WARNING! WARNING! This post contains spoilers for episode fifteen of season two of Once Upon a Time, The Queen is Dead. Stop reading now, if you haven’t seen the episode. (I don’t actually care if people get spoiled or not. I just like making these annoying disclaimers!)
I actually liked this episode quite a bit. The one thing that I did find irksome was Queen Eva, while wearing a dress that must have been encrusted with enough diamonds to buy a small country, giving a young Snow White a lecture about how everyone is equal.
They thing I always like to remember when I’m being told by a work of fiction to root for royalty, is that all their stuff is paid for by taxing their subjects. So, this dress, with its insane amount of jewels, was paid for with money that could have gone to improving sanitation or building a school or any number of public works projects that would have improved the lives of the entire kingdom and not just the queen. Anyone that wastes their people’s money on expensive clothing, lavish balls, multiple castles, tapestries and all the other gaudy royal accoutrements can’t be a good person in my book.
And they can’t say everyone is equal when they became the leader of a country through nepotism, or, if you will, Divine Right. The system of government in Fairy Tale Land is extremely unfair and often the leaders it produces are unfit for ruling. Being the child of a good ruler doesn’t mean that you will be a good ruler… or maybe it does because of magic and true love and fairy farts. What do I know?
Anyhoo…
DEMOCRACY FOR FAIRY TALE LAND!
Seriously, the characters in Storybrooke have now experienced what it’s like to live in a free democratic society. I don’t know why so many of them seem to want to back to a land filled with autocracies and monarchies.
Actually, I just remembered one other thing that bothered me about this episode, they introduced yet another new character, Johanna, only to have her die in the very same episode. This is like the 20th time that they’ve done this. I think they have to find more uses for existing characters and stop murdering so many guest stars.