Betsy Braddock - Phase 1
This page is about the Phase 1 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Betsy Braddock (disambiguation).
| Betsy Braddock | |
|---|---|
 Portrayed by Rachel Weisz | |
| Codename: | Psylocke |
| Affiliations: | |
| Birthdate: | May 10th, 1978 |
| Journal: | x_psylocke |
| Player: | |
Betsy Braddock is the public head of the Snow Valley Memorial Center for Mutant Affairs. Former X-Man, she lent her psychic abilities to X-Force's clandestine missions until August 2010, when family demands drew her once more back to England. Following the events at Genosha, she returned to the school, undergoing powers issues.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: x_psylocke
Real Name: Elisabeth Braddock
Codename: Psylocke
Aliases: Betsy, Betts
First Appearance: May 8th, 2003
Date of Birth: May 10th, 1978
Place of Birth: Malden, England
Citizenship: British
Relatives: Sir James Braddock Sr (father - deceased), Lady Elizabeth Braddock (mother - deceased), Jamie Braddock (brother), Brain Braddock (twin brother)
Education: Former STRIKE operative, an offshoot of SHIELD
Relationship Status: Surprisingly in a stable tangle of a relationship with Xavier's own David Haller.
Occupation: Officially known as the President of the Snow Valley Think Tank. Unofficially, a field operative for Snow Valley's X-Force.
Team Affiliation: Formerly X-Force, currently on leave.
Biography
Childhood
Elisabeth 'Betsy' Braddock was born in Malden, England, the daughter of the noted scientist Sir James Braddock. Braddock was a researcher working at Biotech Labotories, along with Courtney Ross. He had observed the elements of the x-gene in his children, and had actually begun with testing them through a project called Namesake at the time that both he and his wife were abducted. The elder Braddocks were eventually presumed dead, leaving Ross in charge of Biotech and her eldest brother Jamie in charge of the family. Fortunately, the wealth of the Braddocks passed to their children, even if the research did not, and Betsy grew up with the best in schooling and opportunities.
She achieved a minor celebrity status at seventeen, making a name for herself in the modeling world. She began to present her more familiar look by dying her blonde hair purple, which she'd continue for the rest of her life. Despite her success, Braddock never intended to remain a model, and returned to university a few years later to finish her degree. It was there that her combination of intelligence and ability caught the interest of some of the players in Britian's intelligence community, who sent Dai Thomas to recruit her for STRIKE, the British version of the US's SHIELD.
Highly trained, Betsy worked as an agent in STRIKE emerging 'PSI Unit' for several years, showing a unique aptitude for intelligence work, as well as remarkable proficiency in the field. Responding to STRIKE's growing success, an unknown agency secretly baited a terrorist known only as Slaymaster to destroy the division. STRIKE's team took the bait, only to suffer a grievous loss against him, which led to the savage beating and blinding of Betsy. In the wake of the defeat, STRIKE's special division was broken up, and Betsy resigned to recuperate.
To her surprise, Charles Xavier, who had been a distant associate of her father's contacted her, offering her a position in his school. Betsy accepted, moving over to the United States and settling in the mansion.
Living At The X-Mansion
Betsy's first tenure at the school was as a teacher, using her telepathy to see through the eyes of others and counteract her blindness. She focused mostly on the humanities, teaching literature and serving as a strong staff member involved with the students, often taking over duties from both Scott Summers and Ororo Munroe when situations requiring the X-Men interfered with the school. Betsy was especially watchful over Sarah Morlocke, due to her difficult past.
Months after the seeming death of Jean Grey, Betsy and Scott began a quiet and difficult relationship, trying to help each other with the scars they carried. In an attempt to move past her former pain, Betsy consulted with Nathaniel Essex, now a staff member at the school, about possible medical solutions for her blindness, which STRIKE doctors had pronounced as incurable. The collaboration would go on to have severe repercussions for Betsy.
Essex did have a plan to restore her sight, but as they moved closer to the potential solution, a dark emotional connection grew between the two teachers. With the assistance of Pete Wisdom, Betsy uncovered the fact that there were some physical similarities between herself and Essex' dead wife. Growing concerned about the relationship, she confronted Essex, only to have the tables turned as he refused to perform any sort of dangerous operation on her if she didn't feel her could trust him. Betsy reluctantly buried her concerns about Essex, but demanded total secrecy about the upcoming procedure from Essex in return. No one at the school was to know, forcing Essex to recruit Kitty Pryde secretly as his assistant.
Crimson Dawn and Kwannon
Betsy's surgery to replace her damaged eyes and optic nerves with new material was a success, but unexpectedly, she fell into a coma. Essex was forced to reveal what had happened to the rest of the school while he searched for a solution. In response, Essex was removed from his position, and Emma Frost contacted Brian Braddock to place her sister's care in Henry McCoy's hands. However, Essex convinced four of his former students, Kitty Pryde, Jamie Madrox, Sarah Morlocke and Marie-Ange Colbert into kidnapping Betsy from the med lab and delivering her to a medical bay at Fort Dix.
Essex had developed a solution to Betsy's coma with a Japanese genetic program called Crimson Dawn. Through a complex and exhausting operation, Essex spliced new psionic receptive material into the areas of Betsy's brain damaged by her encounter with Slaymaster, saving her life. Betsy and the students returned to the mansion, where Betsy finally awoke from her coma. While many of the staff questioned her decisions to keep her surgery secret, she was slowly welcomed back to her place, and with her newly restored sight, added the role of X-Men to her duties.
Psylocke would go on to lead several small X-Men missions, including the recruitment of Remy LeBeau, and establish herself as a valued member of the team. Her relationship with Scott had difficulties recovering, and Betsy began to suffer from side effects of her surgery, including blackouts and memory loss. Strange incidences began to occur around her, making some of the X-Men like Logan suspicious.
Over the next several months, more incidents occurred, and a disturbing situation was slowly revealed. Betsy's questionable actions were not simply side effects of her surgery, but another personality asserting itself. Calling herself Kwannon, she trapped Betsy's consciousness, and with the help of Manuel de la Rocha, kept her caged while she wrecked havoc on the relationships inside the mansion. Finally, she revealed herself as she attempted to escape, but the X-Men were able to stop her and Xavier's psionic powers trapped Kwannon behind powerful PSI shields.
As a result of the trauma suffered, Betsy took a long sabbatical. Unknown to the X-Men, she traveled to Asia with the help of Lennox, an old friend and former STRIKE agent. During her time there, she investigated a man named Devin Blaze, who led her to the head of the Hand, Matsuo. Matsuo supplied the answers she'd be seeking about Kwannon, enough that she was able to come to a certain level of personal closure, enough to move on and return to the X-Men.
Jean Grey's return dealt Betsy a personal blow, removing any chance of her salvaging her relationship with Scott, and she began to slowly withdraw from others at the school. As well, her eldest brother Jamie, long confined to a mental hospital, finally deemed incompetent, leaving her twin Brian to inherit the Braddock titles and fortune.
Back in the Field
With Pete Wisdom's apparent betrayal, the school faced the daunting challenge of trying to mitigate the damage he'd caused to their information networks. Given the job of trying to fix it, Remy recruited both Betsy and Jake Gavin to work with him as an intelligence arm of the school. Once again using her training, Betsy found a renewed sense of purpose and level of success over the next several months.
During a Hellfire Club party, Wisdom used a drug to successfully incapacitate Betsy without harming her, and as a result, unlocked a number of suppressed memories about her parents and the circumstances around their disappearance. Several of the staff and students were unwittingly drawn up into the mindscape, released only once Betsy was finally able to break free.
After rescuing Remy following his encounter with Malice, and the return of Wisdom following his successful betrayal of the Black Queen Selene, Betsy quietly withdrew from most of the mansion once again, although not in a destructive manner as before. She continued an association with the X-Men, becoming involved in the rescue of several students crippled by the mutant Masque. During that encounter, she also began a relationship with David Haller, the new student counselor at the school.
Once again, Remy brought Betsy back into the field with a request for help after Pete Wisdom's sister was kidnapped. She joined the bizarre team in England to help get her back, working side by side with them in a successful operation against the group known only as the EOE. Following the mission, Wisdom told her of his plans to leave Xavier's permanently, and presented the offer of helping him create a smaller team, focused on a different approach to dealing with potential threats. Betsy quickly agreed.
Snow Valley and X-Force
Betsy's role became twofold, as both the official president of Emma Frost's funded Snow Valley Memorial Center for Mutant Affairs, and as one of the three field leaders of X-Force that operated out of the center. Betsy's experience and training was a valuable asset, as X-Force completed several difficult but successful missions.
During the mission involving Xorn, Betsy found herself face to face with Nathaniel Essex once more, a meeting that brought out some of her darkest anger. In connecting with Xorn, Betsy found her mind drawn up with the others for a brief time, and returned without damage. It was quickly followed by a investigation into an Asian gang war in San Francisco, which quickly led to her being forced to free Marie from the psychic control of the Mandarin.
Betsy spent a large amount of time following those events absorbed in the day to day operation of X-Force, including a great deal of work in the field to expand their operations. During Farouk's episode, Betsy hijacked an entire classroom and attempted to teach them etiquette at sword point before Scott was able to neutralize her.
Betsy and Wisdom took charge of the X-Force operation during the attempted world domination of Baron Zemo, facing the Black Knight, one of the Masters of Evil. Although he escaped, Betsy was part of the force that trapped Zemo and his men in Symkaria and destroyed his secret base.
Betsy also find herself a key player when Apocalypse successfully captured New York City. She was nearly killed when a crash destroyed the building that she was observing the assault from, and was captured by an unmasked and wounded Death; her old friend Alison Blaire. Apocalypse ordered Betsy killed, but she and Wisdom took the opportunity to break Alison's brainwashing, and the three turned on Apocalypse simultaneously as Rogue's airstrike began to bring the Citadel down.
She once again found herself coming to the rescue of friends when she and Emma traveled to England to try and get to the bottom of Wanda's mysterious possession, only to end up confronting the arcane elements in Africa soon after. Only a few weeks later, she added David North to X-Force's roster.
After an urgent request for help by Farouk, Betsy led a small mission to Madripoor to find the man and information Farouk needed to clear his name, and had her first confrontation with the Imperial Guard. The mission was a mixed success, but she brought them home intact. She continued to paly a role in X-Force, largely in Europe on information gathering expeditions, until August 2010 when her brother Jamie was released from hospital. Betsy chose to return to England to help with Jamie's care, while remaining 'on the books' as Snow Valley's President.
Genosha
After a few months of radio silence, Betsy reppeared in Genosha a completely different person - as a Magistrate for the Genoshan government. She met the mansionites and X-Force members kidnapped from the protest rally at the Genoshan embassy, ignoring their pleas for help and sending them to their prison cells. She also acted as handler for Mutate 606 - Amara Aquilla. During the X-Men invasion of the Genoshan prison to rescue their captured people, she intercepted Jean Grey's team. Her appearance sent Haller over the edge, and he turned on Jean when she tried to interfere with his attempts to get to Betsy, leading to the capture of Haller, Paige Guthrie, Vance Astrovik, and Sarah Morlocke.
While interrogating Haller, Haller realized that it may not have been Betsy he was dealing with. This was confirmed when, upon delivering Sarah Morlocke to the Genengineer's lab (who turned out to be Nathaniel Essex), the man knocked Betsy out to reverse the mental conditioning previously done to her, and when she came around, he proceeded to physically separate Betsy's and Kwannon's minds. After the separation, Essex disclosed that he planned to bring his son back from the dead, though refused to share details on how when Betsy asked. When Essex and Kwannon disappeared, Betsy and Sarah escaped to find the nearby group of X-Men.
Several months after the incident in Genosha, Betsy abruptly reappeared at the mansion, seeking out help from Jean and Haller with powers issues. With a number of unexplained physical symptoms and an increasing sense of dread, Betsy wrote a time-delayed email to Haller, which would send in the event of her death. After a number of false leads, the truth was revealed in July 2013 when Betsy exhibited a secondary mutation - the ability to teleport. This revelation wasn't the end of her issues, however, with her forgetting to cancel the time-delayed email to Haller and the resulting confrontation leading to the end of their relationship. Unable to stay in the mansion afterwards, Betsy went back to Muir Island for continuing therapy.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 5ft 11in
Weight: 140lbs
Eyes: Original Blue, Cloned Implants Violet
Hair: Blonde, dyed Purple since a teenager
Other Features: Betsy still carries scars from her encounter with the Slaymaster. When Kwannon is in control, Betsy holds her posture, physical movements and facial expressions differently, appearing almost to be another person physically as well as mentally.
Powers
Betsy is a mid-range telepath. Much like Emma Frost, Betsy's focus has been on skill and subtly with her mental abilities to compensate for her lack of strength compared to telepaths like Jean Grey or Charles Xavier. She is especially good at non-obtrusive connections, such at looking through the eyes of another person, and has often been called on to assist with complex and dangerously fragile mental states. When Betsy is using her powers, she often manifests a purple flare of energy, in an almost butterfly shape. When in mindscapes, butterflies and the colour purple are the most common manifestation of any of her powers.
Betsy has had rare precognative flashes in the past, but has not shown any tendancies towards developing a consistant precognitive psychic ability.
Since the emergence of Kwannon in her mind, Betsy has learned to focus her psychic abilities into a blade like manifestation that forms around her fist. Her 'psychic knife' is a direct amplification of her abilities, and has shown to be able to knock an opponent cold or bypass mental defenses of remarkable strength. Betsy uses it most often to create a hole in the opposing mental defense and then use her telepathic abilities to enter their mind.
From both her STRIKE training and Kwannon's martial arts, Betsy is an extremely dangerous hand to hand fighter, and uses her telepathy as a sort of mental radar to anticipate her opponants attacks, which often makes people believe her to possess enhanced physical attributes as well.
Equipment
Betsy owns a katana blade, but rarely carries it into the field.
External Links
Trivia
Ironically, Betsy Braddock, Pete Wisdom and Remy LeBeau, the three nominal heads of X-Force, at one time all worked for opposing agencies in Europe during the same period.
Plots
2003
2004
2005
2006
Operation: Don't Leave Me With The Germans
2007
2008
2009
Operation: Anansesem cont'
2012
As NPC
Allumwandlung in Azure and Gules
2013
Age of Apocalypse (alternate reality version)
Darkness Falls - event
Meta
Player:
Email:
Player Icon Base: Rachel Weisz
Jay (and Betsy) were with X-Project since it began in May 2003. Jay retired in September 2010 and returned in November 2012, before RL got too much and she left again in March 2014. Betsy was replaced with a P2 version in September 2018.
