Emma Frost

CREATORS: Chris Claremont & John Byrne
FIRST APPEARANCE: X-Men Vol. 1 #129 (January 1980)

Emma Grace Frost was born to a Boston mercantile family, which arrived from England in the 1600's. The second of three daughters, Emma also had an older brother, named Christian Frost, who had turned to substance abuse as an escape from the drudgery of his life and the abuse of his father. Unknown to their family or themselves, the three Frost sisters were mutants, whose telepathic abilities matured upon reaching their puberty. Deemed unfit in her father's eyes, Emma produced low grade point averages and was a social outcast while attending the Snow Valley School for Girls. As a result of her emerging powers, Emma also began to experience severe migraines.

After the emergence of her powers, Emma used them to excel in all aspects of her life. Due to a crush that Emma had on a teacher of hers, Ian Kendall, Emma decided on a future in teaching, much to her father's disapproval. Being seen kissing Mr. Kendall in front of the Frost estate, Emma's father blackmailed her to give up her idea of teaching. After her brother's homosexuality was revealed to the family, her father Winston Frost began to alienate Christian, resulting in his further drug abuse and attempted suicide. When it came time for their father to choose a worthy heir to the family fortune, Christian was automatically dismissed due to his drug problem and because he was gay. While the older sister, Adrienne Frost, seemed the most obvious choice, their father chose Emma. At the same time, Christian was sent to a mental institution, and Emma refused to be her father's heir, choosing to make her own way through life instead.

Emma dyed her hair blonde and enrolled into Empire State University, where she was reunited with Mr. Kendall. While attending class, Emma met her first fellow telepath, Astrid Bloom, and Astrid began to train Emma in the use of her abilities. After learning that Mr. Kendall was dating her roommate, Christine McDermott, Emma confessed her love for him and he pursued a relationship with Emma. Christine threatened to expose Mr. Kendall's relationship with students if he did not leave Emma, but Astrid influenced him to choke her. Upon learning the truth, Emma telepathically fought and defeated Astrid, absorbing her knowledge of telepathy, and saved Mr. Kendall's job, revealing her mutant powers to him. Despite having saved his job, Mr. Kendall left Emma in disgust upon learning that she was a mutant. These events led Emma to view humans as being beneath mutants and she began believing that there was no reason to practice restraint in using her powers. Emma inherited a good deal of wealth, but most of her large fortune was the result of her business successes. Emma rose rapidly through the world of business, thanks to her intelligence, drive, personal charm, and her secret use of her psionic abilities. Also, at some point, the Dark Beast met Emma and helped her rise to wealth and power.

Emma eventually became the majority stockholder of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, which was renamed Frost International after herself. Despite her youth, Emma became a chairperson of the board of Frost International and its chief executive officer. Frost International was principally involved in transportation (both the building of ships and aircraft and their use for freight and passenger transport) and electronics. Emma also became chairperson of the board of trustees of the Massachusetts Academy, a college preparatory school for grades seven through twelve located in the Berkshire Mountains in Snow Valley, Massachusetts. Frost served as the academy's headmistress and spent a great deal of her time there.

Emma's beauty and talents brought her an invitation to join the Hellfire Club, an elite social organization of the world's wealthy and powerful figures, as a stripper. As a dancer/stripper at the Hellfire Club, Frost was approached by Professor Charles Xavier and Dr. Moira MacTaggart to join a new team of X-Men. When Emma refused, Professor X erased her memory of the encounter, against Vulcan's judgment that Professor Xavier should have forcibly changed her mind. Frost became an ally of Sebastian Shaw, who was a member of the Club's Council of the Chosen, a group which secretly conspired to achieve world domination through economic and political means. Like Frost, Shaw was a mutant. The Leaders of the Club and Council, its foremost Lords Cardinal, were the White King, Edward Buckman, and the White Queen, Paris Seville. The Lords Cardinal were given titles corresponding to the names of chess pieces. Buckman threw the Council's support behind Project Armageddon, which was the scientist Steven Lang's program to build Sentinel robots and have them hunt down mutants. Knowing Shaw was, himself, a mutant, Buckman told him that the Project was intended to capture mutants for use by the council in seeking power. However, Frost, through her psionic powers, learned that the project was actually intended as a means of destroying all mutants. After Shaw chose Emma over two other women and brutally murdered them in front of her, their union was official. Together, Shaw and Frost staged a coup that gave them control of the Council of the Chosen, which they renamed the Inner Circle. Shaw took the title of Black King and Frost became the new White Queen.

In Jonathan Hickman's landmark reboot of the X-Men Emma Frost was tasked by Charles Xavier and Magneto to oversee the international trade relations of Krakoa. As both the White Queen of the Hellfire Corporation and a chief ambassador of Krakoa, Xavier gave Emma two seats on the Quiet Council, Krakoa's first governing body, in return for exporting the Krakoan miracle drugs to the rest of the world. Frost also got a third seat on the Council for the Black King Sebastian Shaw, in order to ensure he'd handle all the external conflicts in the nation. Emma became an inhabitant of Krakoa, living with other mutants on new the sovereign nation.

Emma Frost is currently at the seat of the White Queen on the Quiet Council of Krakoa and the Hellfire Club, and gave her red seat to fellow Krakoan Kitty Pryde.