Enneagram Types as 'Once Upon a Time' Characters: PART 1 {Types 1-4}

That's right, my dudes:  I'm splitting this endeavor into two parts!  I'm really enjoying the process of writing this post, but it's taking longer than expected, and each individual type is requiring more exposition than expected, too.  Thus, the schism. 😛

In case it wasn't obvious, I'll be examining various characters from the fairytale television series Once Upon a Time, attempting to classify them according to the personality-typing model of the Enneagram.  But first, some housekeeping:  

• I'm not an expert on the Enneagram; I've read a decent amount of material on it at this point, but others definitely know more than I do; blah, blah, blah.

• The "core desires" I include at the beginning of each type description are taken directly from The Enneagram Institute's profiles for those types.  I also quote those pages often throughout the post. 

• I may not be typing all the main characters that you would expect me to.  In the interests of full disclosure, I'll just come right out and tell you now that I won't be discussing Belle, Killian, or Rumplestiltskin.  Belle because I'm still stumped as to her type (there are too many possibilities!); Killian because I'm inching closer to a prognosis but it would be unexpected and I need more time to collect "textual support," as it were 😜; and Rumple because I'm 99% certain of his type but I don't feel like touching that dumpster fire right now.  So. 😁

• This probably goes without saying, but there will be a lot of spoilers for Once Upon a Time (including later seasons) in this post. 

Now that that's all out of the way, let's get to it!

Type One

Snow White / Mary Margaret Blanchard

Ones: Want to be right, to strive higher and improve everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.

More than anything else, Snow wants to be certain that she is doing the right thing.  

That's not to say that she is always doing the right thing.  Quite the contrary.  Snow messes up.  A lot.  And when she messes up, she messes up big.  Not in cute, innocent, "everybody does it" ways — no, in serious, even catastrophic, ways.

But that doesn't change the fact that committing a moral failure is Snow's personal anathema. 

That's why, when she does do wrong, Snow reacts in one of two ways:

1.  Self-justification / denial.
2.  Total despair.

Before the curse is broken in the first season, when she and David both think that he's married to Katheryn, Snow (or Mary Margaret, rather) rationalizes their adulterous affair by insisting that their circumstance is unique, that the purity of their devotion to each other should override every other concern because "true love" is the most important thing.  It's not, and she knows that, but she feeds herself the false narrative anyway because that's the only way to make what she's doing palatable to her own conscience.  And if her conscience can't approve her, then she can't live with herself.

(This compulsive need to justify herself is the reason she acts surprised when the townspeople judge her after finding out about the affair.  "Wait, you're condemning me?  After I've shown time and time again what a good person I am?  Why?!"  

The self-delusion is also why, when Regina gets into a similar situation in season four, Snow tries to assuage Regina's troubled conscience by literally saying:  "You may be sleeping with a married man, but so have I."  As if that . . . magically makes it okay.  If Snow's done it, it must be excusable, because Snow is an intrinsically Good Girl who could never do anything inexcusable.)

Then, in the second season, Snow is completely torn apart by her "murder" of Cora.  I use the quotation marks because, in that specific circumstance, considering all the other lives on the line, it is definitely debatable whether the killing even was murder.  But not to Snow.  

To Snow, it's black and white.  She killed Regina's mother — selfishly, she thinks — and she deceived Regina to do it, betraying her budding trust in the process.  She is a murderer.  

All you have to do to see that Snow is a One is watch the way she bottoms out after that incident. She becomes essentially catatonic, literally hiding under the covers of her bed and utterly lost to the world that she thinks she has irreparably betrayed.  

In her mind, she doesn't deserve to live anymore — and, with that level of guilt on her conscience, she really doesn't want to.  That's why she shows up on Regina's doorstep, begging her victim to kill her.  And that's why Regina refrains from doing so:  because, at that point, she understands Snow through and through; and she knows that there is no greater punishment for Snow than to have to keep existing with a stain on her soul.

Snow is so obsessed with moral correctness that, when she discovers that her unborn child has the potential to become a Wicked Villain™, she is ready to completely violate every ethical law in order to prevent that from happening.  Because, above all else, her daughter must not be evil.

She is willing to (and does) imperil the life and soul of another innocent infant to preemptively ensure that Emma's character will be, at base, Good.  And then . . . she tries to cover it up.  She threatens those who know the secret and could expose it, because she needs to maintain her image as a "child of light," even if that image is a distorted one. 

*Olivia shakes her head, lovingly but seriously, at a fellow One*

Of course, all that negativity aside, Snow's One-ness also has many good traits.  She does — eventually — acknowledge and own her mistakes.  She recognizes where she has done wrong and she strives to improve herself.  She works to make life better for other people.  She forgives fairly easily, although of course she's only human.  She loves fiercely.  

She clings to hope, holding it out to others as a beacon.  Even when she's exhausted, even when she feels that it's nothing but an empty platitude, she still wants others to believe that maybe, just maybe, things will turn out all right; and maybe, just maybe, even the worst of villains can redeem themselves.  Because, even though she *cough* forgets it occasionally, redemption is one of Snow's core values.  She believes in the possibility of moral change like she believes that the sun has risen, as C.S. Lewis would say:  "not only because [she sees] it, but because by it [she sees] everything else."

She is experienced enough to know that both the darkness and the light are real, and she knows which one she trusts to win in the end. 

Type Two

The Evil Queen / Regina Mills

Twos: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.

"When moving in their Direction of Disintegration (stress), needy Twos suddenly become aggressive and dominating at Eight. However, when moving in their Direction of Integration (growth), prideful, self-deceptive Twos become more self-nurturing and emotionally aware, like healthy Fours." [The Enneagram Institute]  

^^ Oh, look, it Regina. *waves*

Initially, Regina doesn't want much out of life.  She's not interested in the social-climbing power her mother craves; she doesn't need a lot to make her happy.  She has her father, and she has Daniel:  she has people she loves deeply, who, she knows, love her deeply back.  She is quick to help others.  She treats others well, and she expects others to return the favor.

Even after Cora destroys that innocence and contentment, Regina still isn't out to dominate (yet).  I think she would have tried to love Leopold, as an uncle if nothing else, were it not so painfully obvious that he was still so wrapped up in his dead first wife and in Snow.  Maybe that's why she agrees to marry him in the first place, so soon after losing Daniel:  maybe she hopes that some kind of affection or relational stability could grow out of that union, even if it isn't "true love".  At the very least, she will have relationships — she will have people around her who wanted to take care of her.

I think her Two-ness could also explain why she blames Snow so entirely for Daniel's death, instead of directing her rage at her mother.  Perhaps she feels that Snow's betrayal was doubly despicable because she (Regina) had just saved Snow's life.  Regina should have been entitled to Snow's allegiance:  "I literally went out of my way to help her — and this is how she repays me?"  

 

Then, too, Cora's relational proximity to Regina still confuses her.  She grapples with it for the rest of Cora's life.  "She's my mother — on some level, she must have been trying to do what she thinks is best for me."  Whereas, in Regina's mind, there is no such mitigating excuse for Snow's actions. 

After the Daniel fiasco, we see Regina morph into the unhealthy, Eight-leaning version of herself.  The Institute explains that at their worst, Twos are "able to excuse and rationalize what they do since they feel abused and victimized by others and are bitterly resentful and angry".  Regina collects grievances like souvenirs, assembling a portfolio of people who have wronged her and who must therefore Pay.  (And Snow, of course, as the person Regina sees as her ultimate enemy, is top of the list.) 

She casts the curse, even justifying the murder of her father to do it.  (He said he wanted her to be happy; the only way for her to be happy is to hurt Snow White; the only way to sufficiently hurt Snow White is to cast the curse; the only way to cast the curse is to "sacrifice the heart of the thing she loves most"; he is the thing she loves most and he knows that; ergo, he must want to sacrifice himself for her happiness.)  She doesn't mind punishing her subjects along with her foes, because they, after all, did not accord her the love and loyalty they owed her.  They just kept fawning over Snow — even though (in Regina's eyes) Snow is a spoiled, meddlesome brat trying to cast herself in a falsely heroic light. 

Even after achieving her goal in Storybrooke, though, Regina isn't satisfied — because she's lonely.  She's punished the people who tormented her, yes — but she has no one left, no one with whom she can share her victory.  (Could be why she sexually manipulates — abuses — Graham.  He doesn't actually care about her — because he can't, what with the whole "literally stealing his heart" thing — but maintaining that sick relationship at least gives her something in the way of connection and affection, even if it's solely physical.) 

Regina desperately needs both to be loved and to be able to love.  So, when she's alienated every other option, she adopts a child.  She brings home a beautiful baby boy, names him after the father that she loved (and killed *coughs*), and vows to give him the best life imaginable.  And she does love Henry — loves him more than she has ever loved anyone in the past or will ever love anyone in the future. 

But the dark side of her Two comes out again:  here, at last, is the one person she feels she can count on to love her unconditionally — but only if she ensures that he does.  She controls every aspect of her son's life.  She can't risk the possibility of him exercising his free will to not love her, or to leave her — so she keeps firm, biting tabs on his entire world. 

Eventually, though, as Regina grows and matures and repents over the course of seven seasons, she comes into her own.  She is able to recognize that she is valuable in and of herself, irrespective of her relationships; but she is also able to cultivate incredibly meaningful friendships.  She is able to acknowledge and appreciate her own uniqueness (the Four side).  There are several jumbled, whirling planets comprising her inner cosmos:  good and bad, light and dark.  And all the planets are valid in their way.      

Type Three

The Wicked Witch of the West / Zelena

Threes: Want to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves from others, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.

It's telling that jealousy is Zelena's kryptonite.  

I think it could be easy to type her as a Two or even a counter-phobic Six, given how she seems to latch onto the different people in closest relationship to her — her stepfather, her mother, Rumple, even (eventually) Regina — and chase their affirmation like a puppy.  That could seem to indicate an authority complex or an unmet need for love:  desiring authority yet despising it, craving love yet pushing it away.  [And, too, one could consider the lengths to which she was willing to go in order to obtain a child and (like Regina) "ensure" that said child loved her.]

But I don't think Zelena has an authority complex.  I think she has an inferiority complex.  She has spent a lifetime not being chosen.  Worse, she has spent a lifetime watching others be chosen instead, even when their qualifications are not as strong as her own.  

This drives her insane.  She is constantly trying to figure out what on God's ungodly earth is prompting other people to discard her and uplift someone else, for the very things that she can do better.  So she keeps scrabbling back up that hill:  always hoping that when she finally crests it, she'll be allowed to stay; and always plunging into rage or despair when she is pushed down yet again by someone else's rejection.   

Once again, the Enneagram Institute helps us out by painting a portrait of what Threes look like at dangerously unhealthy levels:  "Untrustworthy, maliciously betraying or sabotaging people to triumph over them. Delusionally jealous of others . . . [They] become vindictive, attempting to ruin others' happiness. Relentless, obsessive about destroying whatever reminds them of their own shortcomings and failures. Psychopathic behavior."

*everyone side-eyes awkwardly*

The injustice of Zelena's life — both real and perceived — eats away at her. It makes her intensely envious and intensely insecure. That's why, when the Sisterhood of the Witches (or whatever they're called) wanted to instate Dorothy as a member so soon after Zelena's own adoption into the group, she can't stand it. She has no confidence that if someone else is recognized, she won't be forgotten. Why, if they genuinely wanted and appreciated her and her talents, would they also want Dorothy?

I think that Zelena's scheme with Robin and the baby simply boils down to wanting someone who could be relied upon to look at her and say, "You are my Best.  You are the ultimate good for me.  I am satisfied with you."

This could also be the reason Zelena is so touched when Regina informally bequeaths Henry's care to her in the sixth season, should anything happen to Regina.  "You'd really trust me to raise Henry?"  Of course, there's all the other relational history that would make that moment special to the sisters; but I think it could also be Zelena recognizing, maybe for the first time, that people do value her contributions — that people do want her contributions.  

Because no one's ever done that before.  No one's ever acknowledged her competence.  No one else has ever told her, "I think you are the best person for this job and you are the person I want for this job."  Or, at least, so she thinks.  In reality, she has been affirmed at different times, but it's always been an ephemeral phenomenon because she so quickly allows her deep-rooted insecurity to anticipate a rescission of approval.  

Okay and also:  we have to talk about the final scene of the final season, in relation to Zelena, because IT SPEAKS VOLUMES and is actually super super touching if you think about it.

So, Regina has just been elected the queen of the United Realms, right?  (Yes, they elected their queen:  they're pRoGrEsSivE, okay, deal with it.)  Which, in and of itself, is a huge deal if you only consider Regina's character arc.  

BUT THEN, the camera pans to — you guessed it — Zelena, beaming and clapping with not a trace of jealousy or sadness or insecurity on her face.  Not a whiff, I tell you, of the old attention-seeking:  just pure, wholesome, genuine joy for her sister's achievement.  Even though — yet again — Regina has been chosen over her.  Zelena has grown so much that she is able to smile with full sincerity when someone else — the person she used to think had robbed her of her own due — is recognized and affirmed.  She is secure enough in who she is, in her own worth, that she is able to appreciate everyone else's, too.  

WHICH IS LEGIT BEAUTIFUL AND I MIGHT CRY ABOUT IT. 

Type Four

Red Riding Hood / Ruby Lucas

Fours: Want to express themselves and their individuality, to create and surround themselves with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a "rescuer."

I recognize that this may be one of those situations where the obvious answer is not necessarily the correct answer.  Since so much of Red's character arc is bound up in her struggle to come to grips with her identity as a werewolf, perhaps it's just intuitive to assign her the type that is known for its convoluted sense of self.

Still, I do observe a lot of Four in Red.  While under the curse in pre-Savior Storybrooke, "Ruby" clings to her autonomy — her individuality — with bared teeth, as it were.  She feels that her granny is constantly trying to suppress her personality, to shove and stuff the parts she doesn't like into a mold that will change them to a more agreeable form.  And she both resents and resists that.  

I find this first-season dynamic between Ruby and Granny interesting, actually:  It's as though the curse indirectly allows Red to realize and release some of the residual, subconscious anger she may have had in the Enchanted Forest, due to her grandmother's handling of her identity.  Yes, hiding the truth and attempting to control Red without her knowledge may have been about protecting both Red and the village . . . but still.  Whatever the intentions, whatever the necessities, the fact remained that Red was both denied access to her inner self and made to feel that that self was inherently defective.  Which . . . would be damaging.  Clearly.  

And as the irrepressible, social-butterfly Ruby straining against the rules of a controlling grandmother, Red can vent some of that collateral frustration, until she and Granny are able to come to an understanding.    

Even after her relationship with her grandmother is repaired, though, and even after the curse is broken, Red is still plagued by misgivings about who she is and what she represents.  When she is framed for murder, Red is quick to assume the worst of herself based on the precedent she knows her wolf-side set back in the Enchanted Forest.  And she's quick to ask others to prevent her from causing more harm — by force, if necessary.  

Clearly, part of this is Red's conscience operating; her natural decency and desire to protect others.  But I think it's also possible that Red would rather be imprisoned or even dead than have to function in society as a ghost of herself.  She'd rather not live in the free world at all than have to live in it on terms that violate her own truth.  And she still doesn't believe that she has the power to control her wolf-side, so she's convinced that there's no way she could exist in "civilized" society except as a menace to it. 

As the Institute says:  "[Fours] often see themselves as uniquely talented, possessing special, one-of-a-kind gifts, but also as uniquely disadvantaged or flawed. . . . they are determined to understand the truth of their experience—so that they can discover who they are and come to terms with their emotional history. This ability also enables Fours to endure suffering with a quiet strength. Their familiarity with their own darker nature makes it easier for them to process painful experiences that might overwhelm other types."

That last part, specifically, reminds me of some of the harder parts of Red's life. At first, when she finds her biological family in the Enchanted Forest, she is eager to learn all about her heritage — to learn her "emotional [and literal] history." Meeting her mother is the first time she has found others "like her," others who share her unique and intrinsic difference from everybody else. It's also the first time she is free to consider that maybe that difference could be a good or admirable thing, not just an irredeemably dangerous thing.

But then, when faced with the choice of protecting the family she never knew or the people who have loved her and cared for her her whole life, Red chooses the latter. That action simultaneously splinters her identity even further, and provides her with at least one solid brick of self-hood, created apart from anyone else's input.

Yes, she is left with this reality: "I don't belong wholly to the werewolves' world and I don't belong wholly to the humans' world, either — who, then, am I?" But now something inside her is able to answer: "Myself — and that is enough."

I think it's also worth noting that, despite the horror she feels when she first learns that she is the "monster" who has been terrorizing her community . . . Red is able to rebuild her life, and her sense of worth.  And she is able to do so no matter where she is.  

Pre-curse Enchanted Forest?  She mourns all the loss she has inadvertently caused, but then she harnesses her identity for good.  She uses her unique capabilities to help Snow and her other friends.  

Cursed Storybrooke?  I've already covered that:  it's a tempestuous process for her, but she does find a balance between maintaining her individuality and not shunning those who might not immediately understand her.  As the above scene illustrates, she also finds (through her collaboration with Emma) that she has gifts that can serve her community.  

Post-curse Storybrooke?  Again, it's a rough road, but she realizes that her identity is not a threat — not to herself, not to others.  She is able to affirm her own value with boldness and grace:  "She gave us a chance to start over, and I want to take it."  She realizes that she has forged her own valuable, complex, and beautiful self:  unique yet more than the sum of her uniqueness.

So, what think you?

Do you agree with my typings?

Part 2 will be coming [at some point, possibly] soon!