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"Would you like me to tell you how it's going to go?"
―Destiny

History[]

Origin[]

Visually impaired from birth, Irene Adler was born to a wealthy family in Salzburg, Austria in the mid-to-late 19th century. Her precognitive powers activated when she was thirteen. To cope with the nearly overwhelming visions, she transcribed what she saw into a series of diaries over the next thirteen months. By the time she was finished, she was completely physically blind.

A few years later, Irene hired Raven Darkhölme, a consulting detective, to help her make sense of her diaries. The two found that they shared a desire to use their powers to change the world. Not long afterward, they became lovers. Although the pair deeply cared for one another, they parted periodically, took up other lovers, and even raised separate families.

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Raising Rogue with Mystique

Irene travelled across Europe, and lived for several years in London, purchased a home in Valencia, and worked as a carnival future teller before becoming an archivist for the Black Womb Project in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Here she worked with other visionary scientists including Kurt Marko, Brian Xavier, Nathan Milbury, and Amanda Mueller.

Eventually, Mystique and Destiny reunited and together they raised their adopted daughter Rogue in a small home in Caldecott County, Mississippi. They remained together until Destiny's death.

Brotherhood of Mutants[]

Together Mystique and Destiny formed their own Brotherhood of Mutants. This group of ideologically-motivated terrorists worked for a pro mutant agenda. On one of their missions, Destiny almost assassinated the anti-mutant politician, Senator Robert Kelly, but was stopped by Shadowcat. She was arrested and taken to Ryker's Island, but was freed by Mystique and the Brotherhood resulting in a conflict with the Avengers.

Freedom Force[]

Eventually, this Brotherhood became U.S. sanctioned Freedom Force. In exchange for pardons, they agreed to protect mutants from anti-mutant sentiment. While on a mission with Freedom Force to Muir Island, Destiny was killed by Legion, who was being influenced at the time by the Shadow King. Destiny's consciousness survived within Legion's mind, and after Legion was also slain, both his and Destiny's spirits ended up assisting Margali in Limbo for a time.

Influence Beyond the Grave[]

Shortly before her death, she predicted that Mystique would become romantically involved with Forge. Although the pair loathed each other at the time, they did develop a brief relationship while both were members of X-Factor.

Sometime before her death, Irene also predicted that she would make Raven laugh if it was the last thing she ever did. She also gave Mystique very specific instructions for the dispersal of her ashes. After her death, Mystique carried out the instructions, throwing the ashes out to sea at a specific place and time, and then a sudden gust of wind blew the ashes back in her face. Realizing that Irene had planned the instructions specifically to reach this outcome, Mystique actually did laugh and received some measure of comfort.

After Destiny's death, Mystique protected a young mutant named Trevor Chase who addressed her as "Auntie Raven," strongly implying that Chase was Destiny's grandson.

Chases for the Diaries[]

The X-Treme X-Men spent some time searching for Destiny's diaries with her predictions of the future.

After M-Day, Sinister, the Marauders, and the Acolytes began searching for the diaries hoping to gain information about the rebirth of the mutant species, clashing with the X-Men, assaulting the Mansion, and killing everybody who could be aware of the information contained in it.

Necrosha[]

Destiny was resurrected by Selene with the help of Eli Bard's Techno-Organic Virus. She was kept in a prison cell on Genosha and used by Selene as a personal seer. However, after persuading Leon Matheson, a guard, she escaped to Muir Island. She next attempted to contact Rogue on Utopia via astral projection, but instead accidentally contacted Blindfold. Blindfold and a small group of X-Men travelled to Muir Island and, after defeating Proteus, freed Destiny. She briefly shared a moment with both her adopted daughter, Rogue, and her alleged great-granddaughter, Blindfold.

Chaos War[]

Destiny's soul was not allowed to rest for long; when the Chaos King put the living to sleep and opened the underworld, several X-Men were among those resurrected at the ruins of the Xavier Institute. There, Moira MacTaggert, who was seemingly one of the returning characters from the Underworld, discovered one of Destiny's Diaries with a passage on the Chaos War. Reading the passage caused the body thought to be Moira to become possessed by Destiny's soul and join the small group to defeat Carrion Crow.

Inferno[]

At some point in her current lifetime, Destiny foresaw that Moira X would help create Krakoa as a paradise for mutants, at a time when Destiny would be dead, and told Mystique about it. She warned her that the rulers of Krakoa would seek to delay her resurrection, as they did not want any precogs present. She told Mystique to ensure that she was brought back, and that if she were unable to, she would have to destroy Krakoa.

Just as Destiny predicted, Krakoa came into existence, and despite their promises to Mystique, Destiny was not resurrected. Moira went so far as to convince Professor X and Magneto to ensure Destiny could never be resurrected by destroying her DNA sample and erasing the back-up of her consciousness. Before they could do this, Mystique impersonated them and secured Moira's back-up and DNA, and had the Five resurrect her, with her body the age it had been when she and Mystique first met.

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Quiet Council

Destiny was overwhelmed by her visions, but Mystique nursed her back to health. She acquired enough support among the Quiet Council to ensure that Destiny would be elected to one of the vacant seats. Despite her powers, Destiny found herself unable to see the future, finding a hole there. She and Mystique set about finding out what Xavier and Magneto were hiding.

Mystique and Destiny were summoned by Emma Frost to the White Palace to discuss their ongoing conflict with Xavier and Magneto. While there Destiny demonstrated on the Stepford Cuckoos that her powers were returning. Emma revealed to them that the person really controlling everything was Moira MacTaggert, who was still alive and a mutant with the power of resurrection in a way that destroyed the timeline and created a new one. They at first didn't believe her but she showed them a memory from Moira's past life, in which her counterpart found out Moira had developed a cure for the X-Gene, prompting Destiny and the Brotherhood of Mutants to destroy her research facility. Destiny warned her that if she ever acted against mutantkind in any of her future lives, she would see it coming and would kill her, and would also do the same if Moira made any attempt at preemptively killing Destiny. Instead, Destiny prompted her to use her brilliant mind for the benefit of mutantkind, warning her that she would only live at most 11 lives depending on the choices she made. She then ordered Pyro to slowly burn her to death. Now realizing Moira's the real problem Mystique and Destiny had her kidnapped from her safe house in France and staged it to look like Orchis got her to lure Xavier and Magneto into a trap. While Xavier and Magneto were distracted they took Moira back to her secret base in Krakoa and used a gun designed by Forge to de-power her. No longer needing to worry about the timeline resetting, the two prepared to kill her, but Cypher, Warlock, Bei the Blood Moon, and Krakoa itself showed up to stop her, threatening to expose them to the council and have them either killed and denied resurrection or put in the Pit of Exile. They were forced to give Moira a head start but promise that they and many others would hunt them down. At this time Xavier and Magneto were killed by Nimrod, and she, Mystique, Emma, Doug, and Krakoa delayed their resurrection so they could bring the rest of the council up to speed on all their secrets.

Attributes[]

Powers[]

Destiny is a mutant with the following abilities:

  • Precognition: Destiny possesses the psionic power of precognition: the ability to perceive in her mind's eye the events of possible futures. Although she was blind, Destiny could mentally scan the probability spectrum of alternate futures and mentally perceive the sounds and sights of events that distinguished them. By concentrating she could focus on only the most probable alternate futures. The accuracy of Destiny’s ability to foresee future events decreased in direct proportion to the number of alternate futures to scan. She could comfortably scan the alternate futures that existed from one second away up until those that existed fifteen minutes away. Hence, she could be 97% accurate in her predictions of the future ten seconds away or less. Despite the limited extent to her certainty, her long-range scanning could be of great use in the early detection of possible random factors that could disrupt her to her partners’ plans. The more likely that a particular alternate future would manifest itself in her reality, the clearer and more distinct her mental impression of it would be. Less likely alternate futures would appear hazy and indistinct. For example, when she, Mystique and the Brotherhood tried to assassinate Robert Kelly, she saw a future where mutants were feared and respected, but apparently ignored the vision where murder would result in a future with mutants being hunted down and exterminated by the Sentinels. If she left her precognitive perceptions fully open, she would "see" an overlapping succession of images drift in and out of focus as probabilities shifted and further elements transpired. By active participation in the events around her, she could help shift the probabilities toward desired ends. Her personal phenomenal field, that area with which she could not scan the future for events that might take place on the other side of the world or even a mile away.
  • Astral Projection: After her death and brief resurrection, Destiny projected her astral spirit to Blindfold's room. It is unclear if this is a power she always had or a side effect of her resurrection.

Additional Attributes[]

  • Destiny is legally blind.

Paraphernalia[]

Equipment[]

  • Destiny's Diaries - A twelve volume record of Destiny's visions and predictions for the next hundred years or so. The full content has never been revealed.

Weapons[]

  • Hand crossbow

Transportation[]

  • Freedom Force Helicopter

Trivia[]

  • Destiny's name, "Irene Adler", is shared by another fictional character from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1888 short story Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia. In Chaos War: X-Men #1, Destiny implies that the Sherlock Holmes character is based on her.
    • A different fictional character from Arturo Pérez Reverte's book El Club Dumas (1993) says that her name is Irene Adler, but she is trying to make a reference to Conan Doyle's story and at the same time hiding her true identity.
  • In Destiny's earliest named appearances, including Uncanny X-Men #170, her given name is Irené (with an accent on the final e).
  • Creator Chris Claremont has stated that he originally intended Mystique and Destiny to be Nightcrawler's biological parents (with Mystique having morphed into a man for the act of conception), but Marvel didn't agree because at that time the Comics Code Authority and Marvel policy prohibited the explicit portrayal of gay or bisexual characters. Much later, the two were confirmed to have been a couple.
  • Destiny has been confirmed to have predicted such events as the Apocalypse: The Twelve, Fall of the Mutants, M-Day, the Messiah Complex, the Chaos War, Fatal Attractions, Schism, the Death of Wolverine, the final Incursion, and Dawn of X.
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