Bios - Prince John, Valkyrie and Odin
First Appearance: "To Another Shore"
Position: Dead; Unknown; Unknown |
Bio: In Scandinavia, early in the 10th century lived Prince John,
the greatest warrior of his era. His tremendous skill and velour brought
him tremendous fame throughout the world as the legendary “Viking
Prince.”
His adventures were epic, as were the legends that grew around his
exploits. This much we know to be truth. On a frozen battlefield, Prince
John, sole survivor of a bloody war, its purpose lost to time, met a
Valkyrie, a messenger from the Norse gods, sent to escort the souls of
fallen heroes to their rewards in the walls of Valhalla.
Impossibly, they fell in love and swore their hearts to each other. But
Odin, king of the Norse gods, discovered their illicit affair and,
enraged, banished John from Valhalla. The Viking Prince pleaded with
Odin for mercy, begging to be allowed to remain with his love. Odin
agreed, saying that if John died a heroic death, he and his love would
again be reunited for all eternity.
But Odin was a crafty god and cruel. Before exiling John, he gifted him
with invulnerability to harm from metal, wood, fire and water. The
Viking Prince soon realized he would never die a hero’s death, because
no weapon on earth could slay him. He tried boldly across a troubled
world in search of adventure and an honorable death, growing ever more
distant from humanity.
Eventually, weary of the endless fight for justice and despairing in his
loneliness, he sailed North, beyond the boundaries of the known world
and passed from the knowledge of men.
The Viking Prince’s ship was found in a glacier thousands of years
later. Grodd and the Legion set out to retrieve the boat in an attempt
to reverse-engineer Prince John’s immortality. They were unsuccessful,
however, and the Justice League, led by Wonder Woman, gave Prince John a
proper send off as his ship sailed towards the sun and burned up. |
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