Once Upon A Time: Rumpelstiltskin (INFJ)

Ni:

“He told you I was the savior. It was his plan. Once I fulfilled that role, maybe that’s all I was ever meant to do. Everything I’ve ever done, he had it all mapped out before I was even born.” – Emma

“There are no coincidences. Everything that happens happens by design and there’s nothing we can do about it. Forces greater than us conspire to make it happen.”

Rumpelstiltskin plays the classic role of the hyper long term planner who manipulates everyone and everything to line up perfectly so that he can achieve his goal. Within the first couple of seasons, the level of careful planning is slowly revealed until the viewer eventually realizes that Rumpel somehow had a hand in basically everything significant that happens. He learns of the curse, finds someone to enact the curse, teaches said person how to enact, and sets up a way for the curse to be broken, all so that he can get himself to the same world that his son has fled to.

We considered both Si dominant and Ni dominant for his character, but there are few things that pushed us over to Ni dominant specifically. Rumpel tends to speak in indirect, and abstract ways. Naturally, his actions are often equally indirect. He’s extremely perceptive, but also willing to state these perceptions out loud, demonstrating a confidence in his intuition. For instance, he quickly picks up on the fact that the thing Zelena loves most is him, and tells her directly that that’s the reason she cannot cast the curse for him. Having eliminated her as a possibility, he instantly moves on. In addition, when Regina states that everyone says she looks like her mother, Rumpel says she doesn’t. He doesn’t change his mind about this until later, when Regina begins to act like her. This shows his tendency to infer meaning beyond the literal and visible.

Fe:

“Perception is everything, Miss Swan. Not just in the courtroom but in life.”

“If you want answers, I suggest you start by asking nicely.”

“Stop thinking. Conjuring magic is not an intellectual endeavor. It’s emotion. You must ask yourself why am I doing this? Who am I protecting? Feel it!”

Rumpel tends to toy with and manipulate others for his personal gain. He’ll come across as friendly, if he needs to, or as the villain if he doesn’t. While the fairy tale version of him is quite eccentric, he tends to use pleasantries and come off as generally polite, even if there are extremely sinister undertones baked in. He even makes a deal with Regina that involves her doing whatever favor he asks while under the curse, so long as he says “please.” The real world version, Mr. Gold, while obviously far less eccentric, is similar in this way, For example, on an average day collecting rent from Granny, she hands it off to him, stating that it’s all there, and he readily responds by saying “Yes, of course it is dear, thank you.”

One thing, Rumpel, as Mr. Gold, attempts to explain to Emma is that “perception is everything.” The context here is when Mary Margaret is about to be tried for murder. His intention is to use her personality to get her acquitted. Emma questions the point of all this, and applies the strategy to a general life lesson. This points to the Fe tendency to ensure they are perceived in such a way that is socially fitting and acceptable to whatever the current situation is.

Another potential hint toward Rumpel being an Fe user, is in the way the frames his magic lessons. It’s not that he emphasizes that magic is based in emotion, because if that’s true, anyone would have to teach it like that. However, when trying to help his student draw on that emotion, he suggests asking “why am I doing this?” and then “who am I protecting?” This could suggest more of an Fe leaning than Fi.

Ti:

“Twist my words all you want. What was the purple haze you brought?” – Emma

“You toy with words like you do people.” – Belle

Rumpel’s tendency to be extremely indirect and twist words into whatever meaning he wants them to have is a manifestation of his Ni-Ti in combination. Ni-Te users tend to be more direct due to the direct nature of Te logic. However, Ti logic is subjective and relative. Rumpel tends to use it to twist people’s words back on them, or find loopholes in deals he’s made that’ll enable him to still get what he wants, even if he’s not adhering to the spirit of the deal. For instance, he promises Belle that won’t kill Regina, but then enacts a plan that he believes will guarantee her death. He rationalizes that this is acceptable because he’s not the one directly doing the killing. He tends to defend himself to others in a similar manner.

Rumpel doesn’t appear to have absolute values, beyond his general desire to do anything and everything he can to preserve or regain certain relationships in his life, which is technically more potential evidence for Fe. As a whole, no one ever truly knows where he stands or what lines he will or will not cross.

Se:

“I needed you to work for it. I needed you to want it so bad you would ignore what your eyes are seeing. Do I even look like him at all?” – August

An obvious way that Rumpel’s inferior extraverted perceiving function manifests is shown in his backstory, prior to him becoming the dark one. He doesn’t want to leave his home town, in spite of how troublesome his reputation of being a coward is. He’d rather stay in his comfort zone, then risk starting a new life. This also happens to be how he loses his son, Baelfire.

Rumpel’s Se can specifically be seen in how he spends an incredibly long time planning out how to regain his son, who literally leaves him. Rumpel sacrifices the present, for the hope that he may one day be reunited with him. Another low Se pitfall that he falls into is something that August exploits. He leaves indirect hints that he may, in fact, be Rumpel’s son, planting seeds of suspicion in Rumpel’s mind. This essentially feeds Rumpel’s Ni, and he fails to see the obvious concrete evidence right in front of him. See the quote at the top of this section.