The Bachelor: Shadow King Edition

Would you date this man?

The Shadow King has been portrayed in a variety of ways over the course of Chris Claremont's involvement with the character. Yet, all the King really wants is to love and be loved back. But finding romance can be tough, especially as he started out as a corpulent and sweaty, sitting in a Cairo cafe in Uncanny X-men #117...

The King as a fat, fez wearing Egyptian not really your type? Well, no worries... You see, Shadow King is actually a mental presence without a permanent physical body. He can hop bodies as he sees fit... So, if you like him to be a domineering woman, its his pleasure!

Well, of course she's a big girl... Hey, more to love, right?

Or maybe you prefer your dream man to be, well, a man.. A man who is less bloated,  slightly more caucasian and proves his manhood by growing a beard? Shadow King can manage that... And it makes all the ladies swoon and sob a little too...

Yet... all of these loves seem to involve a fair amount of mind control. Now, don't get me wrong, when you're a highly evolved disembodied telepathic presence, you'll find very little wrong with some old fashioned brain tampering, but... is that really how one finds Ms. Right?

No, of course not... And any ol' bachelor usually has his mind set on one particular gal. In this case, there's a certain mutant mama he's been gunning for all along...

Ah, no, no, sorry. Sure, Chris Claremont established that the Shadow King and Storm share a long history, going back to when she was a street urchin girl in Egypt... It seems her mentor Achmed Al Gibar promised the young Ororo to the King, but having a middle aged man force his will upon a minor just won't do.

In fact, its probably safe to say the Shadow King is spoken for. He knows who he really wants and it makes a lot of sense. He loves taking over minds, so who better to welcome as his Shadow Queen than Rogue, a woman who forcibly takes over another person's mind just by touching them.

Ahhh... Its the old story... Disembodied boy meets and mind controls power leeching girl and *BAM*, magic starts to happen.

Still, before anything substantial came out of this sensual seduction scene from Uncanny X-men # 278... Xavier and his X-men defeated the King.

But, wherever evil exists, the King lives...And he doesn't just forget about his love interest. This explains these scenes from X-treme X-Men annual 2001 when Rogue found herself face to face with the Shadow King again...

Ah yes... take the time to read this dialogue. Its Chris Claremont basically stating all that's been happening to Rogue over the past decade and a half is actually part of the Shadow King's plan. 

He wanted her by his side as his consort, the Shadow Queen, but she had to be properly groomed for that, so Shadow King influenced everyone around her... From the precog Destiny to Mystique, even Charles Xavier was unwittingly roped along so Rogue would become...

The Shadow Queen. Yet, Rogue declined his suggestion and broke free not long after that. So, if anyone out there wants to date a man who isn't too eager to let you escape his shadow... and will probably beat you severly if you dare eclipse his greatness... step right up.

... Ow Rihanna, what *ARE* you doing here, girl?