Despite the outward appearance of maternal love, she's merely concerned with achieving her goal, which benefits her alone. I think there was a missed opportunity in explaining why taking her children with her was so important. On the one hand, if she was pure evil, were the children a sacrifice to ensure her continued supernatural existence? If, however, the children end up in a fabulous paradise, it would have been interesting to see some internal conflict on Laura's part, knowing the immolation was a horrible end, but peace was ensured on the other side. That being said, I know she was meant to be a villain, so villain it is. I save myself a headache by avoiding the "what ifs?"
Hello, MysticScribe, welcome from me also, good post, and I hope you'll kerep posting here. When I saw this storyline for the first time over last christmas, I started a thread with all my questions about it, which MB disabled until the WP was done with it. Maybe everyone might be interesting in commenting, when the thread's reopened...
Diana Millay in the DVD interview certainly thought Laura cared very much about David, and said she played him that way. If the Davids just die and don't go to paradise with her, and she still loves them, and knowingly puts them through this anyway, that makes her dangerously crazy as well as supernatural. That would also make her something other than a simple cliche villain.