Meggan

[Eric J. Moreels]

Meggan

Real Name: Meggan Braddock
Former Aliases: Goblin Princess
First Appearance: Mighty World of Marvel #7
First U.S. Appearance: New Mutants Annual #2
Group Affiliation: Formerly Excalibur
Known Relatives: Brian Braddock (Captain Britain, husband), James Braddock (brother-in-law), Elizabeth Braddock (Psylocke, sister-in-law)
Height: Variable, usually 5'7", 5'10" in true form
Weight: Variable, usually 120 lbs., 130 lbs. in true form
Eyes: Variable, usually green
Hair: Variable, usually blonde
Other distinguishing features: Meggan has pointed ears in her usual and true form

A member of the faerie race, Meggan was born near what legend claims to be the site of an ancient British fortress that was a place of dark sorcery. It was in part because of this legend that Meggan's parents, who were gypsies, believed her to be a demon when she was born. The infant Meggan was covered with fur and resembled an animal. In actuality, Meggan was a mutant with the power to alter her shape, and she had taken this fur-covered form instinctively as a response to the bitterly cold weather at the time of her birth.

Subconsciously, the infant girl was reacting to the suspicions and fears of those around her, and she began manifesting all the things that the others' imagined: bat wings, fangs, talons, and large red eyes. Meggan's parents decided to hide her in their van all the time. [Captain Britain (2nd series) #8]

When Meggan was seventeen, Great Britain was struck by a reality warp caused by James Jaspers. In the altered reality, super-beings were incarcerated in concentration camps. [Mighty World of Marvel #7]

After Jaspers was defeated, almost everything returned to normal, but not in Meggan's case. She found herself alone in an abandoned warehouse, separated from her family that used to keep her safe. In her were-girl form, Meggan was influenced by the full moon which made her appear to be a villain to Brian Braddock, a.k.a. Captain Britain. After a brief battle, Captain Britain invited Meggan to stay with him, his sister Betsy, and a blind seer named Alison at Braddock Manor. Strangely, Alison referred to Meggan as being beautiful and radiant. [Mighty World of Marvel #14]

Meggan began to develop feelings for Captain Britain, but he mostly ignored the ugly creature, a fact that changed after Meggan encountered the Warpies. These mutated children were trapped in a van - a similar scenario to her own origin. Suddenly, Meggan began to understand her true power, that she was an empathic metamorph reacting to the desires and fears of her surroundings. Synchronising herself with Brian's wishes, Meggan shed her ugly exterior and appeared as a tall, blonde, beautiful woman. [Captain Britain (2nd series) #8]

Brian and Meggan quickly fell in love, and Brian decided to retire from super-heroics. [Captain Britain (2nd series) #14]

However, it was not to last, and the pair were drawn into superheroics once more thanks to Brian's sister Betsy, who had joined the X-Men as Psylocke. Inspired by the X-Men's apparent death in Dallas, Brian and Meggan became founding members of the British super-hero team named Excalibur alongside former X-Men Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and Rachel Summers. [Excalibur: The Sword Is Drawn]

During one of Excalibur's adventures to New York during the Inferno, the naïve Meggan was easily influenced by the demons that plagued the city and she became the adopted the identity of the evil Goblin Princess for a short time. [Excalibur #6-7]

After the demonic threat had ended, the team stayed in New York for a few days during which time Meggan discovered that she, like Brian, becomes less powerful the farther away from her native United Kingdom she is. Unlike her lover, who loses his powers completely, Meggan only loses control - synchronising with the person nearest to her without even noticing. [Excalibur #8]

A few months later Meggan, confused over a fight between Captain Britain and Nightcrawler that was caused by Brian's jealousy over her friendship with Kurt Wagner, left with Rachel to find more about herself and her heritage. Together, the pair tracked down a rumour about gypsies with a "magic creature" hidden in a van. They followed them to France and Germany, but as it turned out, it was not a story about Meggan. Instead, they discovered an old being belonging to a mystical race called the Neuri. He showed Meggan her true appearance in which she is able to perceive others' lifeforces. [Excalibur #46]

Shortly afterwards the team traveled to Rachel's future, but on the way back Brian was lost in the timestream. Meggan's world shattered, and she fell into what appeared to be a catatonic state. [Excalibur #68]

In actuality, Meggan was reaching out with her empathic powers into the timestream to stay in contact with her lover. She acted as an anchor so that Brian could be brought back. [Excalibur #75]

This difficult task helped Meggan to master her powers even more, and soon she discovered that not only she was affected by her environment, but she in turn could also affect her surroundings. All forces of nature obeyed her command. [Excalibur #80]

Meggan continued to serve as a valuable member of Excalibur up until the team disbanded after her and Brian's wedding. [Excalibur #125]

For a time Meggan assisted Brian with his scientific research until they were called into action once more to save Otherworld from destruction. [Excalibur: Sword of Power #1]

Meggan now resides on Otherworld with her husband, Brian, who was crowned King after the defeat of the sentient computer named Mastermind. [Excalibur: Sword of Power #4]

Meggan is a metamorph, altering her physical form at will. Her facial features and overall physical appearance often change to a degree with her mood; hence, she might become considerably less attractive when she is deeply depressed. She may consciously or unconsciously alter her appearance to resemble people or even animals that she is with at the time.

Meggan can draw energy from the Earth to enhance her size and strength, as well as using it to project concussive force. She can also drain nearby mechanical objects of electricity, rendering them powerless. Meggan can also manipulate the various elements for a variety of effects, such as to cause earthquakes, set objects ablaze, or freeze enemies in a block of ice.

Meggan possesses the power to fly, presumably through psionically levitating herself. Meggan's life force and superhuman powers are dependent upon the mystical forces within the British Isles. Her powers and health will deteriorate if she remains for too long a time outside Britain, or if nature around her becomes corrupted. Her health and superhuman powers will also function normally in certain magical realms in other dimensions.

Bio assist by Peter Luzifer.

APPEARANCES:
Avengers (3rd Series) #80
Captain Britain (2nd series) #8-14
Colossus #1
Excalibur #-1, 1-70, 73-76, 78-81, 83-87, 89, 91-93, 95-125
Excalibur: Air Apparent
Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem
Excalibur: Sword of Power #1-4
Excalibur: The Possession
Excalibur: The Sword Is Drawn
Fantastic Four (1st series) Annual #23
Kitty Pryde, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1
Marvel Comics Presents #31-32, 34-38, 75
Mighty World of Marvel #7-14
New Mutants (1st series) Annual #2
Quasar #11, 54
Sensational She-Hulk #26
Spider-Man #25
Thor (1st series) #427-429
Uncanny X-Men #326, 335
Uncanny X-Men Annual #11
X-Factor (1st series) #106
X-Force #38
X-Men (2nd series) #30
X-Men Spotlight On... Starjammers #2
X-Treme X-Men #3

[Wolverine]

When did Meggan lose that whole child like innocents

[Ruth]

Originally posted by Wolverine
When did Meggan lose that whole child like innocents

Under Warren Ellis , of course.

[M.O. Frisch]

She was called Tapestry at one point -- though I'm not sure if that name actually appeared in story.

--Marc

[Philip Snyder]

I think they should bring back Excalibur or at least most of the people that were on the team and split them up into the remaining X-Men teams. I really like Meggan's character and everything, and then all of a sudden *bamf* shes gone!

[tyran80]

Though would Meggan currently fit in an X-team? Given the fact that she's married to the King of Otherworld, I'm sure she has better and more urgent matters to attend to.

[mrsage]

Meggan may have a problem living in the Mansion or being mobile with the X-Treme team since she is magically connected to British Isles. If that were addressed, X-Treme X-Men will be good for her.

[Mesran]

I have a question about her origins.

Most faerie's, fairies, pixies, elves, dwarves, etc come from an extra-dimensional realm like Avalon or one of the Nine Worlds. In Meggan's case, she was born in Earth's dimension to human parents, right? Wouldn't this just make her either a mutant or some kind of human variation like a deviant or Eternal? Why is she referred to as a faerie?

[Mesran]

Originally posted by M.O. Frisch
She was called Tapestry at one point -- though I'm not sure if that name actually appeared in story.

--Marc

A year late but...

That name was only used on a trading card wasn't it?

[FeyMeggan]

oookay, multi task time:
mrsage- Actually it was found that Meggan's powers and abilities work fine away from Britain, she just assumed that like Brian her gifts were unstable away from them.

Mad Manfred- She's called a fairie because in issue 12, the start of the Cross Time Caper, it's commented that the fairies of that world treated her 'as a long lost princess'. This, for some reason made people assume she was of their species/type/race. I personally think this is pretty accurate, because in mythology there are fairies called changelings. These are switched out for human babies in myth so would explain why Meggan was that way from birth where as being a mutant wouldn't. If she was a mutant her powers would not have manifested until puberty; however, she had her powers since birth.(long explination, sorry)

And as far as I know the name Tapestry(white rabbit and other random ones) did only appear on cards. In the comics she was always refered to as Meggan.

[Stuart Vandal]

Originally Posted by Eric J. Moreels

After a brief battle, Captain Britain invited Meggan to stay with him, his sister Betsy, and a blind seer named Alison at Braddock Manor. Strangely, Alison referred to Meggan as being beautiful and radiant. [Mighty World of Marvel #14]

Alison Double isn't and wasn't blind. Wearing dark glasses a lot doesn't make someone blind. Most significantly, in her first appearance, she is seen reading a comic, an activity blind people don't commonly participate in (not unless someone is reading it for them, which wasn't the case).

I won't go into the other bits I disagree with and think are wrong (faerie, powers weakening outside of Britain), as Eric and I have discussed these before elsewhere.

[Stuart Vandal]

Originally Posted by mrsage

Meggan may have a problem living in the Mansion or being mobile with the X-Treme team since she is magically connected to British Isles. If that were addressed, X-Treme X-Men will be good for her.

Originally Posted by FeyMeggan

oookay, multi task time:
mrsage- Actually it was found that Meggan's powers and abilities work fine away from Britain, she just assumed that like Brian her gifts were unstable away from them.

FeyMeggan has got it mostly right, though she has one bit wrong - Meggan didn't assume her powers were unstable away from Britain, she was told this by a seamstress on Earth-1193. However that information is clearly in error (no matter how shocking it might seem, a dressmaker is probably not the person most likely to accurately tell a superhuman how their powers work. ). Meggan has been seen to travel to France, Germany, Russia, Tibet, Mbangawi in Africa, etc, and leave the UK for weeks (or even months) at a time without any control problems or power fluctuations. Either the seamstress told them inaccurate info (perhaps true for the Meggan of her world), or she outright lied (Roma wanted to keep CB and Meggan in the UK for the forthcoming fight with Necrom; telling them (either through an agent or herself in disguise) their powers were tied to the British Isles would do that).

Originally Posted by Marduk

I have a question about her origins.

Most faerie's, fairies, pixies, elves, dwarves, etc come from an extra-dimensional realm like Avalon or one of the Nine Worlds. In Meggan's case, she was born in Earth's dimension to human parents, right? Wouldn't this just make her either a mutant or some kind of human variation like a deviant or Eternal? Why is she referred to as a faerie?

Originally Posted by FeyMeggan

Mad Manfred- She's called a fairie because in issue 12, the start of the Cross Time Caper, it's commented that the fairies of that world treated her 'as a long lost princess'. This, for some reason made people assume she was of their species/type/race. I personally think this is pretty accurate, because in mythology there are fairies called changelings. These are switched out for human babies in myth so would explain why Meggan was that way from birth where as being a mutant wouldn't. If she was a mutant her powers would not have manifested until puberty; however, she had her powers since birth.(long explination, sorry)

Meggan is a mutant. I re-read virtually every appearance she had before writing her Handbook entry, and noted all the places where she used magic, all the stuff that suggested she might be a faerie, and all the places where she was called a mutant.

Faerie might be suggested by her affinity to magic, but there's no reason a mutant can't tap into magical energy - there's plenty that tap into every other kind of energy.

There was her encounter with the Neuri, but it only helped her see her true form and tap into the spirit plane, it didn't say she was a faerie.

Billy the Kid on Earth-1193 likens her to a faerie because she is dancing with the local faerie (who look zero like her), but he's a native of a realm of magic, and she has pointy ears - he's going to relate her to the frame of reference he's used to. As for the dancing bit, this is the same girl who dances with wolves, dolphins, Wonderland characters, and hangs out with lions in Africa and New Yorkers in NYC - the faerie welcoming her means nothing when you are an empathic type welcomed by all. Same kind of reason why so many guys fall for her (Brian, Nightcrawler, Colossus) - her powers tend to make her seem the ideal woman to whomever she spends time around.

Excalibur #109 - Spiral calls Meggan a "faerie child".

Excalibur #110 - Xiandu of the Crimson Dawn refer to her as a "faerie child",

Nothing to show they actually knew and weren't just presuming based on their own magical backgrounds and experiences, going on her appearance and perhaps having sensed Meggan can access magical energies. However, this is still a presumption if that is all they are going on - appearance would condemn Wolfsbane as a werewolf, and accessing magical energies would condemn Scarlet Witch - both of whom are mutants, not supernatural beings.

Trading cards and intro notes at front of issues don't hold any weight, as they have contained so many howling continuity errors that they have zero credibility.

What about mutant?

We've seen her parents, and they looked human.

Meggan told her friend Josie Scott she was a mutant, back prior to when she first met Brian.

Excalibur #113 - The High Evolutionary referred to "mutants" plural when she and Colossus entered his citadel, and he strikes me as the kind of guy who would scan every intruder so he knows what he is dealing with.

But to me the single most definitive point comes in Captain Britain Monthly #9. Agent Gabriel of RCX, who has been using a scanner to identify things, is pointing his scanner at Meggan, and states "The MUTANT'S power is incredible. She must be restrained..." This is the same Gabriel who correctly identifies the Warpies as being empowered by magical energies and never calls them mutants, remembers Mad Jim Jaspers when most other people's minds have wiped the experience as too traumatic, immediately recognises Braddock Manor's defences as holographic illusions, correctly identifies the Technet as non-terrestrial (bear in mind that they could have as easily been mutants or Warpies), and admits when he can't understand the readings of his scanner when it reads "Jeeves" (the hologram extension of the Mastermind computer). He's not one to make assumptions as to origins of powers, and he is using a scanner which correctly got the origins of all those others.

And if that isn't enough:

Excalibur writer Alan Davis asked in an online interview about Meggan less than six months ago:

Questioner " Did you intend for Meggan to be a faerie or a mutant? I always assumed from Meggan & Rachel's encounter with the Neuri and earlier hints she was a faerie but I wanted to know for sure. "

Alan Davis "I had never decided for certain. Initially Meggan was supposed to be a Warpie but I always left it open in case I had a better idea later. "

Excalibur #108 - new writer Ben Raab describes Meggan as an "elemental mutant" in a text box - that's the writer speaking directly to the reader.

Excalibur 118 - text box again refers to Meggan as an "elemental mutant"

What about Warren Ellis? In Excalibur #93 we had the following text boxes:

"She'd forgotten the best thing about Meggan; that Meggan enjoys using her mutant powers more than anyone else she knows."

"Meggan reaches out with her mutant nature once again, speaking to the flame."

And for the final word, Chris Claremont in Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn p.10 (and on to p.11)

"Her name is Meggan. And she is as much a creature of the Earth as of Man. In olden days she'd be called one of the Faery Folk...
ACTUALLY, THOUGH, SHE's A MUTANT"

That's four of Excalibur's longest serving writers giving a definitive "mutant", one giving an "undecided". We have people who definitely scanned her saying mutant. And we have that last statement which implies that less informed people who don't know about mutants could mistake her for a faery.

[Ruth]

Originally Posted by Loki

FeyMeggan has got it mostly right, though she has one bit wrong - Meggan didn't assume her powers were unstable away from Britain, .

Claremont set up the unstable powers plot in Excalibur though. one suggestion. As she is an empath and in many ways orineted herself after Captain Britain, perhaps she subvconsciously also echoed the power instability HE was displaying at the time.

[Stuart Vandal]

Originally Posted by Ruth

Claremont set up the unstable powers plot in Excalibur though. one suggestion. As she is an empath and in many ways orineted herself after Captain Britain, perhaps she subvconsciously also echoed the power instability HE was displaying at the time.

That's entirely possible - she could just have been subconsciously echoing him. Alternately it could have been her recent possession during the Inferno which weakened her control. Either way, she's had too many trips overseas both before the Inferno trip and subsequent to it, for what the woman from Earth-1193 told her to hold true.