Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock
Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock
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Portrayed By Miki Mizuno
Gender Female
Aliases None
Place of Birth Maldon, Essex
Current Location Deceased
Known Relatives Brian Braddock, Jamie Braddock
Significant Other None, currently
Identity Psylocke
Known Abilities Psionics, Shadow powers

History

Betsy was born into wealth and privilege, alongside her twin brother Brian, and older brother Jamie. Their father, Sir James Braddock, Sr. was one of Britain's leading research scientists, and had established his residence in Braddock Manor in Maldon, Essex where he also set up his primary research facility. Since Jamie was a good ten years older than the twins, he took over Braddock Enterprises on the death of their parents, while Brian followed the footsteps of her father and became a physicist, and she herself became a charter pilot.

Life seemed to go swimmingly for her for a while, until she and Brian were attacked by Dr. Synne. She was mind controlled (for the first time and far from the last) to see everybody as monsters, and tried to kill them all. She was subdued, and over the course of things were cured of the mind control, but only to be kidnapped (again, not fort he first time and far from the last) by agents of the Red Skull along with Jamie. During the course of this, she was rescued by Captain America and Captain Britain, who she later learned was her twin brother.

The encounter with Dr. Synne seemed to unlock her latent mutant psionics, first manifesting as precognition. This developed into full blown telepathy when she joined S.T.R.I.K.E's Psi unit (and after a brief period of time modeling.) There she was an agent for the government and had various missions that would bring her into conflict with a rather wide variety of unsavory sorts, like the Hellfire Club. During this time she'd lost contact with her twin, who had gone off to America to do his own sorts of adventuring and traipsing off across dimensions.

Eventually Brain returned and through the course of things, ended up leaving, and Betsy took up the mantle of Captain Briton for a short period of time. She'd teamed up with Captain UK who had taught her how to fight and how to use her powers. However, this ended disastrously when she decided to go solo. On one of her first missions, she was led into an ambush by the Slaymaster, and was brutally beaten and was permanently blinded by the villain. This seemingly ended her super hero days when she got engaged with her long time partner, and moved to Switzerland to recover.

This, however, didn't last for very long. By this time her telepathy had grown tremendously, and she used it to be able to see. She was powerful enough to capture the attention of Mojo, who subsequently kidnapped her, implanted cybernetic eyes in her, and then brainwashed her to be a 'Psylocke' (a portmanteau of Psionic Warlock) and the star of her very own children's show, 'Wildways.' Fortunately for her, the New Mutants rescued her and she found herself residing in Xavier's mansion.

Betsy had always wanted to lead a life of adventure and heroism, the kind that Brian led, which is one of the reasons why she took up the mantle of Captain Britain in the first place. Here with the X-Men gave her a second chance to fill this need by becoming one of them. However, nobody really trusted her enough to become a fully fledged X-Man, until she singlehandedly survived an encounter with Sabretooth, leading him away from the injured until Wolverine could get there. Wolverine was impressed enough with Betsy's courage against the Marauder and was the first to nominate her joining the team.

She was a part of the team for a considerable amount of time, leading her through encounters of more villains I care to list here, and officially owning the Psylocke moniker that Mojo had given her. When the X-Men died and then were resurrected in Australia, she was given charge of the Siege Perilous, a very strong magical device where all who entered it were judged and then spat back out into the world, naked, amnesiac, and significantly changed in some way. She was told that if any of the X-men wanted to retire they could go through the Siege Perilous and get rewarded with a normal life. However, when it came right down to it, this was farther from the truth. She had gotten a very strong precognitive vision that the X-Men would be killed by the Reavers during an attack while they're weakened, and she convinced the X-Men that the only way to survive the attack would be to go through the siege.

The Siege Perilous then deposited her, naked and somewhat amnesiac on the shores of Japan, where she was found by the crime lord and member of the hand,Matsu'o Tsurayaba. Even though she didn't know who she was, she was recognized by Matsu'o, and he figured that she would be instrumental in getting his comatose lover, Kwannon back. So he kidnapped her, swapped her body with Kwannon (or so he thought) and brainwashed her to become the Lady Mandarin. Little did he know that that what really happened was that she and Kwannon got spliced together by Spiral, both getting a bit of everything.

She didn't regain her true identity until she captured Wolverine, and his own mental discipline managed to help her break through the programming Matsu'o had done. She wasn't as strong a telepath as she once was (having unknowingly have her power split between her and Kwannon) but as a trade off she had become a master martial artist, and had developed a few new tricks that she could use with her powers, one of which included her now signature psychic knife.

In it's own strange way, the Siege Perilous gave her what she wanted. She always wanted to be a strong, hero type person, and this encounter forged her into a very formidable hero. Later Kwannon (who now called herself Revanche) showed up in Betsy's original body, claiming to be the original Psylocke. They stayed at the X-Mansion for a while until Revanche contracted the Legacy Virus. She had Matsu'o kill her, which restored Psylocke's full telepathic potential and memories.

Things had settled down a bit after that into regular X-Men life, and ended up getting into a serious relationship with Warren Worthington. However during this stint she was mortally wounded by Sabretooth after he managed to free himself while being imprisoned in the X-Mansion. This caused her lover, Dr. Strange, Wolverine and Gomurr the Ancient to travel to the realm of the Crimson Dawn to bring some of it's life giving waters. The waters gave her her life, but her personality was tinged by the Crimson Dawn, and grew cold and distant, straining her relationship she had with Warren.

Eventually Kuragari usurped the Crimson Dawn throne, and kidnapped and brainwashed Betsy (again! See a theme here?) to have her become his bride. Shortly thereafter Angel and Gomurr came and helped rescue him from the corrupting influence, defeating Kuragari and putting Gormurr into the seat of the Protector of the Crimson Dawn. This lifted the corrupting influence the Dawn had on her personality, and left her with all of the extra abilities she gained from being tied to the dimension.

Shortly after the events in the Crimson Dawn, Warren and Betsy decided to take a hiatus and have some much needed down time. This didn't last too long when she got a call from Ororo asking her to come to Africa to help her with a problem that was going on at her old village. She didn't realize that it was a trap set by the Shadow King Farooq, and her attack literally blasted out the entire psychic plane, letting Farooq take over. Eventually Betsy was able to overcome the demon and imprison him using the entirety of her telepathic power, leaving her essentially powerless. When Jean Grey attempted to help her regain her powers a few months later, they ended up swapping power sets leaving Betsy a very strong telekinetic instead. However this didn't save her when she went one-on-one against Vargas, who mortally wounded her, ending her life.

Timeline

  • What's happened since you've been approved?

Quotes

  • "I said it!"

Trivia

Betsy is currently dead, and buried in Xavier's graveyard.

Gallery

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