Emma Swan

**Emma Swan-Jones** is the main protagonist of ABC's *Once Upon a Time*. She is the daughter and eldest daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, older sister of Prince Neal, the granddaughter of Queen Eva, King Leopold, Ruth and Robert, niece to Prince James, wife of Killian Jones, the mother of Henry Mills and Hope Swan-Jones. She is also the grandmother of Lucy Mills, the daughter-in-law of Brennan Jones, sister-in-law of Liam Jones and Liam II, and the former lover of the late Neal Cassidy.
Originally from the Enchanted Forest, Emma became an independent woman who also falls into the Real world, giving birth to a son she gave up for adoption. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Emma's wish of not being alone is answered when her son comes to take her back to her family. Finally breaking the curse after giving Henry true love's kiss, Emma fell through a portal with her mother and returning to her birthplace. In the final battle, Emma and Rumplestiltskin restored the balance of good and evil after the Black Fairy's demise.

She is portrayed by Jennifer Morrison as an adult, Abby Ross as a teenager and McKenna Grace as a child.

## Early History

Many years before Emma was born, a dying seer warned Rumplesitltskin that two people would cast and break the Dark Curse.

As Regina's Dark Curse approaches, Emma Swan is born on October 23rd, 1983, to David Nolan and Snow White of the Enchanted Forest. As the new parents hold their newborn, Snow believes that the wardrobe Geppetto and Pinocchio made can only transport one individual to the land without magic. Realizing Emma has to make the journey on her own, Snow convinces David to take their daughter to the wardrobe to give her "her best chance." As Charming makes his way to the wardrobe, he fights the Evil Queen's guards but is mortally wounded. He finally makes it to the wardrobe and places Emma inside, which successfully transports the baby Emma to the state of Maine, where Pinocchio finds her. He takes her to the diner and they are both placed in foster homes, however, Pinocchio, now August Booth, abandons her, leaving Emma to grow up on her own.

Growing up without parents made it hard for Emma, as she believed she was abandoned by her family on the side of the road. Whether or not she came up with the conclusion herself or if someone else told her is unknown. They didn't even bother taking her to the hospital. Her first set of foster parents when she was three years old only wanted her for financial support. At age six years old, n the year 1989, Emma and some children from her group home visited a movie theater in Minnesota to watch the Disney film, The Sword in the Stone.

Emma later spots a woman sitting down and steals the Apollo stealing the bar. She later sees Arthur pulling out the Sword from the stone. An usher tells her not to do it, and Emma thinks he is referring to the bar she stole. Merlin says he is talking about the sword and is cautious of her to not pull Excalibur from the stone, no matter how tempted she is to do it. Emma looks at the screen and the usher again, only to find that he is gone. Thinking it was part of her imagination, Emma is still haunted by the mystery man's warning while scarcely watching the rest of the film as Wart takes the sword from the stone ("The Dark Swan").

In 1990, sometime after running away from her group home, Emma began living on the streets. One night, she rips out pages from a fairytale book and burns them in a trash can to keep warm. As she moves to tear out a page from The Ugly Ducking story, a boy, actually the older Pinocchio, stops her from destroying it. He offers her insight about all fairytales being about transformation, such as the duckling turning into a swan, but Emma believes the duckling was always a swan without knowing it. The boy explains his view of the duckling having turned into a swan with the power of belief, and that if someone believes in something hard enough, they can change their fate. He uses this to persuade Emma that being on the streets is not the fate she wants and that despite running away from her previous home, it doesn't mean she won't find a good one someday. Encouraged by these words, Emma goes to the police for help, and when asked for her last name, she adopts the surname "Swan" to pay homage to the advice she got about the ugly duckling and the power to change by believing in herself. ("Tougher Than the Rest")

Despite growing up in the orphanage, Emma enjoys singing in her room. However, she is discouraged from joining the school talent show when one of the bullies, tells her that no one will hear her sing because orphans will be forgotten. This results in Emma starting to lose faith in herself so she throws away a musical competition ad in the trash.

Later on, a girl named Cecilia walks into her newly adopted parents and Emma sadly watches the car drive away ("No Place Like Home"). After many foster homes, Emma could not take it anymore, so she ran away to Hopkins, Minnesota where she befriended a young girl named Lily, the unknown daughter of Maleficent. The two of them promise to be best friends no matter what. Emma later loses faith in Lily when she learns she was lying to her the entire time. She later walks away ignoring Lily. In adulthood, Emma would regret leaving her best friend.

Emma, at fifteen, is later living in a foster home when her foster brother Kevin steals her camera. Emma is angered by this and wishes to leave. Ingrid stops her from leaving when she says Kevin is afraid of spiders, even plastic ones. Emma says she'll stay awhile. After a while in a carnival, Emma shows magic once winning the crane. She believes that she is being sent away to another foster home Ingrid says she is adopting her. One night, Emma wishes to have magical powers, but Ingrid goes too far and pulls her in front of a car, imploring the girl to use her magic. She believes Ingrid to be crazy and leaves her for good ("Pilot", "The Stranger").

At age seventeen, Emma tried to steal a small yellow Volkswagen Beetle in the streets. However, she later discovers that Neal Cassidy, the son of Rumplestiltskin, is in the backseat. They are stopped by a cop, but Neal quickly takes the keys and pushes them into the ignition. The duo passes off as a boyfriend trying to give his girlfriend driving lessons. The cop lets them off with a warning before letting them leave. Afterward, Emma realizes that Neal is also stealing the car.

Later that night, Emma meets Neal for ice cream and has a date at a closed amusement park. The two bond and form a partnership that soon becomes a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, Neal abandons her and, unknowingly, his unborn son when he lets her take the fall for his stolen watches at the behest of an adult Pinocchio, now known as August Booth, so she can fulfill her destiny of breaking the Dark Curse.

## Personality

As a product of true love, Emma has a pure heart, both physically and metaphorically. She is a deeply damaged and conflicted woman. Growing up, Emma had become conflicted. At the start of season 1, she is a loner, having no friends until her son shows up after ten years to help her save their family. Despite the fact she doesn't believe, Emma still cares about the other people around her. Like Snow, she grows to realize she is her family (with both unaware of their relationship as mother and daughter at the time). She later grows to be protective of her son Henry and plays along with his curse because of her belief that he has an overactive imagination. Emma also makes it her personal mission to make sure that everyone gets their successful conclusion including Regina Mills, the former Evil Queen. She is one of the purest heroes in the Once Upon a Time universe, believing she had to sacrifice herself for others to live. She willingly sacrificed herself to the Darkness when it attacked Regina and never truly embraced it, wishing herself to be rid of it. During the final battle with Gideon, Emma chose to sacrifice herself because she was the Savior so others could live. Despite dying, Emma is ultimately given true love's kiss Henry who ultimately revives her and turns Gideon back into a baby before the Black Fairy abducted him so his parents could raise him this time, giving them both a second chance. Sometimes she is distrustful of those around her because Lily Page had lied to her while they were friends hiding away. She does not like being lied to and isn't sure if she can trust her other friends because of her incident with Lily and her adoptive father.

However, Emma learns to let down those walls she built up, especially after her and Hook's time-traveling adventure. She is more open about Snow and David, even calling them "Mom" and Dad." She eventually realizes her feelings for Killian, willing to enter a relationship with him after learning he traded his ship, the *Jolly Roger* for a magic bag to get back to her. Emma was able to develop a close friendship with Elsa, because of the isolation they feel when it comes to their roles as the Savior and the Queen of Arendelle, respectively. Despite having a rivalry with Regina, they eventually managed to become good friends, even far enough for Emma to save her from the darkness.

She dislikes secrets and being lied to. She also holds anger towards who keeps a secret from her, something Sage shares with Snow (during the time her mother was angry at David for keeping the secret that he had to remain on the island to not die of the dream shade poisoning). This was, once again, mostly born from her past friendship with Lily, who lied about being a runaway orphan just like her. However, this hatred of secrets got worse when Lily lied about how she met Emma to her then-foster parents and had Emma steal her necklace back from her ex-boyfriend's house. After Emma's foster parents Bill and Kate learned the truth of Emma and Lily's past, she decided to run away from home and believed that Lily intentionally let this happen when she suggested they run away together. Despite this, she still fell in love with Neal but when he let her take the fall for supposedly stealing watches he stole, she believed he had abandoned her when, Neal broke her heart so she could go through her hero's journey to break the curse. In Season 4, she was angered at her parents for keeping the secret of how they rid the darkness she was almost born with and into Maleficent's daughter (without realizing it was Lily). However, after Snow gets injured by the dragon version of Lily and Emma's talk with Hook, she forgives her mother for lying to her, knowing her parents never really meant to hurt Maleficent or Lily.

However, Emma has been guilty of this as well, as she lies to Henry about his father. She realizes that it was wrong to do this and apologizes to Henry, promising to never lie to him again. Henry takes her weird in this, as he backed her up when she suspected Tamara was the "she" August was warning them about before he turned back into Pinocchio. This has appeared to have mellowed down since season 6 because when Hook revealed he kept the Sheers of Destiny and lied to Emma about it, she was more accepting of the answer but told him they would find another way to prevent something bad from happening.

When she was in her late twenties, Emma was once hot-tempered and bullheaded as well as sharing his tactics, according to Rumplestiltskin. She is always determined to get the job done and will do anything to protect the family she loves. However, during motherhood and her time in Storybrooke has mellowed Emma down, where she is more opened to others.

## Trivia

* Emma is one of the main characters who appear in all seven seasons (along with Henry Mills, Regina, Rumplestiltskin, and Belle).
* In the flashbacks of Season 5A, Emma always wore white but in the present day, she wears black.
* In "Operation Mongoose," Emma Swan dresses similar to Flynn Ryder.
* In Prince David's dream, his dream version of Emma has feather accents referring to her last name.
* Emma's red dress in the Time traveling episode could be a reference to her leather jackets that are red.