Why Can’t Professor X Have a Normal Girlfriend?

When you boil most stories down to their core elements, they’re about relationships and that’s especially true for superhero comics. Be they heroes or villains, the dynamics between characters is the base of most of the drama that makes up the best and most interesting stories and that is especially true when its romantic relationships. After all, some of the most iconic characters in comics are, in part, defined by their romantic partnerships — Superman and Lois, Batman and Catwoman, Scott Summers and Jean Grey. But for some comic characters, the thing that is most definitive about their love life is just how bad it is and one such character is Charles Xavier. That’s right, the venerable Professor X has a particularly spotty track record when it comes to love for one big reason: pretty much every woman the man becomes romantically involved with ends up being a big problem later on. And it isn’t a new thing, either; Uncanny X-Men #2 recently revealed that Charles college girlfriend? Yeah, turns out she’s the latest X-villain, the Hag.

While the Hag (aka Sarah) technically comes before some of the other problematic women in Charles’ life, she’s just the latest not exactly normal or healthy relationship for the Professor and while everyone’s got a questionable relationship or two in their dating history, Charles seems to seek out the red flags. It begs the question why. Fundamentally, it comes down to three main ideas: Charles has a type, Charles is himself a questionable character, and the drama is just good story fodder.

First up is the idea that Charles has a type and you might ask yourself, what is Charles Xavier’s type? Well, that type seems to be women with a potential for power but also some vulnerability. One could argue that — depending on where in Marvel canon you’re reading — all of the women Charles has been involved with are powerful in their own right, but also have some sort of vulnerability, be it trauma or insecurity or something else. That sort of makes some sense considering that Charles is himself a powerful mutant, but also in a position of authority and leadership, which has been a factor in a few of his relationships. His relationship with Gabrielle Haller, for example, started after he used his powers to awaken her from her catatonic state and then oversaw her recovery while, in the Ultimate Universe, he was Emma Frost’s former teacher — and he left Mystique in that reality for her. As for the Sarah/the Hag reveal, we don’t exactly know enough about their relationship to determine exactly if she fits the type, but time will tell.

Beyond having a type, while Charles is a “good guy” as the leader of the X-Men, the reality is he’s actually a somewhat morally questionable character. One cannot deny that Charles is an idealist and someone who is striving to do what he thinks is good and right, but it also cannot be denied that he does some bad things in furtherance of his goals — and he has plenty of skeletons in his closet. Everything from wiping minds, to recruiting children to essentially be part of a mutant army of sorts (because really, that’s what the early X-Men were) to killing his twin sister in the womb because he sensed she was evil (and sure, we’ll let him have this one; she is evil but still), Charles has done some things that aren’t exactly pristine. That sort of semi-moral ambiguity, despite his best intentions, likely has an influence on the sort of person he’s attracted to, hence a string of girlfriends who themselves fall in that gray area or, in the case of Mystique (both in the main universe where he actually married her and had a time-traveling supervillain son and in the Ultimate universe), lean more on the “dark” side.

The biggest and likely the real reason Charlies Xavier can’t have a normal girlfriend, however, comes down to what makes for a good story. Sure, “happily ever after” is nice and healthy relationships do exist, but on the pages of comics (and indeed in most fiction) it’s the complex and complicated relationships that have the highest stakes, create the most drama, and result in the biggest emotional punch for readers. That’s certainly been true in the case of Charles’ relationships, most recently Moira MacTaggert who ends up betraying the mutant cause and becomes an X-Men antagonist in the Krakoa era. That in particular is a more dramatic turn because of her history with Charles which then makes her sacrifice in her eleventh life that allows fort the defeat of Enigma — and her final, twelfth life — all the more resonant. Complicated relationships just make for good stories — and if Marvel isn’t going to give readers a version of the story where things are a bit more personal between Professor X and Magneto, Charles just having some decidedly bad other relationships will just have to do.

And really, that’s what it comes down to. Charles Xavier, despite being a fictional character, is just like any of us. He’s a complex individual who may have a particular type, who is himself more of a gray character than truly black or white, and because he’s fictional, he may not love the drama but the readers certainly do. Because the best stories are rooted in relationships, the more complicated those relationships the more interesting the story — which means Professor X probably isn’t going to have a healthy relationship with a “normal” girlfriend anytime soon.

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