Tl;dr: Neal was about 170 years old or younger in mental age and 37 years in physical age, at time of death. There was a physical age gap of about 6.5 years between Nealfire and Emma, assuming his wanted poster "birth date" was correct.
Rumplestiltskin's son Baelfire aka Neal Cassidy has always been a fan-favorite character in the ABC fantasy series Once Upon a Time. Unlike his cowardly father, Baelfire is brave and ambitious. His nickname also happens to be Bae, which makes him even more likable.
↑ Mentioned in an interview that Rumple has been looking for Baelfire for around 300 years. Rumple was in his forties when he list his son. ↑ Estimate birth date because of several characters claiming him to be two hundred years old.
Hook and Rumple are both over 200 years old (Rumple because of his immortality as the Dark One, and Hook because of his time in Neverland). The characters in Storybrooke never aged because time was frozen for 28 years (except Henry who was born in our world, and Emma and Pinocchio who were transported as a baby).
No one knows who wrote Rumpelstiltskin first, though the Grimm version from 1812 is the most well-known one today. The Brothers Grimm themselves were greatly influenced by The Pentamerone a collection of seventeenth-century fairy tales collected by Giambattista Basile.
However, Baelfire is not the boy that Peter Pan is looking for. After a couple of centuries, Baelfire manages to escape Neverland and returns to Earth. He comes up with the alias Neal Cassidy, and grows up to become a thief, which is how he meets a woman named Emma Swan.
Pinocchio, also known as August Wayne Booth, is a character featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time. He is portrayed by Eion Bailey, and his younger self is portrayed by Jakob Davies.
(Time doesn't flow the same between The Enchanted Forest, The Land Without Magic and Neverland.) Strangely Baelfire arrives in 1850s England. Baelfire was 14 then spends at least 100 years in Neverland and age at least 20 more years in the Land Without Magic.
Baelfire was born on March 23, 1847, to Milah and the coward Rumplestiltskin. In his youth, he endured the Ogre War, his parents' strained marriage, his mother running away with a sailor and later dying, and his father absorbing magic to become The Dark One.
They briefly reunite in season five, where Neal warns Emma that everything she hopes will not turn out as she thinks. He also states that he never stopped loving her before kissing her and walking away.
After Belle discovers a fairy prophecy that sends them to the edge of realms, where time moves differently, she grows old in an Up-style montage that will absolutely break you.
In a bar meeting, Neil/Baelfire tells Emma that he did not intentionally meet her years earlier but that “there are no coincidences.” Emma is obviously mad that he knew/found out who she was and doesn't tell him about Henry. Bael didn't know initially, though.
Gold bitterly realizes that August is not his son. The dagger has no magic in this world and Baelfire would know that. But since he has heard about the dagger, Mr. Gold deduces August has come from his world.
Neal is the son of Rumplestiltskin (aka Mr. Gold), but not much is known about his childhood – except for the fact that he was born with the name Baelfire, and Rumplestiltskin abandoned him.
He explains to Neal that Emma has a great destiny she must fulfill; proving he has knowledge about Neal's past by opening a box containing a typewriter with the words, "I know you're Baelfire", typed on a piece of paper.
They aren't. Rumple and Regina/Serum Queen wouldn't be making out, otherwise. Henry Snr has to be her father because she has to get her Latina heritage from somewhere. Two white parents can't make a Latina baby.
Is Rumpelstiltskin evil or good? Rumpelstiltskin is a morally complicated character. He seems good at first because he offers to spin the straw into gold for the girl, but things quickly escalate when he asks for her firstborn in return. In the end, Rumpelstiltskin is evil.
"Rumpelstiltskin" (/ˌrʌmpəlˈstɪltskɪn/ RUMP-əl-STILT-skin; German: Rumpelstilzchen) is a German fairy tale. It was collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales. The story is about a little imp who spins straw into gold in exchange for a woman's firstborn child.
It is likely that his desire for a human child is meant to demonstrate the significant increase of his greed in the tale. Some theories are founded in the belief that Rumpelstiltskin is a demonic creature, making pacts with mortals to obtain living creatures, but the Grimm's version gives no mention of that.
