Adrienne Frost
Details
Character Journal: xp_adrienne
Real Name: Adrienne Lucille Frost
First Appearance: April 11, 2008
Date of Birth: March 31, 1975
Place of Birth: Boston, MA
Citizenship: US
Relatives: Winston Frost (father), Hazel Frost (mother), Emma Frost sister, Cordelia Frost (sister), Christian Frost (brother, deceased), Tandy Bowen ward
Education: MBA from Harvard Business School, Education Certification from Oxford University
Relationship Status: dating Garrison Kane
Occupation: X-Factor Investigations, co-owner of eVolution, CEO of Meridian Enterprises
Team Affiliation: X-Factor Investigations auxiliary X-Men member
Biography
Early Years
Adrienne grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and was born into a family of great wealth and power. Her position as the third child of four meant she was mostly ignored by her parents, which had a tremendous bearing on her emotional development as she grew up believing that she would always be ignored and perceived as being flawed unless she could win her father's attentions and show him that she was everything he wanted in a child.
This desire to gain recognition and love from her father, the most powerful person she knew, led Adrienne to shun her sister Emma's love and ally herself wherever possible with her father, though he continued throughout her childhood to ignore her. After Emma was taken to the asylum when Adri was ten, her father's torment of his son Christian increased and Adrienne, desperate to please her father, contributed to Christian's emotional abuse while following her father's example of ignoring Cordelia.
Her psionic power of psychometry emerged when she was eleven and Adrienne discovered that her father wasn't planning on dividing the family fortune and business up evenly between his children, instead choosing one sole heir. Driven by her hatred of being invisible to her father, Adrienne vowed to be his successor. With the help of her power, on which she had a tentative self-won control, Adrienne excelled in school and continued to ally herself with Winston in the hopes of being chosen to take over the Frost Enterprises company and fortune from him. Her brother's suicide when she was fourteen had little effect on her besides a feeling of relief that her father would have one less distraction in his life and might finally notice her now that both Emma and Christian were out of the picture.
Adrienne worked hard in school and as a model and spent her early teen years enduring her father's sexual abuse, mistakenly perceiving his perverse practices as affection and relishing in his attentions until being once again cast aside in favour of her younger sibling Cordelia.
After graduating at the top of her high school class, Adrienne was accepted to Harvard and planned on achieving her MBA to prove without a shadow of a doubt that she was the perfect person to take over Frost Enterprises for her father.
The summer before she went to college, Adrienne was convinced by someone (she doesn't even remember who) to go to the Sierra Tuscon Treatment Center as she had developed a certain affection for cocaine. At that point she had lost all control over her powers. Her accidental readings of the place showed every grisly detail of relapses and overdoses and sheer misery of addiction which turned out to be a wake-up call and led to her success at kicking the habit. Because the images she sees never fade over time, they are always with her to keep her from falling off the wagon. After a twenty-eight day treatment she started at college.
Shortly after arriving at Harvard, Adrienne received news that Emma had been awarded Frost Enterprises. This infuriated Adrienne, and though most of her anger was directed at Winston, whom she had worked her entire life to please, she vowed never to speak to Emma again out of jealousy and resentment. She accepted the money Emma sent to her with plans to start her own company and become more successful than her sister.
Phase 1
Post-degree
Adrienne worked as a model throughout college and received her MBA at twenty-three, marrying law student Steven du Clos in her final year of school after a courtship of six months. Du Clos was drawn to Adrienne by her looks and popularity as a model, and Adrienne, hungry for all the attention and adoration she could get, subjected herself to DuClos completely. Du Clos loved that he was able to possess Adrienne like a pet and Adrienne loved the attention, giving their union a precarious balance for more than a year.
Immediately after graduating, Adrienne used her stipend from Frost Enterprises to launch a small modeling company which she called 64 Square to honour her lifelong love of chess. Her models began attracting attention very quickly and Adrienne basked in it and grew to finally begin appreciating herself, but her work took her away from her husband, and du Clos, who was used to having everything he desired at his beck and call, was angered. Steven began physically and sexually abusing Adrienne, trying to keep her subject to him. For several months Adrienne put up with the abuse as she'd done with her father, but she found herself preferring the more widespread public attentions of the business world to Steven's form of attention and thought about ending the marriage.
Using her powers, Adrienne came to understand that if she didn't get rid of Steven he would one day kill her. Her desire for self-preservation led Adrienne, just shy of her twenty-fifth birthday, to realize for the first time that she would rather be safe and be invisible than have Steven's kind of attention. Steven du Clos was killed in a mugging under suspicious circumstances while on a business trip to New York but his grieving widow was never charged with any crime.
Following her husband's death Adrienne reverted back to the Frost family name she had fought her whole life to live up to and for the next several years she buried herself in her work, determined to build up her company to international fame and gain the respect and adoration she so desperately sought. The modeling agency expanded into fashion design under the label 64Square (which is actually a logo and not the name of the modeling agency with no space.) Understanding the value of loyal employees, Adrienne was a fair boss but remained solitary and untrusting, keeping her distance from any friendships, not wanting to ally herself with anyone or create any bonds. A ruthless businesswoman who put her powers to use to take over multiple companies in a short space of years, Adrienne began gaining a reputation not unlike her father's, though she stayed in her own circles and away from Frost Enterprises. Her marriage to the abusive du Clos and her father's long history of abuse had made her untrusting of men and the fact that she never dated garnered her a reputation in society for being frigid. While in public she seemed sociable enough with men, the self-preserving streak in her wasn't going away, and she had developed a fear of men who were physically attracted to her, quashing any romantic relationships before they could start.
At the age of 30 it was suggested to Adrienne that she share her business sense with students, and as this seemed like the perfect opportunity for her to attract attention and adoration of future generations she began work on her Postgraduate Certificate in Education at Oxford University with aspirations to teach math and business. By the completion of her program, her powers were beginning to become more than she could handle and she grew tired of wearing gloves, but unable to ask for help she fought on her own for better control of her powers.
After teaching in London for a year, Adrienne was called into an investigation by New York police and was accused of orchestrating her husband's murder on the basis of new information provided by an enemy in her business circles. Ordered not to leave New York while the authorities investigated her and searched for evidence, Adrienne was forced to comply out of fear for her public image, not willing to damage her company's reputation. Estranged sister Emma intervened on her behalf and Adrienne was encouraged by authorities to work at Xavier's School where she could be monitored while they pursue their investigation and also receive help controlling her unstable powers. Adrienne arrived at Xavier's as a supply teacher for the math department, replacing a string of substitutes who had been running the classes since Bobby Drake's departure.
