that the version of the war against the giants we heard was severely [[WrittenByTheWinners skewed by the victors]]. They weren't evil, and now the one giant left wears the now useless magic bean on a necklace as a reminder that humans are all killers.

* WrittenByTheVictors: His explanation for why giants are thought of as selfish plunderers who grew the magic beans to steal from other worlds. Prince James and the rest of the humans who killed his Anton's family spread the story to justify their actions.

* FreudianExcuse: In both "Manhattan" and a WordOfGod podcast on it, we see that she's stuck up for Rumplestiltskin for years, insisting that he's nothing like his cowardly father (who abandoned him). When he cripples himself to get out of fighting because he doesn't want Baelfire to grow up without a father like he did, seemingly confirming that he ''is'' a coward after all and consigning her and Baelfire to notoriety by association, she [[TookALevelInJerkass grows very bitter very fast]].

* AloofDarkHairedGirl: Cora is a tall dark haired woman with a frosty demeanour, much like her daughter.

* AbusiveParents: While not physically abusive to her son, she does leave him alone while she goes off to drink with pirates and eventually abandons him altogether. In the ten years between her running off with Captain Jones and Rumple killing her, you think she could have managed to drop by once in a while or send her a kid a line or something. On the other hand, she does seem remorseful about it and admits it was a mistake, and later Jones tells Baelfire that she used to speak of coming back for him one day.

* BackForTheDead: By Season 5, Milah is long dead. That doesn't stop Rumple stops her from moving on (and seeing Bae again) by pushing her into the River of Lost Souls. To be fair, he only does so to protect his unborn child from Hades -- his expression is pretty regretful after, and he screams her name while he does it.

* FreudianExcuse: In both "Manhattan" and a WordOfGod podcast on it, we see that she's stuck up for Rumplestiltskin for years, insisting that he's nothing like his cowardly father. When he cripples himself to get out of fighting, seemingly confirming that he ''is'' a coward after all and consigned her and Baelfire to notoriety by association, she [[TookALevelInJerkass grows very bitter very fast.]]
** And then it turns out in order to save Bae from dying from a snakebite, Rumple made a deal that their second-born child was the price for, meaning they could never have more children. No wonder she was bitter. Then again, she was clearly already displeased with him before this happened. Dealing their non-existent secondborn child was the [[LesserOfTwoEvils only alternative to straight up murdering a man]], and it did save their firstborn child's life. It's a complicated case where neither of them treated each other the way they should have: Rumple should have given her agency in dealing away a potential child, and Milah should not have asked him to murder a man.
* {{Jerkass}}: To Rumplestiltskin once he ends up abandoning fighting in the war, even though the only reason he did it was to live for her and Baelfire's sake. On the other hand, he doesn't take any of her suggestions to better themselves either, fueling her resentment further.
** Even if her relationship to Rumplestiltskin is debatable, she doesn't seem to give a second thought to leaving her child Bae behind, only regretting it after the fact and only coming back to see him when it was already too late.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Her punishment in the Underworld is looking after a bunch of children, constantly being reminded of her own child that she abandoned.

* PetTheDog: She has a few. She leaves the tavern and Jones' company when Baelfire shows up, she tries to salvage her relationship with Rumple by suggesting they move somewhere to make a new start (something Rumple refuses to do since it ended horribly for him when he suggested it to his own father), she regrets abandoning Baelfire and Jones later mentions that she always missed him and planned to come back for him, and she ''does'' admit that she was wrong for what she did to Rumple and Bae.

** When we meet her in the Underworld she gets a lot of this helping Emma to get to Hook despite the danger.