Swan Queen

"But maybe I need you"

- Regina

SwanQueen is the femslash ship between Emma Swan and Regina Mills from the Once Upon A Time fandom.

Canon
Regina Mills, formerly known as the Evil Queen, is the adoptive mother to Henry Mills, the biological son of Emma Swan, daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. Regina and Emma meet through Henry who went looking for his "real mom". Antagonism runs a muck between these two, particularly on Regina's side as she hated that Henry went out and found his birth mother. When Regina learns that Emma is the "Savior", meant to break Regina's curse, she hates Emma even more so.

Emma and Regina continue to fight once the curse is lifted. However, because Henry asked her to, Emma repeatedly saves Regina from the vengeful mob of newly-woken fairytale characters out for her head. In her efforts to save Regina from getting her soul eaten by a Wraith, Emma accidentally triggered Regina's own magic by laying a hand on her arm, and then subsequently fell through a portal to the Enchanted Forest (aka Fairy Tale Land or FTL). Emma's absence gave Regina an opportunity to have Henry to herself forever, but because she made a promise to their son that she would be "better" and earn his love, she absorbed a death curse to save Emma and let her return to Storybrooke.

There were quite a few subsequent issues involving the return of Regina's abusive mother, Cora, a trip to Neverland, evil Peter Pan, the Wicked Witch of the West aka Regina's older sister Zelena, and although they still don't always get along, Emma and Regina now more often than not join forces to protect their family and the town.

Fanon
The ship came to be when viewers started to notice the evident subtext between these two characters and when they started paralleling many canon true love couples on the show. This ship rivals the Outlaw Queen and Captain Swan pairings, which are both canon.

The pairing quickly gained traction in fandom, drawing femslashers from far and wide. However, as the series went on, fans of the pairing developed a somewhat tense relationship with the show's production team as Swan Queen has several times been cited as an example of queer-baiting, one of very few noted femslash examples of the same. Cranz notes in their History of Femslash:

"Once Upon a Time’s premise is a little gay. A kid has two moms, and those moms like to argue passionately with one another while looking at each other’s lips. It spawned the major pairing, Swan Queen [...] But the showrunners of Once Upon a Time were not even a little okay with the queer focus of fandom, or the demands hinged on “social justice,” and they went out of their ways to assert the hetero nature of the leads. First by calling any flirtation “unintentional,” and then by trucking out male love interests for both characters, who just happened to be identical to the supposed female love interests apart from how they identify gender-wise"

- History of Femslash.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Regina/Emma tag on FanFiction.Net
 * Regina/Emma tag on FanFiction.Net

TUMBLR

WIKIS

Trivia

 * Actress Lana Parrilla supports SwanQueen.
 * SwanQueen won the Zimbio 2018 March Madness ship battle.
 * The fandom considers SwanQueen, Clexa and SuperCorp to be a family of lesbian ships.