Warning! Spoilers ahead for Kang the Conqueror #4
While he may be able to travel through time, Marvel Comics has revealed the true tragedy of Kang the Conqueror's origins (which he'll never be able to escape). Recruited by a Kang from his future, Nathaniel Richards was mentored by his older self to forge him into a superior conqueror. However, Nathaniel's journey has featured some major twists and turns, revealing new truths about Kang and the true curse of his origins as a time-traveling despot.
While Nathaniel learned and studied his future from his older self, Nathaniel eventually killed the future Kang to become his own person rather than adhere to Kang's cruelty. The young man soon found himself jumping through his future while also pursuing the love Kang had tried to get him to reject: Ravonna Renslayer. Knowing that she would die in his future as a conqueror, Nathaniel tried to become a hero in order to change the timeline so she might live. However, time isn't as immutable as Nathaniel might wish.
Tragically, Kang the Conqueror #4 from Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, and Carlos Magno reveals that Nathaniel wasn't a new variant of Kang as the series seemed to imply. While he knows his future life and history, Nathaniel's origins are simply those of the original Kang, revealed to be paradoxical. Despite his efforts to change his future when it became his present, Ravonna still died all the same. Additionally, this was when Nathaniel realized that becoming Kang was his prison forged by time, and there was very little he could do to change the fate laid out for him.
Sadly, Nathaniel was always on the same path to becoming the standard Kang Marvel fans have long been familiar with, no matter what he did to try and change the outcome. To make his paradoxical origins even worse, he even saw himself being shown the exact moment where Ravonna was lost by the older Kang that first recruited him, who himself was recruited by a Kang in his youth, who himself was recruited by his own Kang (with the cycle repeating again and again).
While it's very fitting that Kang the Conqueror's origins would be a paradox given his status as a major time traveler, its extremely tragic nature comes as a dynamic surprise, providing further dimension to his overall characterization as one of the Marvel Universe's biggest villains. While he still believes he can be more than any Kang before by breaking time itself and restoring Ravonna, time will tell if the conqueror will succeed in creating a divergent path for himself and his lost love.