I'm at Excalibur #45 now, and I want to go back through Courtney Ross and Sat-Yr-9, because there is a lot of history sitting underneath that name and that face.

I'm at Excalibur #45 now, and I want to go back through Courtney Ross and Sat-Yr-9, because there is a lot of history sitting underneath that name and that face. First, there are three women to keep straight. Courtney Ross is Brian Braddock's old girlfriend. Saturnyne is the powerful official involved in policing the multiverse. Sat-Yr-9 is the dictator from another reality who murders Courtney and takes her place. They are counterparts, separate people with the same face. Saturnyne isn't secretly the woman pretending to be Courtney. Courtney goes back to Captain Britain #3 in 1976, right near the beginning of Brian's published history. She's part of his life at Thames University, before Excalibur exists and before this becomes a story about somebody stealing her life. Brian has the familiar superhero problem of disappearing when trouble starts, then looking unreliable to the people he left behind. Courtney is one of those people, but she also makes an effort to spend time with him and stands up for him against Jacko Tanner. Those early stories put her through quite a bit. She is injured during the Lord Hawk storyline. In Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain #233–234, she joins the university expedition to Loch Ness, where Captain Britain has to rescue the students from their sabotaged bathysphere. Then #235–238 brings the Black Baron, a vampire and werewolf who sees Courtney as the image of his lost love and wants to make her his bride. Brian gets her out of that too. That matters when she returns in Excalibur. Courtney has already lived through the strange and dangerous side of Brian's life. She eventually knows he is Captain Britain, and their relationship continues with that knowledge. There is also an earlier Arcade connection. Marvel Team-Up #65–66 brings Brian together with Spider-Man and introduces Arcade's threat. Courtney is a captive in Murderworld in #66, and the two heroes save her. The Excalibur encounter is a return to someone who has already endangered her, not her first experience of him. Brian's long absence separates them. Courtney believes he has died, grieves, and builds a life without him. Even while she is absent from his everyday life, the comics use her as somebody who matters to him: in Mighty World of Marvel #10, Jaspers torments Brian with an illusion in which Courtney is his wife. That is an illusion, not a marriage in Courtney's history. Meanwhile, Sat-Yr-9 enters the Captain Britain stories in the 1985 series, starting with #2. She rules a brutal alternate Britain, and Kaptain Briton, that world's counterpart of Brian, is her lover. He flees to Brian's world. Her efforts to retrieve him eventually involve Gatecrasher and the Technet. In #5–6, Kaptain Briton defeats Brian, switches their clothing, and lets the Technet take the wrong man home. Brian ends up facing Sat-Yr-9 while the impostor stays at Braddock Manor. Betsy kills Kaptain Briton in self-defense after he attacks her. Brian convinces the Technet they have the wrong person, and they fight their way out of Sat-Yr-9's reach. Captain Britain #14 follows through on her regime. Roma sends Captain UK to deal with Sat-Yr-9, and she is overthrown. When Excalibur #3 picks that thread up, Sat-Yr-9 is a prisoner. Rupert Holloway wanders through one of Widget's gateways into her cell, providing the opening for her return to the story. Back on Brian's Earth, the real Courtney has become a senior banking executive. Excalibur #1 reunites them. She has stopped dyeing her naturally blonde hair auburn, which makes the resemblance to her counterparts much more apparent. She has money, independence, and a shared history with Brian. He can talk to her about things he struggles to discuss with Meggan. The triangle is already uncomfortable before the replacement. Brian is drawn back toward Courtney while he is still involved with Meggan, and Kurt challenges him about the hurt he is causing. Courtney's murder shouldn't erase her own relationship with Brian, or turn everything leading up to it into something her killer did. Excalibur #4–5 puts Courtney through Murderworld again, this time with the Crazy Gang involved. She helps restore the heroes after their minds have been switched, working with Kitty instead of simply waiting for someone to carry her out. Then she goes home, still exhilarated at having survived. Sat-Yr-9 arrives and kills her. By the time Brian comes to the apartment, the woman welcoming him is the impostor. Courtney's burned outline is still on the floor. That ending changes every subsequent scene carrying her name. Brian thinks an old relationship is opening up again. The reader has seen the woman he remembers being removed from her own life. Sat-Yr-9 starts using that stolen position. In #9, she draws Nigel Frobisher into a high-stakes card game at the Hellfire Club and leaves him owing her more than he can pay. In #10, she watches Rachel and Kitty and thinks about possessing their power and potential. Her interest in them is already on the page. Nigel is then sent to hire the Technet. That leads to Jamie Braddock's extraction from Doctor Crocodile in #15. By #21, Jamie's reality-warping powers are being used to turn the original Vixen into an actual fox and install Nigel in her place. Behind the respectable banking identity, another network of stolen identities and power is taking shape. And alongside that, she is getting close to Kitty. In #21, Kitty is stranded at home while the rest of Excalibur is lost across realities. She has already lost people, believes the X-Men are dead, and now fears another team has disappeared from her life. The woman she knows as Courtney listens, comforts her, and offers her someone to depend on. Kitty has a reason to trust that face. She met the real Courtney during the Arcade rescue. Sat-Yr-9 gets to benefit from a connection somebody else made. Then #24 gives Kitty her fifteenth birthday: new clothes, a fancy dinner, Paris, dancing, and the use of a Jaguar. It can look like an adult making sure a lonely teenager has one good day. But the encouragement comes with a lesson about being the person who makes the rules, including driving when she isn't legally old enough. The same issue also shows the actual Saturnyne dealing with the rest of Excalibur at the Omniversal Hub. Keeping those two women separate is essential to reading it. The St. Searle's storyline in #32–34 continues the influence. “Courtney” has arranged Kitty's schooling, watches how she handles herself, and ultimately helps secure a financial arrangement that saves the school. Kitty makes real connections there and finds her way back to Excalibur. The help she receives still comes from someone whose identity she doesn't know. That's where I'm leaving this as I reach #45. Courtney's history includes the student, the girlfriend, the survivor, and the banker who rebuilt her life. Sat-Yr-9 takes the reputation and relationships attached to all of that and uses them to get close to people. The uncomfortable part is how ordinary those scenes can look. A conversation. A favor. A birthday. Someone offering to help with school. Everybody is dealing with a familiar face, while the reader knows what happened to the woman it belongs to.