David Xanatos - Biography

Biography

David Xanatos started life as the son of Petros Xanatos, a fisherman from Bar Harbor, Maine. Young Xanatos received an anonymous letter which contained a set of valuable 10th century coins. He sold the coins for $20,000 and invested the money in a series of successful ventures, the first steps toward building his corporation. Xanatos's holdings include Xanatos Enterprises, the genetics company Gen-U-Tech, the Scarab Corporation robotics firm, and the television franchise Pack Media Studios. Despite his father's belief that Xanatos did not deserve the gift that had launched his career, Xanatos continued to claim that he would one day prove himself a self-made man.

During this time, Xanatos took on Owen Burnett, a former employee of business rival Halcyon Renard, as his assistant. Eventually, Burnett revealed that he was actually Puck, a Child of Oberon, and offered Xanatos a tempting choice: a single wish (which could grant the immortality he sought) or a lifetime of service as the mortal Owen Burnett. Against Puck's expectations, Xanatos, confident that he could achieve immortality through other methods, chose Owen's service, and the decision deeply impressed Puck to keep his end of the bargain.

Xanatos learned of Castle Wyvern from Demona, the only gargoyle from the Wyvern Clan who had neither been destroyed nor put into stone sleep. He purchased the ruins, transported them to Manhattan, and had the structure rebuilt atop his New York skyscraper, the Eyrie Building. With the castle "above the clouds," Xanatos successfully released the Manhattan Clan from their frozen sleep.

Xanatos initially posed as the Gargoyles' friend, convincing them to "acquire" technology from his rival Cyberbiotics for him and ultimately attempting to destroy the gargoyles once their replacements, the Steel Clan, came online. The Steel Clan was defeated, however, and Xanatos was convicted for receiving stolen property ("Awakening, Part V"). Xanatos continued to plot against the Gargoyles from prison, testing them and attempting to remove them from the castle. Upon his release, he became one of their greatest enemies, engaging in a particularly fierce rivalry with their leader, Goliath.

Xanatos also committed himself to getting his own clan of gargoyles that would be loyal and obedient to him. To that end, he tried several attempts throughout the series to do that such as resurrecting Goliath's brother Coldstone and some of the other dead gargoyles from the Wyvern Clan; genetically creating his own clan of gargoyle-like mutates from humans, one of whom was Elisa Maza's younger brother, Derek; creating a clone of Goliath, and perfecting the Steel Clan. When these attempts failed, he changed focus to continuing his quest for immortality but by using sorcery, magic, and even involving himself with children of Oberon, the King of the mystical island Avalon, instead.

Xanatos would meet an equal in Fox and marry her. It was on this occasion that, by inviting Goliath to the wedding and luring him into seeking reconciliation with Demona, Xanatos was able to reconstruct the Phoenix Gate. The wedding party was brought back in time to the 10th century, where Xanatos arranged for the ancient coins to be delivered to himself a thousand years in the future, via Illuminati, as well as a message to himself describing what to do with them. In this way, Xanatos fulfilled his own history through a predestination paradox, at the same time proving himself to his father as a "self-made man" ("Vows").

When Demona finally betrayed Xanatos to advance her own goals of destroying the human race, he was forced to call a truce with Goliath to stop her. Goliath was later instrumental in saving Xanatos's newborn son Alexander, at which time Xanatos pledged to pay the debt back to him ("The Gathering, Part II"). He soon created new robotic bodies for Coldstone's other personalities, which he named Coldfire and Coldsteel. Since these gargoyles were also created by magic, though, it was impossible for mind transfer to occur. While he and Fox were out to dinner, Puck and Alexander performed the transfer for him. When the existence of the gargoyles was revealed to the public, Xanatos ultimately called an end to the feud and restores the gargoyles to their ancestral home in the castle ("Hunter's Moon, Part III").