From a very young age Regina had been taught that love was weakness. Her mother had hammered the lesson into her, but for many years the lesson had not been learnt. She had always known that her mother hadn't loved her, at least, not in the way a mother should love her only child, but that had never stopped her from craving the love and attention she had seen others receive. Regina had always been told that love was weakness, and that it kept her too open and vulnerable, but Regina hadn't learnt her lesson until it was too late.
In her entire life, she had only loved a reserved handful of people. The first if these had been her mother, her greatest teacher and the person she most feared. Her mother craved power and Regina craved her love, but it was something she never received. Over the years, especially after Daniel's murder, Regina grew to resent her mother. Yet she found that she could never truly hate her, because in some small and twisted recess in the back of her mind, Regina still loved her mother in a strange way. Even after all her mother had taken from her. It was a twisted sort of love that shouldn't exist but did, regardless.
The second person had been her father. Her father had been one of the only people to always be by her side, no matter what Regina did, no matter whom Regina became. He had still loved his little girl, even after all the unspeakable acts of evil she had committed. He had loved her until the very end, even as she had ripped his heart from his chest and crushed it into ashes in her palm. She had loved her father, even through the darkness swirling hazily inside of her. He had been the only person able to get through to her in the darkness, her live for him kept her heart from becoming even blacker than it was.
The third person had been her Daniel, her love for him had been so true and so pure and so innocent. She had been barely sixteen, little more than a naive little girl and yet she had loved him with her everything. She had lived a life of luxury but she gladly would have given up every last bit of it if it meant they could be together. They had planned to run away together, to marry in another land and live happily ever after. Even after all of these years she can still recall the giddy feeling of her happiness, her heart beating rapidly in her chest and a smile so big it made her cheeks ache in the most pleasant way possible.
He had made her see the world from a new perspective, he had given her hope and love and light. He had given her everything, and for the first time in her life she had been able to dream of being happy. They had been so close to true happiness, not just stolen kisses in the middle of a field, that she could feel it in her grasp. Then it had all been cruelly ripped away by her mother and by Snow White. After his murder, she had clutched his cold, dead corpse to her chest and wept for her lost love and happiness.
The fourth person she had ever truly loved was Henry. She had spent decades alone and cold and unmoved, her heart a stone still in her chest. Yet there had still been a dull ache inside her, a numbness of a hole that she didn't think could be filled. But from the moment she had held Henry in her arms, she had known that everything would be fine. The small big in her arms, her son, would be her happy ending and she would be his. For a decade she he doted on him, seem to his every need, provided for him, soothed every illness and loved him unreservedly. She loved Henry more than she had ever loved another person. Her love for him didn't make her feel weak, it made her stronger than she had ever felt before. Even without her magic.
He had loved her too, and for a short while she had been his entire world. His mommy had been his everything. He had loved her in his childish manner and he had seen the woman whom had died before she had come of age. And for a while Regina had had her happy ending, and then her son had started hating her. But she still loved him, more than anything on this earth and certainly more than life itself. Things had changed even more when he had run away from home and returned dragging Emma Swan behind him.
The fifth person and final person she had ever truly loved had snuck up on her one day when she least suspected it. Her and Emma had begun with a more than rocky start, at first they had proclaimed to hate each other. As time passed, and they saved each other continually, they had grown to tolerate one another, for Henry's sake, or so they told themselves. Over that time, both Emma and Regina had passing romances. From Graham, to Hook, to Neal, to Robin, but nine had stuck. The only person whom had stuck for Regina had been Emma. She hadn't realised what it had all meant until one morning in Granny's when she had seen Hook with Emma.
She had felt heat coiling in her like a snake, a feeling she well knew to be envy. And from there it had all spiralled out of control, not that she was complaining. It hadn't taken long for the pirate and the saviour to break up, and at that point Regina had been relieved. From there the rest had been history.
Over the years, Regina had guarded her heart with the utmost care, only allowing a scant few to get past her walls and yet Emma and her son had snuck up on her. She hadn't wanted to love either of them half as much as she did, but now it had happened she wouldn't have changed it for the world. They were a family, and as far as Regina was concerned that was the way it was supposed to be. To her mother, love may have been weakness but to Regina, love had become her greatest strength.