I've got an idea about the Curse, and about Regina. I'm hoping I'm better at explaining it through fic than any other way. Eventual Swan Queen.
To Build a House of Stone
Chapter 1
1983
Regina walked down the paved edge of Storybrooke's main street. She getting used to the fast, metal, carriages that rolled down the street, and to all the people who knew her name, and smiled when they saw her.
It was cold, much colder than it ever had been in fairytale land, but Regina was so distracted that she hardly noticed. There were so many signs to read (adverting things she'd couldn't even guess at – 'dry cleaning'?!), and as well as the metal carriages, there was noise that sounded like music but there were no bands that she could see (and it was often particularly loud inside small shops). Oh, and the shops! There were clothes in colours she's never even dreamed of, and shoes that appeared to made from crocodile, and a shop that sold little baby plants in pots that you could take home with you, and fruits and vegetables that surely didn't grow in a climate like this; there was snow falling and Regina was eating a banana!
By far the strangest thing, though, was all the smiles around her. Not that people hadn't smiled in the Enchanted Forest, but they hadn't smiled at her, and often when she had met people who weren't her family it was because they were coming to her as Queen, with tales of hardship and begging for help. No one here wore rags or sold matches on street corners.
She would have to learn – re learn – who all these happy people were. She had names for them of course, but they seemed to have new names now. And new jobs. She'd run into Snow White outside the elementary school. She appeared to be a teacher. How had that happened? Did Snow have the sort of empathy and moral compass that was required to instruct small children? Regina had smiled at her all the same, and asked to see the school, which had pleased her immensely. It consisted of several large buildings, each of them heated and with rugs from wall to wall in every room. All the children were well dressed and other than one boy standing in a corridor defiantly screaming, "It wasn't me, Miss!" they all appeared happy.
Regina was happy too. She had woken that morning, alone, in a warm, soft bed. When she'd opened her eyes she'd been able to see that the sky was grey and snowflakes were hitting the glass, but inside the room the air as warm, and smelt sweetly of apples and cinnamon. She'd got herself out of bed and looked in the closet for something to wear. So many clothes! How did she become someone with so many changes of clothes? And some of them so scanty!? The underwear for one was so small that she wondered at first how it wasn't going to disappear into unpleasant places. On the other hand, stockings attached to underwear cleverly removed the need for the garters or the likelihood of wardrobe malfunctions.
In the kitchen she'd found fresh food and even managed to make toast herself. It turned out that there was something immensely rewarding in preparing your own food.
The only trouble of the morning had been when she'd initially wandered outside in search of the water closet, and been distracted by the garden (would she need to care for itself, or were there servants of some somewhere?) and almost had to give-in and 'go' behind a tree, before discovering, that luxury of luxury, there was a water closet indoors - even if it took a while to work out how it operated.
Now outside in the main street her happiness stayed with her and kept her warm as she walked under the grey arms of the wintertime trees, and children in coats and hats, freed from school for the day, ran along the street adding noise and colour. She couldn't quite remember a day like this ever before. There was nothing looming on her horizon that she needed to be thinking carefully about, or planning for or hiding from, and it appeared there was nothing to regret: everyone was safely out of Fairy Tale Land, and while deprived of their memories, they had food and education and heating and indoor plumbing. Regina smiled to herself and had to restrain herself from doing a little skip. The 'curse' had worked.