History
Sometime before Jamie Madrox set out to create his own detective agency, a duplicate embodying the treacherous, megalomaniacal aspects of Jamie's personality locked himself in a bunker on Muir Island where he spent the following years attempting to find a way to become the "Madrox Prime."[1][2]
When the Madrox Prime died from M-Pox, his duplicates died as well, except for the dupe locked in the bunker. The airtight bunker managed to delay the adverse health effects, but after the New Mutants found the bunker, the dupe resumed his decay. In an effort to put off his inevitable death, the dupe convinced Beast to create a serum which would not only prevent his death, but also allow for the creation of dupes of his own, just like a prime, then stole a Temporal Beacon from Bishop and traveled into the future.[1]
Due to Madrox's meddling, he came to rule a totalitarian regime that was policed by his own duplicates in that future, dubbing himself "Emperor Prime," though his rule was opposed by a Resistance, which was largely made up of other Madri.[3]
One dupe, a member of the Resistance, was part of a select group who were sent into the timestream to find help by a heroic time-traveling Madrox, that was actually the Emperor from further in the future that had had a change of heart. This dupe was specifically sent to find the X-Men and ended up in a future where they no longer existed. The dupe joined the Clan Askani and became committed to their cause of deposing the ruler of that world, Apocalypse. At some point he bonded with that world's Warlock.[4]
After some time, Cloak, another of the time-traveling Resistance members, came back to collect Cable and the other dupes. Cable was reluctant to abandon the Clan Askani's cause, but ultimately traveled back, alongside Cloak, Deadpool, and Hulk, to the past and brought the heroic Emperor to the future, creating a time loop.[5][6]
When the Emperor Prime's lieutenant invaded the past with an army of Madri shock troops, the combined forces of the X-Men, the New Mutants, and Cable's allies were defeated and captured. Cable ultimately died when the Emperor committed assisted suicide, killing all the dupes in the reality, good and bad, thus stopping the invasion.[7]