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Quote1 My mind is a battleground, whipped and ripped asunder, torn from the very fabric of reality. Quote2
Raven src

Raven, also known as Rachel Roth, is a superhero with magical abilities and a prominent member of the Teen Titans. Raven is a tele-empathetic, she can teleport, and send out her Soul-Self, which can fight physically, manifest as a force field, manipulate objects and others as with telekinesis, as well as act as Raven's eyes and ears away from her body.

Origin

Raven was born the half-breed daughter of a human mother named Angela Roth and the demon overlord Emperor Trigon. She was conceived when her mother ran away from home and joined a cult, which then summoned the demon lord Trigon, who raped her.

Angela Roth, going by Arella, retreated to an alternate dimension where Raven was born and raised in the pacifistic reality called Azarath. Growing up, Raven was taught to control her emotions by the Azar and the Azarathian monks in order to suppress and control her inherited demonic powers. [1]

Teen Titans

Eventually she learned that Trigon was planning to come to her dimension and vowed to stop him. She initially approached the Justice League, but they refused her on the advice of Zatanna who sensed her demonic parentage. In desperation, she reformed the Titans as the New Teen Titans to fight her father.[2]

The team was eventually able to defeat Trigon and seal him in an inter-dimensional prison.[3] However, Raven still had to fight her father's influence, as he was not completely destroyed. More than once, Raven nearly lost control in various high-stress situations in her adventures and barely regained it before Trigon could reassert himself. Compounding the problem was the death of Azar, who had by now passed away from old age and Raven was left bereft of her support.

Trigon eventually escaped, came to Earth and over the course of the next few months, slowly took control of Raven, eventually corrupting her completely. Trigon's demon army invaded Azarath and it was destroyed, despite the Titans best efforts to save it. The Titans pursued them back to Earth, only to find it was almost completely subjugated under Trigon's will. The Titans came together and killed Raven. This allowed the souls of Azarath to possess her and use her as a channel to kill Trigon. Afterward, Raven was presumed dead, but she actually rose from ashes of the battle, finally purged of Trigon's evil. She vanished, and her mother went looking for her.[4]

Free from Trigon

Raven was then captured by Brother Blood's minions to control Nightwing as part of Brother Blood's resurrection. The Titans rescued them both and prevented Brother Blood from returning. Raven donned a new white cloak to represent her being free from her father's influence.

The Titans were eventually captured by the Wildebeest Society, but were rescued by a group of heroes. The leader of the Wildebeest Society was actually their teammate Jericho, who was inhabited by the souls of Azarath. Jericho tried to use the Titans as vessels for the souls, but in the end was killed by his father, Deathstroke the Terminator.

Dark Raven

Later, another version of Raven appeared, this time possessed by her evil conscience. She attempted to implant seeds of Trigon's children into new bodies. She crashed the wedding of Dick Grayson and Koriand'r of Tamaran, and implanted one of the seeds into the alien princess. However, she actually implanted the seed of the good Raven, which caused Starfire to leave Earth in order to escape from the evil Raven and go on a spiritual journey. Raven then implanted seeds into several superheroes. The Titans were able to defeat her with the help of Phantasm.

Raven returned later, still corrupted, in order to destroy her good self which she had implanted in Starfire. The Titans defeated her once again, for the last time. The good Raven was instilled into a new golden spirit body.

Raven and Brother Blood

Brother Blood attempts to marry Raven

Rachel Roth

As a spirit, Raven wandered Earth, looking for her place in the world, when Brother Blood came to claim her. Her spirit was instilled into the body of a teenage girl by the Church of Blood. The Teen Titans (reformed again), discovered that the Church of Blood were worshipers of Raven's father, Trigon. They also found a prophecy which told of the marriage between Brother Blood and Raven that would result in Armageddon. The new team interrupted the wedding, and Raven forced the cult to escape[5]. She then joined the new Teen Titans and enrolled at a high school as Rachel Roth to honor her mother.

Titans Tomorrow

The Teen Titans once traveled through time to a possible dystopian future, where Raven became the Dark Raven and gathered Superman IV (formerly Superboy), Wonder Woman IV (formerly Wonder Girl II), Batman IV (formerly Robin III), Animal Man II (formerly Beast Boy), and Aquawoman (formerly Aquagirl IV) to continue the heroic crusade, but using ruthless, murderous tactics.

Hell's Gates

Later, she was attacked by the villain Kestrel. When Hell's gates were broken, Brother Blood escaped along with his newly appointed mother, Lilith Clay (formerly known as Omen). Hawk and Dove, Kole, and Phantasm also returned from the grave.

Raven has recently become romantically attached to Beast Boy. Raven had been developing feelings for him since her recent rebirth.

Infinite Crisis

Due to the effects of the Spectre's destruction of magic, Raven found her own magical powers weakening and slipping out of her control, but continued on the good fight nonetheless, helping the Titans both in evacuating the shattered city of Blüdhaven and battling Superboy-Prime.

After the Second Crisis, Raven quit the team after she and Beast Boy broke up their relationship. A recording of her told Cyborg that Beast Boy was stressed by being team leader, and even compared him to Nightwing. Raven then left the Titans because she learned a secret about the new members of the team, though she let them think she was leaving because of Beast Boy.

One Year Later

Raven traveled around the globe, looking for something that had been stolen from Titans Tower by one of the many members the team had seen in the previous year. She based her operations out of an apartment in Beijing, and met with Red Star briefly in Moscow to ask the Russian hero questions about their former teammates. She was able to recover a book, but this action resulted in her being chased by a squadron of armed soldiers. She eventually made her way back to the United States where she reached the Church of Brother Blood. The book that she had in her possession contained a computer disk, which housed the spirit of her old colleague, Jericho. Raven was able to withdraw Jericho's soul from the disk and transpose it into a resurrected body.

Raven was later approached by Robin and Wonder Girl, in the hopes that she could resurrect Superboy like she did Jericho. Unfortunately, Raven declares that impossible since Superboy's soul had moved on to the afterlife, while Jericho's soul was kept on a computer disk. Without warning, the Titans were captured by the villainous Titans East and transported to the original Titans Island in New York, where Raven was placed in the 'care' of Enigma and Duela Dent, who took to torturing her psychologically. Raven managed her escape by offering Duela membership into the true Titans group. After knocking Enigma and Risk unconscious, Raven, Duela, and Cyborg got reinforcements in the form of Nightwing, Troia, Beast Boy, and Flash (Bart Allen). After beating the Titans East, she revealed hints that she still loved Gar, but he refused to dwell on the matter, leaving their relationship uncertain at the moment.

Titans

Raven 004

Raven in high school

Raven and a group of classmates were attacked by a demonic creature, sent by Raven's resurrected father Trigon. She soon joined Beast Boy, Donna Troy, Red Arrow, Starfire, Flash and Nightwing at New York's Titan's Island where Cyborg and his Teen Titans team were attacked by Deathstroke and the villainous Titans East. These events lead to the creation of the newest team of Titans, which consists of the original New Teen Titans.

Raven discovered that Trigon had more than one child, and that a trio of children devoted to her father are behind the attacks. She was affected along with many of the other Titans by these three beings, who preyed on the strongest emotions present in the group at the time (such as Nightwing and Starfire giving in to long suppressed longing for one another, and Flash and Donna Troy's mild envy taken to extremes in a usually calm social interaction). For Raven and Beast Boy, the emotion used against them was their subdued rage and insecurity towards themselves and each other. Raven was attacked at one point by an incensed Garfield, but their fight was broken up by the remaining Titans when they begin to gradually recover from the attack. Raven's three half-brothers then used her and Beast Boy to act as keys to open a portal to Trigon's realm. Raven used her own power to influence greed in others to make her half-brothers steal what little power Trigon had left. The portal was closed, and Trigon's sons, believing they had gained great power, left the scene.

Deadly Sins

Raven 005

The Sin of Pride

While Raven and Beast Boy went out together on a "not-a-date", she informed him that since meeting her half-brothers, she's felt herself being tempted by her father's evil power and fears she will once again turn evil. Although Beast Boy rejected the idea, Raven's fear was made reality, as her half-brothers later returned, and provoked her demonic side, causing her to leave the Titans and join them. However the team was able to track them down and convince Raven to join the side of good once more with the help of a mystical artifact Raven gave Donna Troy should such a situation ever arise. She later provided a number of other artifacts, all capable of killing her, to the Titans as terms for her staying with the team. However, the experience played a hand in Raven ultimately electing not to pursue a renewed relationship with Beast Boy.

Raven aided the Titans in capturing Match, who went on a rampage with Jericho trapped inside of him. Through her powers, she discovered that Jericho was actually in control of Match, not the other way around. Before she could warn the other Titans, Jericho used a device to temporarily knock out the lights. When the back-up generator kicked in, Jericho was gone, and Nightwing deduced he must have possessed one of the Titans in the confusion.

Powers

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Raven in flight

  • Astral Projection: Through the use of her soul-self, Raven can project her consciousness into the mind, for therapeutic purposes (to aid in her own meditation, or to help calm an agitated ally), or for offensive attacks, rendering her enemies unconscious, as well as manifesting as strong forcefields.
    • Soul-Self: Raven can manifest her "Soul-Self" through astral projection. It normally takes the form of either her human shape or a giant raven. Raven Soul Self is also the doorway, and is the separation of the eleven realms of the after life.
    • Darkness Manipulation: Raven's astral form is made out of pure darkness. She can project this darkness out as an offensive attack
  • Dimensional Travel
    • Teleportation: Raven can instantly travel through space (and even time) to anywhere she likes, almost like teleportation. However, according to her, she does not actually consider this teleporting because, instead, she simply instantly travels through dimensions via portals.[6]
  • Empathy: Raven has the psionic ability of empathy, the power to read, manipulate and absorb emotions, enabling her to feel the feelings of others,[7] and has the ability to sense people and their souls and emotions.[8]
    • Emotion Negation: She can also use her empathy to steal emotions from others, rendering them emotionally "numb".
    • Empathic Healing: She can absorb the pain of injured people to ease their suffering, and induce rapid healing. This cannot be done to major injuries.
    • Force Emotion: Raven is able to induce emotions into other people's subconscious to affect their mental state as she wishes.[7]
  • Energy Projection: Raven on some occasions has been shown to project powerful bolts of energy that has sent objects and people flying backwards.[9]
  • Flight: With her new body came new powers and new abilities, the ability to naturally fly being one of them. In her older bodies, she was still capable of flight using her Soul Self and/or telekinesis.
  • Precognition: Raven has a limited precognition ability to foresee future events before they happen, although this ability is not able to be controlled and activates spontaneously.[10]
  • Reality Alteration: As a result of her demonic heritage, Raven is able to alter and warp reality at a whim, and has destroyed an entire city and its population, and reverted it all back to normal.[4] She also once unintentionally created an inter-dimensional being.[11] Her capabilities are so powerful, it is said that she is capable of destroying the Heavens and entire planets.[12] Raven herself said that she could destroy a universe.[13]
  • Superhuman Durability: Due to her demon heritage, Raven is able to withstand a certain amount of bodily harm and distress.[18][19][20][21] She even survived a physical encounter with Plasmus although the radiation he emits did cause some internal pain.[18]
  • Telekinesis: Raven has the ability to move objects and matter with her mind, seen for example when she uses this ability to levitate children out of a burning hospital in Dakota and move herself through the flames.[22]. As mentioned above, she can also use it for self levitation and flight.
  • Telepathy: Raven harbors telepathic abilities and has been able to alter the dreams of others,[23] read their minds,[24] absorb information,[25] erase their memories,[26] and induce a sleep or comatose state in them.[27]

Abilities

Weaknesses

  • Strong Emotions: As an empath, Raven has the ability to feel other people's emotions. But if she comes into contact with an individual with strong emotions whether good or bad, it will overwhelm her and bring her pain.[30]

Equipment

  • Chakra: The Chakra helps her to control the darker passions of her soul-self.[citation needed]


  • Although this character was originally introduced during DC's Earth-One era of publication, their existence following the events of the 1985–86 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths remains intact. However, some elements of the character's Pre-Crisis history may have been altered or removed for Post-Crisis New Earth continuity, and should be considered apocryphal.
  • Raven does not eat meat.[31]
  • Raven has a tattoo of her namesake on the small of her lower back.[32]
  • After being resurrected into a new teenage body, Raven began watching the television series Gossip Girl religiously.[33]

Related

External Links

Footnotes


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