Almost Human

It's criminal, the way we love, the way we hate;

It's almost human...

WARNING: Once Upon A Time SPOILERS (if you're watching it)

I watch quite a few programs on TV - one of which is Once Upon A Time. It's quite an interesting program - a bunch of fairy tale characters are cursed into our world where they have no memory of their pasts and the savior (daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming) has to break the curse. In the second season the curse is broken and now they can't get back to their world or leave their town.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because of the villains of the show. They're brilliant. They take "evil" characters such as the Evil Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Captain Hook, and they make them... believable. Human. How? Their motivations, for the most part are routed in Love.
C.S. Lewis talked of how love can go wrong without some element of selflessness (Charity) in The Four Loves - it's actually rather applicable here. A particular paraphasing comes to mind here:

"[Love] begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god."

Once a love starts to take over, it destroys.

How? Here is as follows.

Captain Hook a.k.a Killian Jones
I'd say one of the least sympathetic, Killian was a philandering, murdering pirate. His True Love, Milah, was killed by Rumpelstiltskin, and so he swore vengeance - taking a portal to Neverland to preserve his life while he figured out how.
In the current story line, he switches sides like a revolving door and has displayed absolutely no mercy - especially towards Belle, the woman who Rumpelstiltskin loves. As far as motivations go he kinda has the weakest.
His love is Eros (Romantic Love), and when it goes out of control he only wants to ruin Rumpelstiltskin's love because he was denied his.

Regina Mills a.k.a. The Evil Queen
Regina Mills is the woman who cast the curse - she was known as the Evil Queen. When we meet her we know that she's been trying to kill Snow White, her step daughter, for some reason and that she cast the curse so that she would be miserable. No more happy endings.
It's revealed that the reason she wants Snow dead is that when Snow was 8 years old she told Regina's mother, Cora, that Regina was in love with a stable boy named Daniel. Cora, a powerful witch, didn't want Regina running off with a stable boy when she could marry the King - so she killed him.
(Cora also arranged the meeting between Regina and the King - by having Snow's horse go wild and Regina riding to rescue her)
However, this wasn't the start of Regina's fall from grace. She tried to escape her marriage but mother dearest would always stop her. Until one day she called up a powerful being - Rumplestiltskin - to help her. He helped Regina trap her mother in a mirror (in Wonderland incidentally where she became the Queen of Hearts).
Rumples took her on as his apprentice and by pretending to try and help her bring back Daniel (it was an elaborate plan to destroy her last bit of goodness by pretending the procedure failed so she had nothing left) he finished the foundation for the woman who would become the Evil Queen. This woman would proceed to try to kill Snow White for frakking with her chances of love, and then go on to cast the curse that would deny everyone their "happy endings".

In Storybrook (the town they live in our world) she is the mayor and she has adopted a boy, Henry - who happens to be the son of Emma, the aforementioned savior. Henry suspects the curse and thus doesn't like his mother.
(I think he's a bit of an asshole - I mean, the woman has raised him for 10 years and with the exception of trying to have his psychiatrist convince him that his theory is madness hasn't been a bad mother)
Her actions in the series are primarily aimed at trying to keep Henry - however, she doesn't do it the right ways since while it's clear she loves him, her only real examples of parental love are her passive father and her b*tch of a mother. At the beginning of season two she was working to redeem herself in Henry's eyes, but thanks to Cora's intervention she's now back to the "dark side".

Regina started out on Eros with regards to her desire to destroy Snow White but has since moved onto Affection (family love). She loves Henry - so he must love her back. She exhibits the "need-love" aspect of Affection - it wants to be returned, it wants to be loved.

Cora a.k.a The Miller's Daughter (from Rumpelstiltskin)
Honestly the biggest b*itch in the series. While she only wants the "best" for Regina, she doesn't allow Regina any choice in the matter and has even used magic to restrain her. Basically, rather than true concern for her daughter, she would rather live out her failed ambitions through her. In the most recent episodes, she framed Regina for murder to turn Henry against her and then used this new divide to convince her daughter that she could only get Henry back through use of magic.
She helped Killian to get his revenge on Rumplestiltskin in order to chase her daughter into a new world and "assist her in her greatest time of need".
In C.S. Lewis's the Four Loves, we can see that Cora's "love" is when Affection goes wrong. Affection needs to be needed, such that it will manufacture reasons why it must still be needed. Cora does this throughout the series and thus exhibits the "give-love" aspect of Affection - the need to be needed.

Rumpelstiltskin a.k.a. Mr Gold, a.k.a. The Dark One
If we want to trace back everything that went wrong in this world, it comes back to Rumpelstiltskin. He taught Cora magic, he gave Regina the curse, he killed Killian's True Love. But why?
Well, Rumpelstiltskin was once a poor man with a son, Baelfire. His wife had left him long ago and the town hated him because of his cowardice in running away from a battle. And now his son (not yet fourteen) was being recruited into the same long running war.
He had heard that he could control a great entity called the Dark One if he had it's dagger - a dagger currently kept by the man sending the children to war. So, with Baelfire's help he stole the dagger and summoned the Dark One. After an argument Rumpelstiltskin accidentally killed the Dark One - and became him.
After this Rumples defeated the ogres in the war and brought the children back... but the power went to his head. Nothing was to hurt his son. They would never be looked down on again. However, Baelfire grew afraid of his father and wished for him to return to normal so he consulted the Blue Fairy. The Blue Fairy gave him a magic bean, the "last in the land" (revealed to be a big fat lie) that would take them to a world without magic. However when Baelfire went into the portal, the coward in Rumples resurfaced such that while he was freaking out the portal closed. Since the Blue Fairy said there was no other way, Rumples started to try and find the Curse so that he could return to his son.
It was this event that lead to his teaching Cora magic, his corrupting of Regina, all to get to this "world without Magic".

Again we see Affection, but I think Rumples is more motivated by guilt. It was his cowardice that caused his wife to leave him and that caused him to lose his son. But it was the total disregard for anything but his son that did the most damage. He lost his True Love Belle twice to this - as a kiss from her would break the curse of the Dark One and he would lose the power to find his son. In Storybrook he and Belle struggle with his dark side.

Rumpelstiltskin works a bit differently to the other characters since he is sharing his body with an evil entity that sort of boosts his dark side. However, the biggest fan backlash was about his actions towards Killian. I mean, it didn't serve his purposes of finding Baelfire so it can't be justified by that. And, honestly, of all his crimes I'd say that this was the most... well... human.

I mentioned that Rumpelstiltskin's wife had left him, yes? She did - for Killian. But she didn't outright walk out on him. She pretended that she had been kidnapped and then Killian challenged Rumples to fight for her. Rumples who had a limp. And a very young son who would be an orphan if Rumples died. And thus Rumples couldn't fight - he was afraid. Rumples carried that guilt with him for at least 10 years - that it was due to his cowardice that Baelfire didn't have a mother.
Once he became the Dark One he tracked down Killian to avenger Milah - only to find she was happy with him. In exchange for their lives she offered a magic bean (told you the Blue Fairy was a liar). When Rumples asked her why she left Baelfire she said it was difficult but she had to be free "never loved [Rumpelstiltskin]".
Now... the woman who he married and had kids with, the woman whose "kidnapping" he felt guilty for for several years, the woman who he obviously loved just told him she never loved him and hated him so much that not only did she wished he died in the Ogre wars but chose to leave her son just so she wouldn't be with him. In a rage her killed her and left - and so Killian stole the bean and used it to get to Neverland.

A lot of people hate him for that... but I really view it as his most "human" action - I mean, all this information was just dumped on him. What else would he feel besides rage?

Anyway... I guess I made this post because I don't see that many really good villains - these guys may not believe that they are doing the "right" thing, but they are working towards real goals. And it's nice to see a villain where the "love" that motivates them isn't about power or lust.

Chemical: the way we love, the way we love;

It's quite inhuman...