Once Upon A Time: Regina Mills (ESTJ)

Te:

“What he needs is a dose of reality.”

“No, you don’t get to speak. You don’t get to do anything.”

“Miss Swan, I’d be happy to continue demonstrating my power, but am I right in guessing your resolve to stay is only growing?”

“You can make them not be scared. You can make them love you.”

Regina is very goal focused and tends to prioritize getting what she wants. Enacting the curse and making the required sacrifice is one example of this in action. She is willing to sacrifice her own father in order to enact a curse that she is convinced will give her what she most desires. When speaking or dealing with others, Regina is very blunt and authoritative. She is quick to tell others exactly what she thinks of them and dole out criticism. She relishes in exercising her power and authority over other people; she regularly strong arms and threatens the towns people into doing what she wants. In her mind, anything that you want to happen you should be able to force into happening.

Regina doesn’t have a very good grasp on emotional dynamics, and as a result, is convinced that you can make other people love you. This is one of the main conflicts that she has with her son, Henry, because she doesn’t understand why he doesn’t like her and is unhappy. While she does truly love her son, she is still very strict and stern with him, making sure that she has a rigid structure in place to keep him in line and doing what he is supposed to be doing. Another example of her lack of emotional intelligence is shown when she offers to let Hansel and Gretel live with her. She seems truly confused that they would hold out hope for their father when she can offer them anything that they physically desire.

When Emma arrives in Storybrooke, Regina doesn’t make any attempts to hide the fact that she doesn’t like her and does not want her there. As a matter of fact, she point blank tells her both of these things, and then proceeds to make it difficult to stay. First, she gets her arrested for supposedly drunk driving, and then gets her expelled from the place she was staying. She even goes on to confront Emma, making no attempts to hide she was behind any of it. She openly admits to demonstrating her power, but also acknowledges that it is having the opposite effect than what she wants due to Emma’s stubborn nature.

Si:

“In order for something to grow, Miss Swan, it needs roots, and you don’t have any. People don’t change. They only fool themselves into believing they can.”

“If you can’t let go of the past, Regina, it’s still gonna haunt you.” – Dr. Hopper to Regina

“So long as you live in the past, you’ll never find your future.” – Rumpelstiltskin to Regina

For the first few seasons of the show, Regina is shown to be stuck in the past to an unhealthy degree. She is admonished by multiple people at different points in her life to let go of her past, but she is unable to. She’s fueled by her anger over what’s happened in the past, and uses it to form her ideal for the future. One more extreme example is how she preserves and keeps the body of her first love, Daniel. She’s unable to fully let him go until he’s threatening her son in his warped, resurrected state. Of course, a more minor example of her connection to her past is how she names her son “Henry” after her father, in spite of being the one that killed him.

Regina is extremely direct, and Gold describes her as lacking any kind of subtly. This is most common for those with Te and Si in combination. Regina has a tendency to be fairly straightforward, and not prone to withholding a bunch of information. She approaches Emma at one point during season 1, states that Emma will look into the stranger in town for her (which is a Te power display), and then when asked why, she proceeds to give a detailed explanation.

Regina dives into research and gathers information when facing problems. When Emma comes into town, Regina learns her entire history, and then proceeds to grill her on the specifics, which is another example of her Si use. She probes about why Emma hadn’t stayed in one place for more than two years, but then specifically asks about Tallahassee because it had been the longest. Naturally, she seems to verbalize all of the information that she had learned to Emma, and then criticizes her for failing to put down roots. This also suggests Si because Si users value stability, and Regina was pointing out that Emma lacked any and all stability. She concludes the lecture by saying that people can’t change; they only think they can.

Ne:

“I don’t like surprises, Sheriff. I find them threatening.”

“But what if we’re wrong? What if that portal opens up and it’s not my mother? What if Mary Margaret and Emma do defeat Cora, and go through it?”

Regina shows evidence of low Ne, like finding surprises to be threatening. This is a statement she makes to the Sheriff of Storybrooke shortly after the curse is enacted, simply because a couple of tourists were in town. This dislike of surprises in low Ne users is caused by a fear of the unknown, which drives the them to prepare for possible outcomes. Regina demonstrates this general tendency.

Another example can be seen when Henry as a little baby is crying all of the time. She takes him to the doctor, who says that nothing is wrong; he just needs maternal love. She insists that something is wrong, and starts asking him to run a bunch of tests, like a chest x-ray or blood work. When it is mentioned any genetic predispositions could be learned from the birth mother, Regina instantly kicks into research mode again, and has Sydney hunt down all possible information on Henry’s birth mother. When learning that Henry’s birth mother is the savior, Regina gets so afraid of what the future might hold, that she nearly gives up Henry. When she is unable to, Regina decides to take a memory loss potion so that fear doesn’t prevent her from putting Henry first.

Other ways in which Regina’s Ne surfaces is in how open to possibilities she becomes when she’s trying to save someone close to her. She refuses to believe that there’s no way to get to Neverland to save Henry, even though people keep saying that there’s no way to open a portal to another world. In addition, one of the reasons why she holds onto Daniel’s body is in hopes that maybe she can find some way to revive him. This hope (with some behind-the-scenes manipulation from Rumpel) leads her to Dr. Frankenstein, whom she is willing to believe can revive Daniel.

Fi:

“I am not evil. They call me that because of her. She’s the evil one. …When she is gone, when Snow is dead, then they will see my kindness.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

Regina’s Fi comes across in her warped view of herself. In spite of all the things that she has done, it takes her a long time admit that she is evil. Earlier on in her back story, she is convinced that Snow White is the source of all her problems, and that once Snow White is dealt with, everyone will love her. This demonstrates low self awareness and a low identity function that is struggling to connect her own evil actions to her identity. On many occasions, she steps over the moral boundaries, that she supposedly should have as a good and kind person, in the pursuit of completing her goals which again demonstrates her low Fi use.

Another way her Fi comes out is in her denial of any weakness, like fear. She openly declares that she isn’t afraid of anything to Tinkerbell, which is an out and out lie given the fact that she had just (out of fear) fled from an opportunity to meet her next true love. She tends to put on a cold and unfeeling face, acting unaffected by any tragedy that she has faced and the general disdain that others have for her. Denying any weakness is typical of those with inferior Fi as they tend to be hyper sensitive about it. They hate weakness in others which leads them to deny weakness in themselves.