From Tumblr: Ask - Why did it matter to Rumple that Belle was a virgin in A Bed of Thorns?

[nym_wibbly]

A Tumblr user asked why it mattered so much to ABoT!Rumple that Belle was a virgin on their wedding night when he's more enlightened the rest of the time.

Like most of what he does in A Bed of Thorns, he had more than one reason. The reason he asked her outright was so that he knew how experienced she was; what he was dealing with in practical terms. Unlike the Rumple in my Broken Wheel series, who wanted to know for selfish reasons and was smug and excited to be her first, the Rumple in A Bed of Thorns was thinking of Belle. He was regretting the deal he’d made and was willing to let her out of it for his own sake; he also felt sorry for her, that she hadn’t had a better experience than he (thought he) could give her before being chained to him. He felt she was missing out. There’s also a magical aspect; first times for anything are significant, and knowing he was the first strengthened his misguided sense of obligation to her. He really did mean it for the best when he got it over with quickly and got out of there. He couldn’t imagine her wanting anything else from him.

On another level, he was just curious and reluctantly ingrigued by Belle. He’d seen her sense of duty in action, knew that he’d “rescued her” from a life with Gaston and the Duchess, but he had the sense that she was motivated by more than obedience to duty when she agreed to his deal. He wanted to know if she’d followed convention and “saved herself” for the husband she’d eventually be sold off to, or if she’d thwarted those cultural restrictions on her behaviour and had lovers anyway. Her answer – her indignation and her uncertainty that he’d asked – told him a lot about her at a moment when he knew almost nothing. It also let him introduce the topic of consummation less bluntly, “in character” as the imp, and to spin it as a magical rather than a personal thing; he didn’t know if she even knew what was involved in consummating their union.

With Rumple, it’s rarely just one reason!