They hadn't been married long when Madelyne became pregnant with their first, and only, child. Scott was off in space fighting in the Secret Wars when she gave birth to Nathan Christopher Summers, the baby who would grow to become the man called Cable. Scott left the X-Men shortly thereafter, having been defeated by Storm in a battle for leadership, and for a time, they lived a normal, quiet life. Then one day he received a phone call, telling him that Jean Grey was still alive, and he rushed off, abandoning Maddie and their son, to go see.

Cyclops found that Jean Grey was indeed alive, and decided to form a new group consisting of the original X-Men, called X-Factor. By the time he went back to check on Maddie, she and the baby had disappeared. There was no documentation that either of them had ever even existed. In reality, Maddie had been attacked by Sinister's Marauders and Nathan Christopher was taken from her. She survived the attack and ended up in the hospital, where the X-Men rescued her from the Marauders, who were returning to finish the job of killing her.

She spent a while with the team, taking care of their communications and computer databases since she had no mutant powers to offer to the team. When the Fall of the Mutants came, she bravely sacrificed her life alongside the rest of the X-Men. Meanwhile, Cyclops had thought Maddie dead, having been asked to identify a dead body that resembled her exactly, planted by Sinister. But when Maddie sacrificed her life to save the world, a camera man broadcasting to the world at large gave her a chance to say a few last words. Cyclops caught the news brief and realized that she was alive after all. He had never stopped searching for their son, whose death he had found no trace of, and now he found that Madelyne had been alive all the time, only to die there on national television alongside the X-Men, as he watched.

Madelyne did die...but only for a few seconds. She and the rest of the X-Men were restored to life only moments after their sacrifice by the Goddess Roma. Thinking it better to operate covertly, the X-Men kept their continued lives a secret, letting the world believe them dead. Madelyne continued to serve the X-Men as a computer specialist, and all seemed to go well for a time. Then, during what she believed was a dream, she accepted an offer of evil power for revenge against her estranged husband from the demon S'ym. It wasn't a dream. When Maddie awoke, she was not immediately changed, but big things were on the way.

Shortly thereafter, she,Rogue and Wolverine were captured by the Genoshans. It was during her time there, while she was being tortured, that her powers first manifested themselves in the form of a psionic blast that killed every Genoshan in the room. From there, it wasn't long until she began an inevitable downward spiral into evil, tainted by the power S'ym had given her.

She began an affair with her husbands brother,Alex Summers (Havok), beginning to act generally secretive and nasty. When Sinister and the demon N'astirh's evil plans came together and launched Inferno, Madelyne discovered the true nature of her "birth" from her own creators lips.

Using the DNA of Jean Grey, Sinister had attempted to clone her to use against Cyclops, whose child he had dearly wanted for the power it would someday possess. Madelyne Pryor had been the result of his efforts, but for all her physical perfection, she lacked life, lacked a soul. When the Dark Phoenix died on the moon, it had attempted to return what it had stolen from Jean Grey to its rightful owner. When Jean refused it because it was tainted by blood, it went to the next closest thing: Madelyne. It was in that instant that she gained life, and also how she received the memories that matched Jean Greys.

Angered beyond belief at the way she had been used, Madelyne took her child back from Sinister and used her not inconsiderable power to try and defeat his plans. In partnership with the demon N'astirh, she planned to sacrifice Nathan Christopher to the Dark Gods to keep the gates of Limbo open for all time, allowing demons to over run and rule the world.

During the ensuing battle against her now most hated adversary, Jean Grey, she used too much of her power against Jean Grey and began to die, trying to pull Jeans psyche into death with her. Jean only escaped being pulled into death with Maddie by accepting back the part of herself which the Phoenix had stolen so long ago, that tiny piece of herself that had given Madelyne life. And so, the Goblyn Queen was defeated.

It wasn't until Nate Grey came to the X-Mens timeline from the Age of Apocalypse that Madelyne once again knew life. When Nate (X-Man) arrived on this world, he called out to his "mother", Jean Grey. In the AoA timeline, she had only been the donor of DNA for Sinister to create Nate, but still he felt a connection with her after only meeting her once in that world. His psionic plea for help manifested in a most peculiar way, though; since Jean Grey was not on the earth at that time, his plea instead found the psionic residue of Madelyne Pryor, very strong in the place she had died years ago. Nate's amazing powers managed to reconstruct Madelyne as a psionic projection, a phantom without true life or substance.

When Madelyne had a run-in with the mutant called Threnody, something horrifying and inexplicable took place: she somehow absorbed the womans life essence, changing from a phantom to as real a woman she had been before Inferno. True to her evil roots, she has joined the Hellfire Club and seems bent on wreaking havoc in this world, though not as vehemently as she once did. Madelyne remains embittered toward the X-Men, especially Phoenix and Cyclops, but remains at Nate's side as a friendly enemy.

Strength level: Madelyne Pryor possesses the normal human strength of a woman of her age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise