Selene (Joint Venture)

The Black Queen is a villainess, a mutant and sorceress, and longtime member of the Hellfire Club and enemy of the X-Men and their sub-groups. This is the Joint Venture Universe version of the character.

Early life
Little to nothing is known of Selene's early life. It is established that she is at least ten thousand years old, making her the oldest known living mutant, and has had several cults and religions form about her, often outside of or in direct opposition to the pantheons of various religons.

Ancient Greece was the first culture where her name appears in mythology. Calling her the "Daughter of the Night," they often assumed she was the child of either Nox, the goddess of the night, or Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Selene herself embraced the title, though she has never stated which of these rumors is true, or indeed whether either of them are. Those who come too close to discovering anything concrete about her ancestry or lineage often suffer mysterious deaths before they can uncover the truth.

What is an established part of her history is that her cults have always involved human sacrifice, even in cultures that frowned upon such acts. Indeed, it is practically a necessity, as Selene's mutant power requires her to drain the life-force of others to sustain herself.

Egypt, Babylon, and India all have myths of a Selene-like figure, a pale, black-haired woman of unsurpassed beauty and cruelty, but nowhere is she more infamous than in Rome.

Luna Regina, Empress of Rome
Following the ascension of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus to emperor of Rome in March of the year 37 AD, he took mysteriously ill in October of that same year. Selene, posing as a healer, seemed to restore the young Emperor to health...but in the process had somehow warped his mind, making him dangerously unstable, cruel, sadistic, and perverse. To this day the reign of "Caligula" (the Emperor's boyhood nickname) is associated with power-madness and tyranny. After pronouncing himself "Neos Helios", the new god of the sun, in a sacreligeous display of hubris, Caligula was mysteriously assassinated in the year 41 AD, and his entire ruling cabinet sought out and killed, save for his infant daughter, Julia Drusilla, and the Imperial mystic Selene, both of whom vanished. Thirteen years later, Caligula's uncle and successor to the throne, Emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, would suffer from a malady all too similar to his nephew's -- but this time, there would be no miracle healer, and he would die on October 13, 54 AD -- the date, coincidentally, that Selene likes to mark as her birthday to this day.

Julia Drusilla, in hiding those thirteen years, would miraculously materialize, alive and well, on the same day as her great-uncle's death, a young girl of fourteen. Nero -- who was in line to succeed Claudius, and historically was meant to be the last emperor of Rome -- opposed Julia's claim to queenhood and tried to have her killed, but Julia fought back, possessed of considerable powers she claimed came from the gods themselves. Raising herself to Empress, she converted the temples of the goddesses to temples of Diana, the Moon Goddess -- but her vision of the goddess of the hunt was far darker than the ancient myths characterized her. She became high priestess of the Moon, called Luna Regina by the people, and held festivals every full moon. These were times of great joy for the Empire, but also times of great terror, as one young Roman would disappear from the crowd every month, never to be seen again. Nonetheless, Luna Regina Caesar would enjoy a peaceful and prosperous reign -- at least, on the surface. Underneath, there was corruption and depravity to rival the darkest days of Caligula, with the exception that now it was all just behind the curtain, just under the table, the shadows at the corner of one's eye, rather than cruelty and madness in plain sight.

Ashake, Artemis, And A Deception Exposed
Roughly another thirteen years after Luna Regina's ascension to the throne, Rome was prospering beyond the wildest imaginings of its citizens, its enemies held at bay by the Moon Queen's arcane might -- but the shadows of death, pain, and fear hung like a thick miasma over even the brightest day.

Eventually, the truth had to come out. Ashake, the Sorceress Supreme of Earth during the early AD era, came to Rome in searth of the powerful mystical force that held it in thrall...and for the first time, Luna Regina found someone whose mystic might could stand up to her own. During the Festival of the Full Moon, Ashake was captured, chosen as the lunar sacrifice to Diana -- just as she had planned. The Mistress of the Mystic Arts used the Eye of Agamotto upon Luna Regina, and the truth was revealed for all to see: that the child Julia Drusilla, daughter of Caligula, had in fact been killed over a decade ago, and the woman who had reigned over Rome as Luna Regina was none other than Selene, the power-hungry sorceress who had driven one Emperor mad, killed another, and drained the life force from the rightful heiress to the throne. Fueled by the shock and rage of the Roman people,

Ashake then used her mystic might to summon forth the true Diana -- Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the Moon, daughter of Zeus -- who was infuriated by the atrocities committed in her name. She brought an end to the false queen's illusory empire with a single fateful shot from her Silver Bow of Moonlight. Bathed in the pale light of destruction, Rome fell as it had been destined to, and Selene vanished from the annals of history, presumed slain by the true Moon Goddess, for nearly two thousand years.

Nova Roma
It would be discovered, but not for some time, that Selene had not in fact been slain by the Goddess of the Hunt. Instead, she had fled the scene, gathering the youngest of those cultists who were loyal to her and spiriting them away while Rome burned around them. Using much of the power she had left, she cast a spell that sent herself and her followers as far away from Rome as she could -- to the Amazon rainforest. The salvation of her faithful was not an act of benevolence on Selene's part; rather, she had abducted the children and left their parents to die specifically because she needed to start over, and the more malleable minds of the younger generation would prove much more useful to her. In addition, as she had learned from absorbing the life-force of baby Julia Drusilla twenty-seven years prior, children and the young provided her with much more vital energy than their grown counterparts.

To hide from Ashake, and future Sorcerers Supreme after her, Selene refrained from using her mystic powers as much as possible, instead choosing to rely on the toil of the survivors of the empire of Luna Regina. She did, however, expend a portion of her power to acclimatize the young ones to the new environment, ensuring that local diseases and toxins would not affect them -- they were no good to her dead. Thus, they became "Nova Romans," citizens of a new empire hidden by their Black Goddess.

Selene spent nearly two millennia in Nova Roma, treating the place like a combination of playhouse and cattle farm. She raised and cultivated the Nova Romans like livestock, ensuring she would have a steady supply of victims to maintain her life, youth, beauty, and power, while at the same time cutting off all contact with the world outside her small empire, ensuring the place would remain a faithful recreation of the place she had once held absolute power over. Nova Roma prospered as Rome once had, while still suffering from that same oppressive black cloud of fear that followed the Black Goddess wherever she went.

Hellfire in the 20th Century
to be disclosed