Characters / Marvel Comics: Madelyne Pryor

Madelyne Jennifer Pryor / Goblin Queen

"For too long, Limbo has held the spirits no one wants to face. The parts of us we condemn to darkness. Nothing heals in darkness... No more hiding."

Aliases: Madelyne Pryor-Summers, "Maddie", Anodyne, Mutate #9818, Goblin Queen, Black Rook, Red Queen, Queen of Limbo

Nationality: American, Krakoan, Limbo

Species: Human mutant (Clone)

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #168 (April, 1983)

Madelyne Jennifer Pryor-Summers is a Marvel Universe mutant super villain associated with the X-Men. She debuted in Uncanny X-Men #168 in 1983.

During Jean Grey's first death, Cyclops flew to Alaska with his family, where he met Madelyne, a charming, red-headed commercial airline pilot, who looked exactly like Jean. They fell in love, married, and had a son together, Nathan Summers (better known as Cable).

Then Jean Grey came Back from the Dead and Cyclops left Madelyne alone with their son to go back to superheroing, just in time for her to be targeted by Mister Sinister and the Marauders. As it turned out, her entire past was faked. She was actually a clone of Jean, but was deemed a failure until Jean died on the moon and a shard of the Phoenix's power and Jean's soul ended up getting caught in the clone, creating Madelyne. Sinister then programmed her with Fake Memories and planned to used her as a "brood mare" to produce the next generation of powerful mutants and deliberately manipulated events so she would encounter Scott and the two would fall in love.

She barely survives the attack by the Marauders, who successfully kidnap Nathan. She grows extremely resentful of Scott for having abandoned her and their child, which only grows when she learns he and Jean got back together. This is when demons from the realm of Limbo contact her, offering her a Deal with the Devil in order to get Revenge on Scott, Sinister, and Jean. She accepted, and becomes the Goblin Queen, starting the events of the Inferno (1988) story arc, until she dies and her psyche is reconciled into Jean's.

She has since been brought Back from the Dead and has become an antagonist in numerous X-Men stories, having been associated with the Hellfire Club and briefly led her own villain group called the "Sisterhood of Mutants", and then later into a Hazy-Feel Turn antihero of Dark Web and Dark X-Men (2023).

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Madelyne Pryor provides examples of:

A-H

• Aborted Arc:
  • Originally Madelyne was not intended to be Jean's clone at all, but instead an Identical Stranger. Of course, this made Maddie in practice just a Replacement Goldfish for Jean, and after the writers got permission to bring Jean Back from the Dead they no longer needed Madelyne. But since she and Scott were Happily Married by this time and had a child, simply having her fade into the background wasn't an option. Hence her very swift turn to the dark side.
  • Another one occurs in X-Man. The entire first half of the run has a subplot involving Madelyne and the Hellfire Club, which appeared to be leading up to a showdown between Madelyne and Selene for the title of Black Queen. Then, abruptly and without fanfare, Madelyne just walked away from the Club, turning her back on a carefully built alliance/partnership with Sebastian Shaw to go looking for Nate Grey with no reason given in-story or out. Details are scarce, but it is presumed this arc was just of the many 90s plots that fell by the wayside thanks to the high creator turnover and backstage politics of the period.
• Ace Pilot: She has been a highly skilled pilot since her introduction, although it doesn't come up often past her Face–Heel Turn.
• Action Survivor: Got her start as one of these, being an ordinary woman (later retconned into having dormant powers) thrust into dangerous situations alongside the X-Men. She graduated to Badass Normal and Pregnant Badass before her Face–Heel Turn.
• Affectionate Nickname: She's sometimes called Maddie by people close to her.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite everything she tried to do, when she's killed yet again in Dawn of X, Alex still cared about Madelyne and was heartbroken because the Quiet Council refused to revive her in lieu of her already being a clone of Jean Grey.
• All for Nothing: Inferno and Madelyne's death, in hindsight. 1) Everyone now knows how things would go between Cyclops and Jean Grey. 2) The image of Cyclops keeps re-sinking, even though Marvel keeps on trying to re-float him. 3) Jean's parents would later end up getting slaughtered anyway... by space aliens.
• Amazon Brigade:
  • She founded and led an all-female villain group called the "Sisterhood of Mutants" in an effort to destroy the X-Men.
  • Found herself in another one of sorts when she and Magik along with Mirage and Wolfsbane ended up trapped together in Limbo and having to fight their way out.
• And I Must Scream: How she was tricked into making a Deal with the Devil. The demons S'ym and N'astirh sent her visions, which she thought were just nightmares, of her husband taking their baby son away from her and then systematically taking away all her physical features — clothes, then hair, then mouth and nose and eyes — and putting them on a featureless mannequin revealed to be Jean Grey. When it's done, Jean is real again and Maddie is the featureless mannequin, unable to even scream. They walk away happily and with the baby, leaving the naked and faceless Maddie to struggle alone through a blistering wasteland burning her away. Major Nightmare Fuel for anyone who read that issue as a kid, or even as an adult.
• Arch-Enemy: To Jean Grey, at least up until Jean's second death; and also to Cyclops, Havok and Mister Sinister. Madelyne has since become a more independent villain.
• Atrocious Alias:
  • Such a childish-sounding moniker as "Goblyn Queen" has been hard to take seriously from the start. Marvel's staffers seem to be aware of this, because Pryor was never called the Goblyn Queen since Inferno (1988) concluded in 1989. (Until Secret Wars (2015).)
  • After not using any alias on Madelyne Pryor since 1989 (the "Black Rook" alias barely applied), in 2009's Sisterhood story arc Marvel tried calling her the "Red Queen". But after Disney's Alice in Wonderland (2010), apparently Marvel decided they couldn't use that moniker anymore, so no alias was mentioned when Pryor returned again in 2014. (Funny enough, "Red Queen" later became an alias of Kate Pryde during Krakoa.)
  • During her return in Hellions, though outfitted like the Goblin Queen again, she is not called that or any other alias. She is referred to only by her name all throughout.
  • Immediately after, during "The Labors of Magik" arc in New Mutants (2019), though Pryor is still in the Goblin Queen outfit, she's called that only once, sarcastically by Mirage.
  • Then Dark Web seems to finally settle her alias, amended to "Goblin Queen of Limbo", with a more regal (and dignified) outfit.
• Back from the Dead: Appropriately for her connection with Jean, she has been resurrected several times, first by Roma in Uncanny X-Men, then Nate Grey in X-Man, and then by Arkea in X-Men (2013), and finally by The Five at the end of Hellions.
• Badass Normal: Started out as a commercial pilot with a mean right hook, then during her time on the run from Sinister's Marauders, she joined the X-Men out of necessity and became their tech support, managing to pull her weight on the team without any (apparent) powers at all.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: In addition to her Psychic Powers, at the height of her Goblyn Queen phase, Madelyne could draw out the innate evil in things and people, which she used to turn the X-Men against X-Factor.
• Barrier Warrior: As the Goblyn Queen she erected a barrier around herself and Jean Grey to fight her without interference. It was totally unbreachable until Longshot successfully pinpointed its one weak spot with his luck powers, allowing the rest of the team to strike and break through it.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In her kinder moments she makes it clear she really does appreciate Havok's Undying Loyalty even when everyone else dismissed her as a fake Jean. This is probably also the reason she's willing to be X-Man's Only Friend despite her disinterest in heroics.
• Bed Trick: During Uncanny X-Men, she psionically impersonated Emma Frost in order to have sex with Scott.
• Berserk Button:
  • Do not mention Mr. Sinister around her. Nate and Tessa both found out up close and personal why this was a bad idea.
  • Unsurprisingly, comparing her to Jean. First time around, when Scott asked if she was, she just punched him. By the time she'd gone full evil, her reaction was to turn Jean's parents into demons (in their defence, they saw a woman who looked exactly like their daughter in front of them).
  • Implying that she's not a real person. Considering that this implication is what sent her down the slippery slope to begin with, it's not too surprising.
• Bondage Is Bad: After her time in the Hellfire Club, her outfits were often Hellbent For Leather, or she Dressed Like a Dominatrix and acted as a sadomasochistic seductress.
• Bookends: Shortly before Summers had proposed marriage to Pryor, Kitty Pryde asked and handed Lockheed the dragon over to Madelyne to babysit. Two years later, Pryde again asked and handed Lockheed to her to babysit, which was just before what became the beginning of the end of both the marriage and of Maddie as a straightforward character.
• Broken Bird: Starting from the marriage disintegrating to up until the start of Inferno, for four meta-years Pryor was characterized as being this. Then subverted entirely during Inferno which recharacterized Pryor as being all Hate Sink with zero redeeming qualities or actions.
• Came Back Strong: Her numerous resurrections seem to have had this effect, as after the first one she took on both Nate Grey and Jean Grey at once and was having the best of that encounter - though it has to be noted that she was draining Nate's powers at the time. On her third resurrection courtesy of Arkea she proved capable of flattening Rachel Grey in one shot.
• Came Back Wrong: Her first resurrection courtesy of Nate Grey was somewhat this, as she was not actually a living, breathing person, but rather a physical manifestation of psionic energy that was to some degree still tainted by her corruption and death. Mutant death-senser Threnody noticed this and confronted her with it, leading Maddie to have a Villainous Breakdown and kill her in response.
• Chess Motifs: During her time in the Hellfire Club she held the rank of Black Rook.
• Cleavage Window: Her new design in X-Men (2013) is far more modest than her previous costumes, with the only skin she's baring being a window to her cleavage.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Somewhat towards Scott, definitely (and frighteningly) towards Nate.
• Clone Angst: She's a clone of Jean Grey created by Mister Sinister, and Mister Sinister later created six more clones of her to absorb the Phoenix. She doesn't handle the reveal (and being left for her original) well.
• Commonality Connection: When she meets Ben Reilly in the prelude to Dark Web they both quickly hit it off when their Clone Angst manifested as two groups of demons begin attacking each other, figuratively and literally granting them reprieve from the hordes jeering about their existential insecurities as clones.
• Continuity Snarl: Was she killed by Queen Jean back in X-Man? Was she actually Queen Jean herself? Thanks to that story's obscurity and an Unreliable Narrator, we may never know.
• Costume Evolution: The first time she had powers as Anodyne, she was in a pink Pimped-Out Dress with long sectioned-skirt and heavily with golden accessories. Then as the Goblin Queen, it's the notoriously Stripperiffic black outfit. Decades later as Queen of Limbo (the page image), her outfit seems a composite of both the previous.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Her part of Dark Web was trying to get some memories she felt belonged to her via force, manipulation and Mind Rape when she could've just damn well asked.
• Dark Action Girl: Evolved into one, and during her Red Queen phase she organized an entire team of Dark Action Girls, the Sisterhood of Mutants.
• Deal with the Devil: Which unlocked both her Psychic Powers and Black Magic. She made said deal in a dream, and explicitly didn't believe it was real... but the demons considered it binding anyway.
• Death Is Cheap: She was killed in Inferno (1988), resurrected by Nate Grey, killed again (possibly) by an evil alternate version of Jean, showed up as a psychic ghost to Cyclops and Cable on the Astral Plane, then resurrected again (maybe) as the Red Queen, where she died yet again. The fans took bets on how long it would stick. Indeed, she came back in X-Men (2013). And then, it appears that she is shot dead in Hellions. After a ton of pushing from Havok, she was resurrected by The Five.
• Derailing Love Interests: Was originally introduced as a Nice Girl and a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Jean after her death, serving as a Love Interest to Scott so they could get Happily Married and retire. But then Jean came Back from the Dead and it was decided Scott wouldn't retire, so writer(s) shifted her from a Nice Girl into a Wet Blanket Wife and Scott quickly abandoned Madelyne so he and Jean could be back to being an Official Couple. But since Scott abandoning Madelyne just like that made him into a Jerkass, the writers decided to make Madelyne more unsympathetic by turning her into a demonic supervillain who was even capable of killing her own child.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Dies in Alex's arms after getting shot in the heart in Hellions, with her begging him to remember her as something more than a Jean Grey clone. Neither Scott nor Jean gave her any such courtesy the first time she died in Inferno.
• Discard and Draw: During her brief time as Anodyne (back when she was still believed to be a normal human), Madelyne had the ability to manifest mystical flames to heal injuries and ailments. This ability was seemingly lost after her latent mutant powers were activated by demonic magic during the Inferno story arc. She also possessed the ability to warp reality within a localized area. After being resurrected, she retained her natural mutant powers of telepathy and telekinesis, and later learned to teleport. For a time she also possessed the ability to siphon psionic energy from other mutant psionics, an ability she learned from Selene. Since becoming queen of Limbo, she has received further training in magic from Illyana.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Her motivation in Hellions. After her resurrection back in 2013, she dropped off the grid. When Krakoa was founded, she was snubbed and decided the best response was to burn it to the ground.
• Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Of course, she wasn't a straight example because Jean wasn't really dead and later came back to marry Scott.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: As the Goblin Queen, Madelyne wears a skimpy cropped black leather shirt, a leather loincloth, and thigh-high Combat Stiletto boots. Years later she briefly dressed like a literal one when she subjected Empath to S&M domination, and so wore a dominatrix costume and mask and held a whip.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Combines this with Badass Boast after her Villainous Breakdown in X-Man #25:
  Madelyne: (after being told she's still dead) I breathe, I think, I feel... I've got power, and I most certainly live!
• Emasculated Cuckold: A rare female example, but having Scott abandoning her in favor of Jean was a blow to her confidence as a woman. Made even worse by the fact she soon learned she was actually an inferior clone of Jean.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Pre-Inferno (1988), there was a storyline where Madelyne was granted Healing Hands powers from drinking the enchanted water of an Asgardian fountain, at the cost of her imagination.
• Everyone Has Standards: Genocide is too much for Madelyne to stomach, as she once tipped off Cable to a plot of her old flame Sebastian Shaw to use a device belonging to Apocalypse in the hopes of harnessing his power and destroying all of London in the process.
• Even Evil Has Standards: During Dark Web, she lies to a psychologically fragile Eddie Brock to get him to help, then has Chasm Mind Rape him when he starts annoying her, but later admits she shouldn't have, but only after the damage has been done.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Jealously egocentric due to the trauma of her initial life and death, Madelyne often comes into conflict with Jean due to the assumption that Jean's just as proud and spiteful. It finally seems to sink in that this isn't the case in Dark Web when her motive - to gain access to a Cerebro cradle so as to have the memories of raising Cable - is revealed, and Jean tells her that all she ever had to do was ask. And then the two proceed to bond over the memories like over baby photos.
• Evil Costume Switch: After having just undergone her Face–Heel Turn and becoming The Goblin Queen, she got herself into a dark Stripperiffic costume. She even changed Havok into a similar skimpy evil costume when she brainwashed him into becoming her Goblin Prince.
• Evil Counterpart: During Dark X-Men (2023), she goes up against an evil version of herself from an alternate universe who's sided with Orchis. Regular Maddie wins.
• Evil Knockoff: She became this to Jean Grey eventually.
• Eviler than Thou: Gets subjected to this by Mr. Sinister, only to turn it right back around on him.
• Evil Redhead: Though she didn't start out this way, she eventually became the poster child for this.
• Evil Wears Black: Before her descent into darkness, Pryor always wore either bright colors or work-clothes in earthy tones, and rarely any darks. Since her descent, she is nearly always in blacks.
• Expendable Clone: The assumption of Executive Meddling was that retconning Madelyne into this (as well as into other things) would make it easy to kill her off and that readers would permanently forget her. But her having been given considerable Character Development even before this, and nowadays the increasing appearances of the trope Clones Are People, Too, seem to have recently helped Pryor get Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.invoked
• Face Framed in Shadow: In the issue before her Face–Heel Turn, her face was often draped in shadow, with only her green eyes shining in the darkness, in order to make her look sinister and depict the degradation of her sanity.
• Face–Heel Turn: Overlaps with Retcon to some degree, as Maddie was established during Inferno (1988) as succumbing to her darker side well before she snapped and became the Goblyn Queen.
• Fashion Dissonance: When artist Marc Silvestri originally designed the Goblin Queen costume in 1988, thigh-high boots were associated with tramps and prostitutes^note remember a hit 1990 film?, influencing the artist's design choice. In recent years, such boots have become associated with high-fashion and fashion-divas.
• Femme Fatale: Post Face–Heel Turn she becomes much more sexually assertive and starts using her feminine wiles to manipulate men, having no trouble winding men around her little finger - examples include Scott Summers, Alex Summers, Sebastian Shaw, Nate Grey (sort of), and Empath. As she informed Jean in X-Man #25, "I've lived the darker side of us."
• Fiery Redhead: Originally, she showed a temper only once — that time she famously slugged Scott in the face. Since her fall into darkness, she has been motivated almost entirely by anger, gets enraged when unhealed wounds are brought back, and uses her sexuality very aggressively.
• Flanderization: Madelyne as the Goblyn Queen during Inferno (1988) was very much Not Herself, being subject to intense trauma and demonic influence to descend into that state, yet as of 2020 the event has more or less completely defined her character. This started with an alternate-reality depiction of Maddie in the 2015 Secret Wars event, in which she had conquered New York during Inferno and still ruled it. After this, however, Zeb Wells chose to push the reset button on her hard, reverting her to the Goblyn Queen for her appearance in the new Hellions title even though the demons who corrupted her are long dead. This, in the midst of a story trying its absolute hardest to break the Status Quo Is God rut no less.
• The Force Is Strong with This One: After she killed Threnody in X-Man she unleashed a kind of 'psychic shockwave' that was felt by everyone who had any kind of connection with her, even a non-telepath like Havok.
• Freudian Excuse: Having been near constantly exploited by villains and dehumanized by heroes, she has boatloads of trust issues and often causes unnecessary problems fighting to take from heroes what she could simply ask for because she refuses to debase herself "groveling".
• Go Mad from the Revelation: She didn't take it very well when she found out she was a clone created by Mister Sinister for the sole purpose of having Cyclops's baby, since Sinister believed he could create an extremely powerful mutant by combining Cyclops and Jean Grey's genes. The revelation drove Maddie insane and she tried to kill her and Cyclops's infant son, and after failing killed herself.
• Grand Theft Me: She once tried to inhabit Jean's dead body as a new host, but got outplayed by Scott who had Domino replace Jean's body in the grave beforehand, causing Madelyne's plan to backfire horribly as only a body as strong as Jean's could take Madelyne's essence, causing her to perish.
• Happily Married: Subverted. Originally she was introduced to give Cyclops a way to retire from superheroics, as Chris Claremont's original vision for the X-Men was for the older members to retire and the new guard to gradually take their place. But since comic books are the patron medium for Status Quo Is God obviously that couldn't happen and their marriage slowly fell apart. But later, Marvel's Powers That Be decided that Status Quo Is Boring As Hell, so Cyclops and Jean Grey's marriage would eventually be subverted as well.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Illyana Rasputin grants Maddie the chance to transcend all of her past and traumas by taking the former's mantle as ruler of Limbo. Whether Pryor became a better person from this seems settled in Dark Web immediately afterwards. She's certainly on much better terms with Jean after that, as Jean gently told her that all she ever needed to do (to share the memories of Cable) was ask.
• Healing Hands: During her stint as "Anodyne" in the Asgardian Wars. She even fixed Rogue's absorption powers during this period, though it didn't take.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door:
  • In X-Man she starts off as Nate's "guardian angel" (good) before abandoning him to study the dark arts under Selene and later has a major breakdown after Threnody drops one truth bomb too many on her and so thrashes Thren and then Nate and Jean Grey (bad), forges an alliance with Sebastian Shaw to undermine Selene (grey area), only to walk away from the Club and rejoin Nate (good), but her storyline in the title abruptly ended.
  • When returned later in Uncanny X-Men, it was only as the Bad; then X-Men (2013), Hellions, and New Mutants (2019) had her in Grey Area throughout.
  • Dark Web then seems to settle her status; starting out as a Big Bad, then having a major Heel–Face Turn, and at the conclusion having her seemingly on both the Grey Area and the Good.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She died alongside the X-Men in Dallas to save the world from the Adversary. Her turn to evil came later.
• Homage: Pryor originally being featured as an airplane pilot was meant as a tribute by Chris Claremont to his mother, who was a pilot. In other comics and novels, Claremont wrote many female characters as being professional pilots, also in homage to mother.
• Hypocrite: Despite her inferiority complex over Jean, she occasionally compares Alex unfavorably to Scott, ignoring Alex's own inferiority complex.

I-Z

• Jerkass Has a Point: Though Pryor fell into Evil Cannot Comprehend Good about Jean Grey and unleashed Dark Web unnecessarily, Madelyne wasn't completely wrong. Jean Grey (2023) exposes that Grey herself still nurses distrust and resentment of Pryor even immediately after the two shared memories and made peace. Jean Grey gets over it only after being killed again.
• Kick the Dog: Murdering Threnody in X-Man #25 and turning Jean Grey's elderly parents into demonic lackeys out of spite during Inferno (1988).
• Lady of Black Magic: She's sultry and usually demure, and has sorcery in addition to her formidable psychic powers.
• Left Hanging: Despite being identified as the Red Queen by the protagonists in-story, by the fans and by this very page, her identity was never confirmed in-story and it is entirely possible that a future Retcon will reveal that character to be yet another interdimensional doppelganger, ala Queen Jean.
• Loners Are Freaks: She is one of the only supervillains to be rejected from joining the new Krakoan nation in House of X, being spurned from the offer given to dozens of villains many times more evil than she is.
• Male Gaze: Arguably even more-so than from the infamous costume top, Pryor's Goblin Queen costume included what might be politely called a "crotch thong".
• Mama Bear: Subverted. At the start of Inferno (1988), she's pulling out all the stops to get her baby back from Sinister... then it turns out she just wants to sacrifice him to turn New York City into Hell on Earth.
  • She only wanted to make Hell on Earth after Sinister revealed her origins.
  • However, upon meeting adult Cable, she has some soft spots to him and still recognizes him as her son. At one point, after explaining how she was created and, by proxy, how Nathan was born, she even offered him that We Can Rule Together, which he obviously refused.
  • When trapped thanks to Apocalypse, Cable asked to be reunited for the first time with his father and mother. Maddie granted his wish and they reunited at the Astral Plane, and she offered them to stay like that so they can be together forever.
• Meaningful Name: Mr. Sinister named her Madelyne Pryor due to her having a prior existence as part of Jean Grey. Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor indeed.
• Mission Control: Worked as this for the X-Men during the brief time when she was with them between Scott leaving her and her turn into the Goblin Queen.
• Morality Pet:
  • Nate Grey was this to her, her being his Only Friend. Indeed, she was, as shown by a Mysterio-induced hallucination, his Best Friend.
  • Alex Summers becomes this after Dark Web, and she briefly has another in newcomer Carmen Cruz during Dark X-Men (2023).
• More than Mind Control: During Inferno she convinced Havok to join her side as the 'Goblin Prince'. Initially this appears to be a straight up case of Mind Control, but when fighting his brother, Alex reveals that he isn't being controlled, and instead chose to help Madelyne out of disgust at how Scott treated her.
• Most Common Super Power: And how! Though Depending on the Artist.
• Ms. Fanservice: After becoming the Goblin Queen, her tattered costume featured barely-a-loincloth and a top that covered her breasts only on the top.
• Mutant: Not originally one, but retconned into one after The Reveal that she was Jean's clone. Naturally, this meant she got all of Jean's Psychic Powers.
• Naked on Revival: An off-screen example when she's revived by Arkea, she comes back with no clothes on, much like Selene, but by the time we see her, she's already wrapped in a Modesty Towel.
• Nightmare Sequence: A demon gives her one in order to manipulate her into accepting his Deal with the Devil. He subjects her to a vision where Scott shows up and tells Madelyne he doesn't love her anymore, takes Nathan away from her, and then starts giving her a Shameful Strip by taking her clothes and her very facial features, and gives all of it to a mannequin of Jean Grey, rendering Madelyne a naked and featureless mannequin with no mouth, nose or eyes, leaving her all alone in an And I Must Scream situation.
• No Mouth: Madelyne likes to shut people up by erasing their mouths via magic. She does it to the Legacy Marauders, seemingly for fun, and then to Alex when flirting with him.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: During the Nightmare Sequence where Scott takes away all her clothes and facial features, leaving her a featureless Barbie Doll Anatomy all alone in a giant desert. She wanders aimlessly until she falls into an oasis and surfaces naked from the water with all of her features returned, with Censor Steam covering up her bits. Then the Limbo demon S’ym shows up and drapes her in a black cape, the same she will wear when she adopts her Goblin Queen identity in the future, with the whole sequence working as a rebirth metaphor.
• Parental Incest: With Nate Grey, alternate reality cloned son of Cyclops and Jean Grey, and technically Maddie's son's alternate reality counterpart. While he immediately backed off on that aspect of their relationship once he figured out their relationship, her... well, it's complicated, but she was something of a Clingy Jealous Girl, a classic Tsundere and the cover art of X-Man #41 had a giant Maddie holding Nate between two fingers and licking her lips◊. It really didn't help that the letters page had some readers enthusiastically shipping them.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: During the first Genosha story arc, which takes place between her original Deal with the Devil and Inferno itself, Madelyne is kidnapped by the Genoshans, who intend to physically and mentally enslave her through the Mutate Bonding Process. She uses her newfound demonic powers to lash out and kill everyone in the room with her.
• People Jars: Was kept in one in stasis by Mister Sinister after she failed to develop powers as a Jean Grey clone. She only awakened when Jean died and a part of the Phoenix went inside her.
• Percussive Therapy: When she first sees Scott and Jean together in a computer screen, she's enraged and smashes the screen with her fist. The resulting explosion renders her unconscious, and she's visited by a demon who offers her a Deal with the Devil to turn her into the Goblin Queen.
• Personality Powers: Not as the Goblin Queen, but in her original incarnation as just Madelyne Pryor she was granted powers from a magic Asgardian fountain. And because was a firmly good, well-adjusted and even selfless person under her original creator's pen, she manifested Healing Hands powers and became Anodyne, a healer so skilled she even cured Rogue of her Power Incontinence. This was probably the happiest period of Madelyne's life; sadly, it was too good to last.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Her interactions with her son and Nate Grey, as noted above, can be considered as this.
  • Long after their marriage disintegrated, Cyclops (secretly) kept Madelyne's picture.
  • When Magik chooses Pryor to be Limbo's new ruler in New Mutants (2019), their interactions — which they were never shown to have ever had before, even during Inferno (1988) — show Illyana being nothing but understanding and even sympathetic to Madelyne.
• Properly Paranoid: One of her biggest motivations has been to prove to the world she's a real person and not just a stand-in for Jean Grey. The Quiet Council won't resurrect Madelyne because she was already a clone, confirming her fears that (most of them) did not consider her her own person.
• Reality Warper: Implied to be a power she had during Inferno, which enabled her to transmogrify Grey's parents into demon servants. They and the whole transmogrified city then all changed back to normal only after Madelyne died (similar to the effects shown with Ace in the DCAU).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Gives this to the Genegineer while she's a prisoner in Genosha. She's the first person in-story who's shown to dare to critique him to his face for the Genoshans' system.
  • She gives some truly crushing Hannibal Lecture lines to Scott during her Red Queen phase.
    Red Queen: (in response to Scott offering to help her) Let you help me? Don't make me laugh, you child. You could never help me. Not as a hero, not as a man — and certainly not as a husband.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In X-Man #25, after liberating herself from her dependence on Nate Grey's psychic powers to continue existing.
• Redhead In Green: Her debut appearance had her wearing a green bomber jacket and given she's a clone of Jean, she's also Scott's Significant Green-Eyed Redhead. This color scheme was mostly dropped post Face–Heel Turn.
• Reluctant Hero: Madelyne makes it clear to Nate after they reunite that she does not see herself as a hero and is willing to help him and teach him, but not at the risk of her life. Despite this, she does actually risk her life for his sake in their fights against Holocaust and Stryfe.
• Replacement Goldfish: She was only this because the writers couldn't bring Jean outright back at the time.
  • In-Universe, Nate seemed to function as this to her for Cable (her son, whom he was an AU counterpart of), while she seemed to function as this to him for Jean (being the clone of his AU mother). Add in the UST in all of their interactions and you have one hell of a messed up relationship.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Had Marvel just dropped her (and her son) out of the picture without any word or hype, she likely would've just faded into obscurity and been forgotten just like most minor supporting characters in superhero comics. But by making her the center of such a massive send-off and Marvel's editors & writers believed that they could get away with Character Derailment and Murder the Hypotenuse because they assumed that Viewers Are Morons, instead it backfired and made her a martyr of Executive Meddling and secured her into an established character, averting becoming one of the later Audience-Alienating Era rejects.
• Retcon: Very late in the X-Man title and some time after Madelyne herself had disappeared, a new villain was introduced calling herself Queen Jean. This character claimed to have been the Madelyne Pryor Nate knew "from the very start", impersonating Pryor to get close to Nate. The story went back and forth on whether this was true or if Queen Jean was just a maniac screwing with Nate. By the time he finally killed her, fans and the story had both settled on an uneasy option B, but the identity shenanigans didn't end with Queen Jean's death. Between Queen Jean, the Red Queen and her own issues with the real Jean, it is safe to say this character has had one of the most complicated identity crisis in all of fiction.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Inferno (1988) is basically Maddie snapping and unleashing literal hell on Earth after enduring a brutal Trauma Conga Line, with her primary targets being Scott, Jean and Mr. Sinister.
• Sanity Slippage: All through Inferno. Between being targeted for assassination by the Marauders, having her son kidnapped, being abandoned by her husband, being tricked into a Deal with the Devil, and finding out she was nothing but a clone created to be a brood mare, it's really a miracle she didn't snap sooner.
• Send in the Clones: A story set shortly before the events of Avengers vs. X-Men had Mr. Sinister create six clones of her to control the Phoenix Force. These clones had none of Maddie's personality though, and were mostly just soulless husks following whatever orders Sinister gave them.
• Settle for Sibling: After Scott abandons her she brainwashes Havok into being her Doctor Boyfriend. Alex (who seems to have genuine feelings for her) calls her out for this in Hellions during his "Reason You Suck" Speech which seemed to turn her on.
• Sex for Solace:
  • Shortly after Scott's abandonment and Nathan's kidnapping, she finds herself being consoled by Scott's brother, Alex Summers/Havok. As she slowly succumbs to the demonic corruption, she starts to give him sexual advances, which he reluctantly accepts due to his own hangs ups after his failed relationship with Lorna. After a Sexy Discretion Shot, we cut a post-coital Madelyne, still dispassionately staring at Alex sleeping.
  • In X-Man, after an anguished encounter with Jean and Nate, Madelyne shows up at Sebastian Shaw's bedroom and starts stripping while telling him not to say anything, with the last shot of her Toplessness from the Back while advancing towards him in bed as the scene cuts away.
• Sex Goddess: She's been portrayed as this after her tenure in the Hellfire Club, though it's often used as Fan Disservice due to her sadomasochism, such as her time as the Red Queen where she used her sexual prowess to control and interrogate Empath, giving him both extreme pain and pleasure.
• Shout-Out:
  • Named after the Steeleye Span folk singer Maddy Prior.
  • Whoever at Marvel came up with the "Goblyn Queen" moniker^note either Chris Claremont, or Louise Simonson (since the "Goblin Queen" name appeared for the first time in X-Factor, which Simonson was the writer at that time), or a committee of both, he/she/they must have been obsessed with a 1986 film which featured a fanserviced "Goblin King" who abducts babies.^note And get this: Marvel did a comic-book adaptation of the film in question (look here), drawn by veteran artist John Buscema. A couple of years later, shortly before the Inferno crossover started, Buscema and Chris Claremont were collaborating on the Wolverine (volume 2) solo series.
  • In Uncanny X-Men #238, a vision of Pryor as a little girl in a field of daisies, followed by a nuclear explosion, might have been an apeing of an infamous 1964 presidential campaign commercial.
• Sibling Triangle: If his speech in Hellions is anything to go by, Havok had feelings for her even when she was Happily Married to Scott and he made it clear he was Not Brainwashed during their relationship. Madelyne only really used him as a coping mechanism after Scott abandoned her and only really began to see him as a person after he got sick of hearing her talk about his brother. Unfortunately she was killed by Greycrow immediately after that revelation.
• Sinister Scythe: During Dark Web it's revealed that she manifested all her pain and suffering into what she calls the Scythe of Sorrows. Like Magik's Soulsword, it signifies her sovereignty over Limbo, allowing command of its demon armies, and grants demonic mystical powers to whoever wields it.
• Snark Knight: After Dark Web, she's made guest appearances in The Amazing Spider-Man where she gives this attitude each time.
• Spell My Name With An S: Is it "Goblin Queen" or "Goblyn Queen"? Even the comics used both more or less interchangeably.
• Start of Darkness: Madelyne was originally a pilot who ran into Scott Summers after the death of Jean Grey, and caught his attention because she looked exactly like Jean. After a fairly long run with the X-Men and a stable relationship with Scott that resulted in the birth of Nathan Summers (a.k.a. Cable), Madelyne discovered two things in rapid succession that had a major effect on her; first, that Jean Grey was still alive and that Scott had left her to go to Jean and return to the X-Men, and second, that she was a clone of Jean created by Mr. Sinister to bear Scott's child so that Sinister could have a weapon to defeat his nemesis Apocalypse. This was combined with her house being invaded by Sinister, her son being kidnapped, her being shot, and a nightmare that involved Scott stealing all of her facial features to create Jean, then leave with their baby, and leaving a faceless, mouthless Madelyne to walk through a desert until she ran into a demon that offered her a Deal with the Devil. Thinking (or hoping) that it was All Just a Dream, Madelyn agreed... and was promptly subjected to Demonic Possession, leading to the events of Inferno (1988). Oh, and afterwards her son was sent into the future, and came back as an adult, meaning she missed most of his life. She never really recovered. Being resurrected as a psychic vampire by an alternate counterpart of said son, Nate Grey, did not help.
• Stripperiffic: When she became the evil Goblin Queen, she wore a skimpy cropped black leather shirt, a leather loincloth, and thigh-high boots.
• Super-Empowering: During Dark Web she uses Sym's severed finger to turn Janine Godbe into Hallow's Eve, much like Sym himself once did for her.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: Thanks to her son's Time Travel, she looks much younger than her son. Recently reversed with his replacement by a time-traveled young-adult counterpart.
• Superpower Lottery: Madelyene has telekinesis and telepathy just like her progenitor Jean Grey, and briefly had some Black Magic which allowed her to warp reality and summon demons. She also later displayed the ability to teleport and drain energy from other psionic mutants, abilities she apparently learned from Selene. She has received further magical tutelage from Illyana Rasputin.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Became this when the writers couldn't make her just Jean reborn.
• Taking You with Me: She attempts to do this to Jean at the climax of Inferno (1988), subjecting herself to psychic suicide in the hopes of dragging Jean down into death with her. It doesn't work, of course.
• Tangled Family Tree: She married into what was formerly the Trope Namer.
• This Is Gonna Suck: When the X-Men teleported off to Asgard in X-Men Annual #9, she had the strangest feeling things were about to go horribly wrong for some reason. They were; immediately after the X-Men got home, the events of Uncanny X-Men #200-201 happened, and then X-Factor #1 debuted.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Fans never stop pestering Marvel about Pryor, so in order to placate them (i.e. to shut them up for once), for the past several years Marvel has featured her in some alternate-reality titles (e.g.: the Mutant X series; the X-Men: The End limited-series) in which Pryor pretty much came out ahead in the end. But those didn't satisfy the fans, so in 2014 Marvel finally gave in and brought her back in the "prime reality", and let her escape whole and healthy (only to later kill her again and bring her back again soon after). Then she was included in the Secret Wars (2015) crossover event, especially in an ''Inferno redux'' tie-in storyline that ended with Maddie finally winning and getting to kill Mister Sinister for all he did to her. Later in prime reality, Illyana Rasputin generously hands Limbo over to Pryor, and soon after, Dark Web seems to finally give her a real Heel–Face Turn and then what the scripter declares to be the long sought redemption fans have been demanding for decades.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Unlike many cases of Clone Angst, Maddie was allowed to live on her own and believe her life was her own, which in many ways made the eventual reveal all the more cruel. Imagine finding out one day that the first 20-30 years of your life never happened because your memories of them, all those private experiences you thought were yours, actually belonged to and happened to someone else. As causes to Go Mad from the Revelation go, few are more horrifying on a personal human scale than hers.
• Took a Level in Badass: She was pretty badass right from the start, but over the years Maddie's taken a fair number of these.
• Touched by Vorlons: While in gestation Madelyne was touched by the Phoenix Force, which had been wandering Earth after being rejected by Jean Grey. The Phoenix Force gave her the spark of life and Jean's nascent memories, though she didn't realize her memories were counterfeit until much, much later.
• Tragic Villain: A particularly tragic case given how fast it happened in-story and how much Executive Meddling had to do with it out-of-story.invoked
• Transformation Horror: Likely a form of reality warping; one of her most potent abilities as the Goblyn Queen. She could transform people into demonic minions, though it apparently only worked on powerless or vulnerable humans. She transformed Jean Grey's parents into demonic lackeys, but failed to do the same to Colossus (in one what-if tale she did successfully demonize Wolverine, but he retained enough of his humanity to turn on her in the story's climax).
• Trapped on the Astral Plane: After Cable and Cyclops encountered Pryor existing in the Astral Plane, she apparently remained there and couldn't return to the mainstream universe until she turned up as the Red Queen after an eight year meta-gap.
• Trauma Conga Line: The sequence of events that eventually pushed her off the slippery slope.
• Tulpa: How Madelyne got resurrected by Nate Grey. Fast forward several issues later, Nate tries to reabsorb the energies he used to create Madelyne, but she has taken on a life of her own.
• Underboobs: Pioneered this daring choice in villainous fashion when she went bad in Inferno (1988). It is very likely that telekinesis is the only thing keeping her inside that costume.
• The Vamp: Post-Face–Heel Turn she became a more overt seductive Ms. Fanservice, with her Evil Costume Switch being very Stripperiffic and her often being portrayed as a domineering seductress.
• Villainous Breakdown: In X-Man #25, on learning she is not actually alive. She ends up killing Threnody in the process.
  Madelyne Pryor: I breathe, I think, I feel... I've got power, and I most certainly live! You. You're the freak here — the obscenity — the crippled cow that needs these toys of Sinister's you pretend to command… the dead wood!
• We Can Rule Together: Late in X-Man she got offered one of these by Stryfe, who was attempting to seize control of Latveria in Dr. Doom's absence. She accepted the offer (and got a portion of his power in exchange) but as it turned out she was just playing The Mole for Nate and Cable (not that she bothered to tell them, of course).
• Wet Blanket Wife: Scott and Madelyne slammed into this trope the moment she became a wife and mother. Beforehand, Madelyne had been presented as a patient and understanding woman who had her own adventurous side as a cargo pilot. However, after she became married and settled down as a housewife, she began complaining that Cyclops spent all his time as an X-Man instead of at home helping to raise their son. Things escalated to the point that when Jean Grey was discovered alive, Cyclops felt obligated to spend time reconnecting with her rather than fix his strained marriage.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Her status as a clone for Jean is a constant source of anguish for her, especially since many treat her as disposable due to it. In Dawn of X, the Quiet Council even votes against resurrecting Madelyne precisely because she's just a clone.
• Whip of Dominance: During Uncanny X-Men in 2008, she briefly became a sadomasochist seductress who went by "Red Queen" and wielded a psychic energy whip when "punishing" Empath.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Having her nascent mutant abilities awakened might have turned out alright for Maddie, had they not been awakened by demons and while she was in the process of being trampled by a Trauma Conga Line.
• Woman Scorned: Partly due to What the Hell, Hero? and partly (well, mostly) due to Executive Meddling. Her love for Scott turned into hatred after he abandoned her and Nathan to go back to Jean.invoked
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: She learned that she was a clone of Jean Grey and was abandoned by her husband, Scott Summers (who fell in love with her because of her obvious similarity to Jean, though neither knew she was a clone at the time, assuming it to just be mere coincidence that they looked exactly alike), when he reunited with Jean, after Jean returned from the dead. Then Maddie's infant son was kidnapped and she was left for dead. She has a daydream where she's ripped apart to build the woman her husband actually wants and then is offered revenge. Thinking that it's just a dream, she accepts, which, naturally, leaves her possessed by a demon and willing to sacrifice her baby (whom she finally has the power to find) to allow the demons of Limbo to take over the Earth.
• Would Hurt a Child: She has her demons kidnap twelve babies to sacrifice in a ritual during Inferno (1988), and when that fails she attempts to sacrifice her own son.

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