Short Review: TRUTH AND DAGGERS

For me, this was the most frustrating story to read and review, partly thanks to my bias. It centers on Belle and Rumplestiltskin, my favorite characters on Once Upon A Time. More than that, the story attempts to explore the pair’s relationship while living in the Dark Castle, as well as Belle’s individual past. And it fails so much. What should’ve been a golden nugget of canon expansion, especially for the often neglected Belle, turns out to be fool’s gold.

The beginning has plenty of promise. We see a bit of Belle’s daily routine as she sets out to do some grocery shopping for Rumple’s larder. Rumple is his usual self—snarky, distrustful, and obstinate in hiding his affection for his maid under the previous two traits. Belle engages in teasing banter with him before setting off with a charmed broached that alerts Rumple if she tries to run away. At this point, Belle seems to like Rumple and wants him to trust her. Keep this in mind, as it because a somewhat baffling plot point later.

While at market, Belle experiences a little favoritism from vendors who want to ensure that the Dark One gets his yellow potatoes, lest they face retribution. I like seeing that Rumplestiltskin doesn’t magically replenish his pantry; it does make one wonder how he got food before making Belle his solitary member of staff. What could’ve led to character-developing interactions between Belle and the locals is cut short by the arrival of a cart carrying soldiers wounded in the Ogres War. Wait, the war is still going on? Well, Rumplestiltskin made a deal with Belle to save her town, not necessarily the whole area affected by the conflict. Belle recognizes one of the wounded as her childhood friend Samuel. Ah, yes, the very recognizably French name Samuel. I poke fun simply because the rest of the people in Belle’s town have French names—Maurice, Gaston, Colette. Is this meant to suggest that Samuel is not native to that part of the land? Sadly, the reader gets hardly any backstory on Belle and Samuel’s friendship. Belle asks that she be allowed to take him to the Dark Castle to nurse him back to health. She probably reasons that with easy access to medicine and perhaps magical remedies, Samuel has a better chance at recovery. There’s a minor obstacle, of course: Rumplestiltskin isn’t about to turn his estate into an infirmary Downton-Abbey style. For concealed reasons, he does let Belle bring Samuel in and look after him, so long as doing so does not interfere with the servant-master flirtations routine they’ve got going on.

Belle spends a week or so fussing over her friend, who’s running a fever. His injury came from contact with a magical blade, or so Belle deduces while trying to treat it. Rumple provides next to no help. He just lingers in the hallway commenting on how he expected the guy to have died by now and concedes (indirectly) that she’s doing a commendable job keeping him alive. All well and good, until, in the middle of fetching tea for her ill friend, Belle stumbles upon Samuel on his feet, looking fresh as a daisy. And with Pandora’s Box in his hands.

Understandably, Belle is shocked. How did he manage to feign both a magical injury and a fever? Did he go to the Ferris Bueller School of Faking Illness? And is Belle lacking that characteristic perception of hers for the sake of a plot twist?

Hang in there. It gets better.

Samuel explains that his entire plan had been to rescue her from Rumplestiltskin by imprisoning the imp in Pandora’s Box. He argues that not only will she be free to go home, but the land won’t have to deal with the Dark One anymore. Against his expectations, Belle isn’t on board with the idea at first. She just got Rumple to start trusting her, and turning on him would be betrayal. Which is . . . kind of noble? It also sort of reeks of potential Stockholm Syndrome, which is the last thing I want to say regarding Belle’s relationship with Rumple. One of the best features of this couple is that Rumplestiltskin, a centuries-old dark sorcerer, makes accommodations for the woman he obtained in a deal and made his servant. These changes come gradually, but they’re obvious. When Belle attempts to open the curtains to let in light, Rumple initially objects; after she falls into his arms, thereby tearing down the curtains, he dismisses her offer to put them back up, saying, “I’ll get used to it.”

While I’m not claiming it’s wrong for Belle to want Rumple to trust her if she’s looking for a relationship with him, anyone writing these characters must understand why Belle wants his trust. It’s not entirely clear how far along Rumple and Belle have progressed in their relationship in this story. We don’t know if it predates the fall off the Ladder of Love™. What we do know is that Belle wants two things: a chance to see the world, and to get better acquainted with Rumplestiltskin. She’s intrigued by him and clearly likes him, and the heroic part of her wants to help him be happier. So, yes, for the sake of unraveling the mystery that is Rumplestiltskin, Belle wants to win his trust. And if Rumple is locked up in a box for all eternity, she can’t exactly get to know him. But surely Belle realizes that whether she likes him or not, she doesn’t owe him loyalty. They’re not at the point where she knows she loves him. She doesn’t realize or acknowledge the extent of her feelings until he offers to let her go, which she takes. Again, it’s noble that Belle wouldn’t want her freedom to come at the cost of someone else’s. That said, it still feels off when she only says that she doesn’t want to betray Rumplestiltskin when we don’t really have enough information on where their relationship stands. And why doesn’t Belle consider the possibility of seeing her family again? (Actually, this is a question that’s relevant to the show’s canon, which I find interesting—we never see Belle go home after she leaves the Dark Castle. We see her in a tavern, then traveling to do battle with the Yaogaui. No mention of ever seeing her father between leaving Rumple and being imprisoned by Regina. Seriously, what’s going on there?)

I suspect that Vazquez or Bechko saw a similar problem with Belle’s characterization. So what could they have done? Add more details about the Rumbelle dynamic rather than flashback to the scene where Belle leaves with Rumple, which viewers have already seen? Nope. Instead, they decide to shoehorn in a double twist! One that makes so little sense you’d swear M. Night Shamaylan was co-writing.

Samuel convinces Belle that trapping Rumplestiltskin is for the greater good and will make her the hero she always wanted to be. Belle leads him to a door that will take Samuel to the Dark One’s chambers—only to lock him outside. She’s clearly pained by this choice. It’s a poignant moment that gets ruined by the second twist.

Rumplestiltskin poofs out of nowhere and reveals his awareness of Samuel’s plan. He claims Pandora’s Box and sends the man off to some remote bog in the forest. He admits to being flattered by Belle’s loyalty, even if she was responsible for bringing Samuel into the castle in the first place. And then it happens: Belle tells Rumple that she knew ALL ALONG what Samuel was up to. Not only that, but she knew he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. She found a book he was carrying with information about the Dark One, including the dagger that can control him. She figured out from that one clue that Samuel wasn’t going to simply capture Rumple, but exploit him with the dagger to plunder his way across the land.

What the hell were the writers smoking when they came up with this idea?

This twist is so devoid of logical continuity it hurts my brain to even begin explaining all the stupidity. But explain I shall, as succinctly as possible.

Until Samuel reveals that he wasn’t sick, Belle acts as though she believes he’s ill. If she figured out what he’s up to, why would she go along with his ruse? She wouldn’t. Not unless she wanted to give Samuel a chance to come clean, but even in that scenario, she would’ve said something to prompt him for the truth. But, no, nothing! Not one hint of foreshadowing. Hey, writers, that’s what foreshadowing is for—to give us a hint that a character knows something but can’t reveal it until the right time, so that when your oh-so-brilliant “twist” is unleashed, it makes an ounce of sense!

Then, when Samuel does “disclose” his plan to her, why does Belle still choose not to tell him, to his face, that she knows he’s lying? Is she afraid he’d hurt her? There’s nothing to suggest that Belle is afraid of her childhood friend, even if he’s plotting to do something awful. Seriously, when has that ever stopped Belle on the show? She’s more likely to put herself in danger by being too forward and uppity.

Also, having Belle not demand the whole truth from Samuel and pretend she’s reluctant to help due to loyalty to Rumplestiltskin makes her one ruthless, cold-blooded manipulator. That is not who Belle is. She values honesty very highly. We’ve seen her become disillusioned when people she loves lie to her and she doesn’t catch on. So, no, Belle is no more capable of leading on her childhood friend like that than Ron Weasley is of being a Death Eater. Believe what you want in your own AUs, but it’s as removed from canon as we are from Pluto.

All these baffling logical backflips leave the ending less than satisfying. The writers probably wanted to finish with Belle declaring that she was protecting the whole realm, not just Rumplestiltskin, and walking off with an impressed and aroused Rumplestiltskin in her wake. Yes, that would’ve made a great conclusion, if it hadn’t been preceded by COMPLETE NONSENSE. Of all the stories that had to unravel on such basic elements of character and storytelling, it just had to be the Rumbelle one. Fantastic.

Well, at least the art is pretty. Like I said in the first post on this book, the watercolor palette works nicely for both the characters and the fairytale setting. Hey, I had to throw in at least one more compliment about this train wreck.

Rating: 2/5