Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau - Phase 1

PHASE 1

Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau
Portrayed by Angelina Jolie
Known Aliases:	None
Affiliations:	New Orleans Guilds - The Assassins' Guild

Socked By:	Erin
Introduction:	Drop of Nightshade

The former wife of Remy LeBeau, Belladonna Boudreaux-LeBeau is a dangerous mutant assassin, on the run from her former guild, with a thirst for revenge and the will to carry it out, until the Hellfire Club provided her with a a new role - Black Queen.

Belladonna is the only daughter of Lucian Boudreaux, the head of New Orleans powerful Assassins Guild. She grew up in a position of both privilege and responsibility, aware of her place in the family and her eventual duties to the Guild. As a young child, she was apprenticed to Tante Mattie as part of an ancient compact between the Guild and the voudoun community. Splitting her time between some of the best tutors in the United States and the elderly houngan's shack in the bayou, Belladonna learned early of the two worlds in which she would need to live; the rich, connected and corrupt level of the Guild, and the poor, ignored and brutal level of the slums and swamps. While her instruction did involve voodoo magic and abilities, Belladonna was never intended to follow Tante Mattie's path into the mystic arts. Her father placed more important duties on her.

At twelve, Belladonna was finishing her intensive pre-training in the demanding physical requirements of an assassin. The next step in her schooling also included instruction on her newly emerging mutant abilities and the technical end of the Guild. Proving herself to be a natural leader and skilled administrator, Lucian slowly began to add duties to his daughter. She found success in them, especially to separate her from her brutal older brother Julian. He used to beat her regularly, despite an almost ten year age difference between them.

At sixteen, she was responsible for a great deal of the operational end of the Guild's limited European branch. It was through them that she discovered the sadistic assassin known only as Gambit was coming to New Orleans. More important than that were the disturbing rumours she'd been receiving about her eldest brother. People whispered that Julian was tired of waiting for Lucian to retire, and had decided to stage a coup to unseat him. While his power in the Guild's inner circle was minor, Julian was popular with the more brutal local elements of the Guild business, giving him the raw violence to unseat and kill anyone who stood in his way. Belladonna held no illusions that if it happened, what her fate would be.

It was then that Gambit's existence in New Orleans was confirmed by Tante Mattie, who had secretly enslaved the famed assassin at her bayou home. Fascinated, Belladonna went to meet LeBeau, and a plan very quickly formed in her head. Through Tante, she ensured that Gambit was 'introduced' to the Guild society. While the Guilds loathed outside agents as a rule, Gambit's reputation, abilities, and natural charm quickly soothed any violent reactions, and after a few months, the Council granted him a charter to operate independently in the city, likely considering how they'd best use him.

One of the most outspoken opponents of the plan was Julian Boudreaux, as the sixteen year old Belladonna had hoped. While her brother argued bitterly with his father and the Guild members, Belladonna dropped the second surprise, and announced her upcoming marriage to the assassin. She had made a deal with Gambit, that for his help with her family situation, she'd serve as his eyes and ears in the entire Guild system. Whether it was for the intelligence assets, his own personal admiration of the teen's audacity, or simply a convenient way into her bed, Gambit agreed to her plan.

As Belladonna expected, Julian went over the edge, considering the entire affair an affront to his honour and the honour of the Guild. He challenged LeBeau to a duel the morning after his wedding, and both men faced each other in a dirt ring far outside of town. Only Gambit walked out of the ring alive. The ensuing outcry saw him simply disappear one night, eliciting an even louder attack for callously abandoning his 'wife'.

For Belladonna, she had won a great victory. Her younger brother Daniel was easier to control than Julian, and her father continued to add to her responsibilities. Her status as the abandoned wife also held off the courting gestures of many, freeing her from worrying about parrying off suitors.

Over the next several years, Belladonna worked to expand the guild’s influence in Europe and Asia, building a core group of loyalists from outside of New Orleans. The incidents of Brood convinced her that the old structure of the Guilds had finally become ineffective, and that opportunities existed to do what no other guild had done: seize control.

Through allies in other guilds, Belladonna carefully orchestrated a crisis between the Guilds, eliminating her rivals and driving the city into a state of near war. When the heads of the guilds met, a bomb killed them all, decapitating the leadership of the city. Using falsified evidence to prove the Thieves Guild was behind the assassination, Belladonna seized control of the city, dissolving the compact between the Guilds and the Carib communities. Only the arrival of Gambit and Polaris prevented their efforts to eliminate Tante at the same time.

Belladonna carried on a shadow war against Gambit, trying to draw him into the open and destroy him without risking war against the X-Men as a whole. She knew that until eliminating Tante and LeBeau, her hold would never remain secure. Over the year, Belladonna was involved indirectly in a number of plots involving the X-Men and X-Force, including the kidnapping of numerous students for Candra, and fronting an assassin team against Ororo and Remy in Arcade's forced game.

Finally, concerned with LeBeau's potential involvement in her final plan against Tante, she ordered his assassination, badly injuring Marie-Ange Colbert in the process. X-Force traveled down to New Orleans, and in thwarting her plans, cost her her position as head of the unified guilds and reverted them back to separate groups. With her involvement in the murder of the former Guildmasters exposed, Belladonna was forced to flee from those she once commanded, and remained at large until April 2010 when Sebastian Shaw approached her with an offer to become his Black Queen, an offer she accepted, killing Selene to take her throne.

It was as Black Queen that she was able to provide the resources to collect and train a new incarnation of the Serpent Society as her personal assassins in her war against Remy, sending them to kill as many members of X-Force as they could in a honey pot scheme aimed at Carmilla Black. It was only the warning of Bucky Barnes that saved the lives of those in the brownstone at the time.

Powers/Abilities

Belladonna is able to fire bioelectric bolts of energy from her hands of medium strength. While weaker than Scott's optic blasts, she is capable of destroying a car or dealing a lethal blast to a person. She is also tutored in voodoo magic, but it is limited to a few wards, charms and general spells.