Origins

Orphaned at birth, Remy LeBeau was immediately recognized as a mutant by his red-on-black eyes. He was stolen from a New Orleans orphanage by the Antiquary, a 'collector' of children, who considered Remy a perfect work of art. Jean-Luc LeBeau, a thief who visited the Antiquary occasionally, couldn't stomach the idea of Remy growing up in a virtual prison, and so he in turn stole the boy and adopted him. Remy was raised first on the streets with a gang of pickpockets to keep him out of the Antiquary's view and under Jean-Luc's close watch. He became a pickpocket of considerable skill and when he was nine Jean-Luc formally adopted him and made him a member of the Thieves Guild of New Orleans. Along with his cousins Emil Lapin and Etienne Marceaux, and his foster brother Henri, Remy grew up to be the most talented thief in the Guild. He also started a friendship with a member of the Thieves rival the Assassin's Guild. Bella Donna Boudreaux was the daughter of the Assassin's leader, but she and Remy formed a bond that surpassed their differences. Remy had no idea for many years that his father had manipulated his entire meeting and relationship with Bella.

When Remy was fifteen, he agreed to be Etienne's advisor on Etienne's tilling ritual, his formal induction into the Guild as a full-fledged thief. The two went on a job to Spain, where Etienne was charged with stealing a chalice from the mansion of Candra, the immortal benefactress of the Guild. Remy, in the mean time, was learning to control his emerging mutant powers. They came in handy when Etienne's job went bad and the two boys had to escape Candra's mansion ahead of a horde of armed guards. The two were eventually captured and sent to the island base of a slaver known as the Pig. Remy escaped using his power to kinetically charge objects and release them as explosive projectiles (*This is the earliest recorded time Remy used a charged play card as a weapon.) He scarred the Pig for life, but paid the ultimate price. Etienne died when he fell from an outside wall of the base into the sea and was struck by falling rubble. Only years later was Remy able to exact his revenge on the Pig, this time facing him as a adult and a warrior who killed the foul creature.

Remy's first real job as a thief ended in disaster as well. He was sent to Paris, France to steal a magnificent ruby necklace called The Cheating Star. The jewel was owned by a young woman named Genevive Darcineaux, daughter of the jewel thief who had originally stolen it, and Remy seduced her in order to get to the necklace. Tragedy struck, however, when a competitor for the jewel emerged in the form of Victor Creed, the mutant known as Sabretooth, whom the jewel thief had hired to get the necklace back. In a confrontation with Remy, Sabretooth dangled Genevive and Henri LeBeau off the towers of Notre Dame cathedral. Remy gave him the necklace, and managed to save Henri. Genevive, however, fell to her death.

Excommunication

A few years later, Remy was married to his childhood sweetheart Bella Donna in order to seal a peace pact between the Thieves and Assassins. Bella's brother Julien, however, objected to the marriage and challenged Remy to a duel. Remy killed Julien, and was excommunicated from the Thieves Guild. He was also forced to flee New Orleans to prevent another war between with the Assassins. He left his bride behind, however, refusing to let Bella Donna share his blame.

Wandering the world and plying his skills as a master thief, Remy came into the employ of the mutant 'genetic engineer' called Mr. Sinister. Unable to control his mutant powers, which were growing by the day, Remy submitted to an operation by Sinister that reduced his powers to a manageable level so Remy could learn how to control them. As payment, Remy helped Sinister assemble a team of assassins called the Marauders, including his old adversary Sabretooth. Remy also agreed to lead the Marauders into the domain of the disfigured mutants the Morlocks for an unknown mission. The mission turned out to be the Morlock's annihilation, and Remy watched in horror as hundreds were butchered. He managed to save only one Morlock, who would later become the X-Woman Marrow. Remy fled Sinister and the Marauders in the deepest guilt, determined that no one would ever learn his terrible secret.

Thief to X-Man

Returning to the South, Remy met the X-Woman Storm, who had been de-aged by the Shadow King and had no memory of her adult life. Twelve-year-old Ororo proved a capable thief, and Remy took her under his wing. Soon they were working their way through the South, cleaning out the best homes along the way. When Storm regained her memory and her true age, she sponsored Remy's admission into the X-Men, where he took the code name Gambit. Life in the X-Men went smoothly for a time, and eventually Remy's past as a thief came out. He also received the news that Bella Donna had died. Gambit began to have feelings for his teammate Rogue, even though he couldn't touch the mutant woman without risking death.

Gambit's relatively peaceful new life underwent another upheaval when his brother Henri came seeking his aide in the tithing ritual that all Thieves must undergo and was murdered by Julien Boudreaux and his assassins. Julien was very much alive and had been twisted into a monster by the process which kept him so. Before he died, Henri revealed that Bella Donna was also alive but gravely ill, and that Remy had to return to New Orleans and his past to save her. Remy went home to take part in the tithing and receive the Elixir of Life, a mystical liquid bequeathed to the Thieves hundreds of years ago. The Assassins were trying to claim immortality for themselves, however (this is how Julien lived, and he had become addicted to the Elixir) and Remy aided their cause by stealing some of the Elixir and giving it to Bella Donna, saving her life. He left New Orleans, however, knowing there would never be a place for him there again.

Gambit the X-Ternal

When the mutant demigod Apocalypse twisted time to create an alternate future, the 'Age of Apocalypse', Remy found Rogue married to Magneto, the leader of the X-Men after Professor Xavier's death. Remy himself was an intergalactic thief, leader of a band known as the Externals, and Magneto hired the group to steal back a shard of the M'Krann Crystal from Apocalypse. The Crystal was the thing giving the evil mutant his power, and keeping the world in a virtual hell. Gambit and his companions stole the shard, and time was returned to it's normal state thanks to their efforts.

Redemption and the Trial of Gambit

After he returned to the normal present, Gambit and the entire team went into space to aide the Shi'ar queen Lilandra. After he witnessed the almost utter extinction of the Shi'ar at the hands of the alien collective the Phlanx, Gambit was uncomfortably reminded of his own past transgressions and returned to earth to make amends. He wound up battling the very forces of Hell itself in the form of Oliver Stoker, a crime lord and demon who wished to possess 'Heaven's Gift', a fallen angel named Anielle. Gambit eventually sent Stoker back to the abyss and returned Anielle to her rightful place in the cosmos. He had done his penance for the Morlock's death, but he had still not told the X-Men about his role in the Marauders.

The truth came out in the most disastrous of ways, when Rogue absorbed Remy's memories after a forbidden kiss. Horrified by what she perceived to be Gambit's willing role in the massacre, Rogue told the rest of the team, who in turn informed the world at large. Remy was put on trial for his role in the 'Mutant Massacre', where he was found not guilty of murder. Rogue, however, refused to believe the verdict and when Remy returned to the team she left him to die in the icy reaches of Antarctica. Betrayed by all those he loved, Remy was saved by a mysterious entity known as the Green Ghost, who took up residence in Remy's body in exchange for keeping him alive. Unable to come to terms with the callus behavior of his teammates, Remy returned to Westchester for a time, but soon embarked on a series of solo adventures, including reconciliation with his father Jean-Luc and his revenge against the Pig.

Serving the New Son

Remy was once again being tormented by his secrets, however, in the form of the New Son, a mysterious entity that claimed he had saved Remy from death in Antarctica. The New Son controlled the Green Ghost, and the Green Ghost was rapidly reaching the point where Remy's death would be her only means of survival. Remy was tasked by Courier with performing a series of tasks for the New Son, including retrieving an ancient artifact from a crashed Shi'ar ship and stealing a disk of the mutant database at Muir Island. Remy soon grew tired of serving his shadowy master, and when the Green Ghost left his body he rebelled and became the New Son's enemy. Trapped in the past during another adventure, Remy returned to that era's Mr. Sinister to reverse the operation that limited his powers, the only way Gambit could see to get back to the future. He came back to his own time, but to defeat the New Son, who was in fact Gambit from an alternate universe and feared that Remy would become so powerful he would destroy Earth as the New Son had destroyed his own world, Remy pushed himself to the limit and 'burnt out' his powers, returning them to their previous level.

Gambit's Destiny

Remy returned to Westchester and to the X-Men for an uneasy reconciliation. After a few false starts, he and Rogue regained their friendship, if not their former love. When Jean-Luc disappeared, Remy took control of the now-united Thieves and Assassin's Guilds for a time, but when his father was found he gratefully returned the task. Remy had realized he was truly an X-Man, and not bound to the Guilds any longer.

When Professor Xavier began a slow descent into insanity, helped in that path by his evil twin Cassandra Nova, Storm formed a new X-Men team and took them off to Australia to keep at least a fraction of the old team safe from Xavier's increasingly deadly actions. They also began a search for the diaries of the blind mutant seer Destiny, who had written down the fate of both humans and mutants in sometimes indecipherable hieroglyphic. Gambit plays a large part in the destiny of the world, and many pages in the diaries are devoted to him, but whether he plays his part for good or evil, as the Witness or as himself has yet to be determined. While residing in Sydney and aiding Team X-treme, Gambit was accused of the murder of the Chinese crime lord Father Gao. With Rogue's help, Gambit not only cleared his name and exposed the true killers (Lady Mastermind and Sebastian Shaw of the Hellfire Club) but gained the alliance of Gao's grandson Red Lotus to the X-Men. Gambit continues to be allied with Team X-treme, and what the future holds for him only Destiny knows...