GAMBIT

Remy LeBeau did not marry for love alone, whatever he felt for the bride. His wedding to Bella Donna Boudreaux was a contract written in vows: he was the adopted heir of Jean-Luc LeBeau and the New Orleans Thieves Guild, she was blood of the rival Assassins Guild, and their marriage was arranged to end generations of war between the two houses. The arrangement was revealed to readers in X-Men Vol. 2 #8 (1992), when Bella Donna walked back into Gambit's life and introduced herself to the stunned X-Men as his wife.

Remy and Bella Donna had known each other since childhood — they met at eight years old, long before either understood what their surnames would demand of them — so the treaty had a real heart beating inside it. That is precisely what her brother Julien could not forgive. Immediately after the ceremony, Julien challenged his new brother-in-law to a duel to the death, calling the marriage an obscenity against the Assassins' name.

Gambit accepted, fought, and killed Julien in self-defense — and the peace the wedding was built to protect demanded a price for the blood. To keep the fragile non-aggression pact from collapsing into open war, the Guilds exiled the bridegroom: Remy LeBeau was banished from New Orleans, separated from his bride and his home in a single ruling. The marriage meant to unite two families became the reason its groom could never go back to either, and the wandering thief the X-Men later recruited was a man whose own wedding had sentenced him to wander.