Professor X's Entire Backstory Explained

Charles Xavier's family includes some of the most powerful and dangerous people on Earth, and in at least one case, he's been fighting them literally before he was born. When Xavier is conceived, he's one in a pair of twins. Even in the womb, he senses his twin is an inherently malevolent presence, and he uses his still budding psychic abilities to cause a miscarriage. Astonishingly, the twin survives and grows into the powerful telepath and villain Cassandra Nova. 

Another sibling, though not blood-related, gets power of a different kind. Xavier's father dies while the mutant is still young, and his mother remarries Dr. Kurt Marko. Dr. Marko's son, Cain, bullies Charles relentlessly. Later, the stepbrothers serve together in the Korean War. When Cain goes AWOL, he finds a ruby in a cave that transforms him into the unstoppable Juggernaut. Marko proves to be one of the most physically powerful villains in Marvel, able to go toe-to-toe and even defeat powerhouses like Thor and the Hulk.

And there's the matter of his kid. Around the same time Charles first meets Erik Lehnsherr (the future Magneto), he falls in love with an Israeli woman named Gabrielle Haller, though they split up when Xavier leaves Israel. Years later, he discovers he has a son by Haller — David, aka Legion. While Legion couldn't be called evil, the combination of his powerful mutant abilities, his mental instability, and his hundreds of split personalities tend to cause some unintended chaos. 

Charles Xavier's earliest battle with a mutant takes place in Cairo, Egypt. Charles has no agenda, and he's merely a traveling tourist when a young African girl named Ororo — who would later be known as Storm — swipes Xavier's wallet from his pocket. With his mental powers helping him, Charles tracks Ororo down and forces her to stop running from him. He senses her mutant talent and tries to probe deeper, but he's stopped by an outside psychic force. 

After Ororo runs away, Charles tracks his psychic attacker to a saloon. His adversary is Amahl Farouk, aka the Shadow King. He's the crimelord of Cairo's Thieves' Quarter, a mutant with telepathic abilities like Xavier's, and one of the scariest villains in Marvel history. When Xavier relates the story in 1979's Uncanny X-Men #117, he says feeling Farouk's thoughts was like "swimming in a sea of maggots." Xavier and Farouk have a psychic duel in the astral plane where they appear as armored warriors wielding fiery swords, though in the saloon, observers see nothing more than two men sitting quietly at different tables. Xavier narrowly defeats Farouk, and he believes he's actually killed the villain, though like most Marvel bad guys, Farouk is destined to return.

The duel is a formative moment for Xavier. While telling the story, Xavier says Farouk is first evil mutant he'd met, and that the experience taught him just how dangerous mutants could be if they abused their powers.

In 1966's Uncanny X-Men #20, Professor X tells Jean Grey the story of how he lost the use of his legs. While traveling through Tibet, a young Charles Xavier came across a town where he sensed some of the inhabitants were being mentally dominated by an outside presence. After entering the town, Xavier realized the town's leader wasn't from Earth. The alien invader called himself Lucifer, and he was from a race called the Quist. Charles was able to disable some of his opponent's technology and led a revolt against Lucifer. But when Xavier confronted the alien, Lucifer hit a switch on a nearby wall that dropped a huge slab of rock on Xavier's legs. 

A number of different times, Xavier has regained the use of his legs due to certain circumstances, only to eventually lose them again. For example, in the 1992-93 event X-Cutioner's Song, he's temporarily able to walk after surviving being infected with a techno-organic virus. Another instance occurs after 2005's House of M when he's stripped of his powers for a time while regaining the use of his legs. As of the 2019-20 event Dawn of X — after a number of resurrections leave him in new bodies that were never wounded by Lucifer or any other aliens — Xavier is once again walking without any outside assistance.

Ironically, considering his majestic goals and global concerns, Xavier's has spent a good deal of time away from the world he's so desperate to fix. 

Xavier's most powerful attachment to outer space is Lilandra, who's a princess of the Shi'ar Empire when she first meets Charles. For some time, Xavier receives psychic visions of Lilandra, but he doesn't meet her in the flesh until 1977's Uncanny X-Men #105. He then learns she's been sending him visions because she's hoping he and his team of heroes can help her stop insane brother, D'Ken. The X-Men help her, and some time later, Xavier leaves Earth with her after he wrongly believes most of the X-Men have died. 

He returns, but Xavier would eventually leave again ... this time long enough to miss huge events in the lives of his students. When he joins Lilandra and the Starjammers in space, Xavier leaves the temporarily reformed Magneto in charge of his school. In his absence, the X-Men lose Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Shadowcat to the events of the 1986 crossover Mutant Massacre, as well as Rachel Summers who disappears right before the event begins. Similar changes come with subsequent events like 1988's The Fall of the Mutants, 1989's Inferno, and 1990's X-Tinction Agenda.

In spite of his benevolent intentions, Charles Xavier has some pretty big skeletons in his closet. For example, there's his Danger Room. In Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men series we learn the Danger Room includes an artificial intelligence capable of independent thought. It goes rogue, eventually building itself a powerful mechanical body. In 2005's Astonishing X-Men #12, after the team defeats the A.I. now called "Danger," they learn that Xavier always knew he was keeping a new life captive with the Danger Room. In fact, as soon as it went online, it reached out to him and asked, "Where am I?" But tragically, Xavier ignored it.

Then, in 2005's New Avengers #7, we learn that Professor X is one of the members of a clandestine group of superheroes called the Illuminati that's been working behind the scenes for years. Among other things, the Illuminati is behind Bruce Banner's temporary exile in space. Even though Xavier isn't part of that particular decision, the Hulk rampages through almost all of the X-Men teams to get at Xavier in the 2007 miniseries World War Hulk: X-Men. 

And in the game-changing 2006 mini-series X-Men: Deadly Genesis, the events of Giant-Size X-Men #1 are retconned to reveal Xavier sent a team of mutants — including Cyclops and Havok's brother Kid Vulcan — to save the X-Men from the mutant island Krakoa. After those mutants were presumed killed, Xavier erased the memory from Cyclops' and Moira MacTaggert's minds, which is a pretty disturbing thing for a so-called superhero to do. 

In the 2019-20 event Dawn of X, Professor X and Magneto come together to change the mutant race's future. Inspired by Moira MacTaggert's revelations that merging their visions into one is the only path forward, they establish a new nation on the sentient mutant island of Krakoa. All mutants are welcome on Krakoa, even those who've been the X-Men's most ruthless enemies. The Hellfire Club, former members of the Brotherhood, and even Apocalypse assume leadership roles on the island's Quiet Council. 

The countless mutant powers at their disposal, as well as the unique island of Krakoa itself, help the new nation to create incredible technological and cultural advances. Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher, creates a new mutant-only language which is uploaded to the mind of every new arrival to Krakoa. The island creates incredible medications, which the mutants use as leverage to get other countries to forge trade and peace agreements. Portals allowing instant access to and from the island exist in every country, and only mutants have access. There's a group of mutants known as "The Five," and these beings are able to combine their powers to bring any mutant back to life.

As for Xavier, he's more enigmatic than ever, always wearing a mobile Cerebro unit as a helmet. His former students continue their roles as X-Men and in other capacities. X-Force is reborn as Krakoa's covert strike team, and Kitty Pryde co-opts the former villain group name Marauders for her team of mutants who then take to the seas. In other words, it seems as if Professor X has finally achieved his goals of mutant peace.