Except that she is of Japanese heritage, nothing is known about the the woman named Kwannon. Not even her last name has been revealed. Gifted with empathic and low level telepathic abilities, Kwannon became the elite assassin of crimelord Nyoirin after years of ninja training.

While Nyorin harbored feelings for Kwannon, she eventually fell in love with Matsu’o Tsurayaba, who happened to be an assassin for the Hand, a rivaling organization. Kwannon and Matsu’o feared the day their line of work would put them on opposing sides.

They vowed to fight to the death should they ever be forced to directly fight each other. Eventually, that day came when Matsu’o was ordered to kill Nyoirin, which Kwannon as his bodyguard tried to prevent. During the battle, she fell off a cliff and nearly drowned.

While her body survived the fall, Kwannon’s mind was damaged. Seeing his lover mortally injured, Matsu’o abandoned his mission and retrieved his lover to bring her to the Hand’s labs. When the X-Man known as Psylocke, Betsy Braddock, washed ashore on one of the Hand’s islands..

naked and amnesiac after emerging from the Siege Perilous, Matsu’o saw a chance to restore his incapacitated lover. He proposed his idea to the Mandarin, which was to transfer the mind of Kwannon into the apparently empty shell of Psylocke.

The Hand’s psi-sensitives were sure that, because of her own limited mental powers, Kwannon’s mind would be able to withstand the transfer but her injured physical form served a problem. Therefore, Matsu‘o contacted Spiral at the Body Shoppe for help.

To please her employer, Mojo, Spiral twisted the two women further than she was asked. Besides switching their minds, she manipulated genetic coding between them. Both women now had traits of Kwannon and Betsy, and it was nearly impossible to tell them apart.

Apparently, though, most of Kwannon’s soul was transferred into the British woman’s body. Matsu’o was only interested in the other female: (the major part of) Betsy‘s mind in body of his lover, Kwannon, and left with her to make her join the Hand.

Betsy was given to The Mandarin to serve as his assassin. Betsy changed her armour to a more revealing outfit, and learned to focus her psychic energy and turn them into the "psychic knife". On her first assignment as Lady Mandarin, she had to battle Wolverine.

When she stabbed Wolverine in the head with her psychic knife, it showed her his memories and revealed to Psylocke who she truly was. Psylocke then rejected her role as Lady Mandarin, joining the XMen

Spiral told Nyoirin that the soul of his former prime assassin, who never returned his affections, was now trapped inside the Caucasian body and she handed her over to him. Nyoirin helped her cope with the new body but, used her amnesia to feed her lies and make her truly his own

After some time of healing and re-establishing her former position as master assassin, “Betsy“ decided it was time to face the X-Men and Psylocke. She adopted the codename Revanche and traveled to New York to reveal the “imposter“ in the X-Men’s midst.

Revanche stayed with the X-Men and even managed to get along with her “twin” Psylocke for the time being, hoping that they’d soon find a way to confirm their true identities. Revanche revealed that she too had contracted the Legacy virus.

Revanche traveled to Japan to confront Nyoirin about what he had done to her, yet she found him dead - killed by Matsu‘o. She then made up with her old lover and asked him to kill her, not wanting to die of the Legacy virus, as she felt her end was coming.

Psylocke felt her dying and sought out Matsu’o, who used this telepathic imprint in the way Revanche asked of him. Matsu’o released the energy on Betsy and her mental peace was restored, as all fragments of Kwannon were taken from her soul, restoring her true sense of identity.

Kwannon was buried in Wolverine’s private cemetery in Akihabara, Japan, However several years later, her corpse was stolen by members of the Sisterhood, a covert organization of several of the X-Men’s deadliest villainesses.

After Spiral repaired Revanche’s decaying body as much as possible, the Sisterhood’s leader, Madelyne Pryor, performed a magical spell that infused the corpse with the life-force of Psylocke, whom the Sisterhood had captured earlier.

Kwannon and several others engaged the X-Men, providing a necessary distraction. She was struck by a full-force laser blast from Dazzler. Half of Kwannon’s face was burned away and she was severely weakened, allowing Psylocke’s spirit to briefly take over.

Betsy made Revanche use her telepathic knife on herself, frying her already-damaged brain even further. On the astral plane, the two psyches battled for a final time, with Revanche vowing to take Betsy along with her if she had to die again.

Despite these threats, Psylocke’s mind proved to be the stronger one and her essence returned to the Asian body as Kwannon perished.

A second burial was denied to Kwannon, as operatives of the Hand incinerated her corpse with explosives when Psylocke tried to return it to her grave in Japan.

Betsy Braddock aka Psylocke, continued do fight alongside the X-Men for many years in her Asian Kwannon body..

When Psylocke joined a group of X-Men to search for clues about the whereabouts of Wolverine's missing corpse, the mutants were ambushed by a local crime group the Femma Fatales. Betsy was attacked by the psychic vampire Sapphire Styx, who absorbed her soul, leaving her body dead

Psylocke managed to fight her way back from the depths of Sapphire Styx's mind, and destroyed her from within, using the remaining soul power to recreate her original body. Psylocke's previous asian body was later reanimated, and appeared to have been inhabited by Kwannon again

Finally, back in their own skin, Kwannon in her original asian body and Betsy in her original Caucasian body, are two different beings and while one continued with the X-Men, the latter reappeared speaking in Japanese that she was trying to remember them and that she was nothing.

Now Betsy Braddock (former Psylocke) will take the mantle of Captain Britain, leading the Excalibur, while Kwannon will take on the Psylocke mantle being the lead star in Fallen Angels, in the new X-Men era!

Raised to be "the enemy of peace", Kwannon fell in love with a boy and gave birth to a daughter. This displeased her master, who killed her lover and took her daughter away from her.

Although she was The Hand’s top psionic assassin, Kwannon always fought under her own rules. Having her own daughter taken away from her, made her human enough to show mercy when she was demanded blood.

After showing all of her potential to defeat Apoth, Psylocke decided to stay in Krakoa and learn more about her past, and try to do more good.

Cyclops asks Kwannon if she could join Sinister’s Hellions to keep them in check. Specially his brother, Alex. Psylocke enters as the team’s battlefield leader!