Marvel's X-Men relaunch has finally confirmed that Charles Xavier killing his X-Men dream is no accident. The formerly peaceful leader of the X-Men (and all of mutantkind) has been corrupted... making him a different character than the one fans used to know.
Jonathan Hickman's X-Men reboot has executed a high-profile relaunch aimed at putting Marvel's mutants back on the map. Charles Xavier has established the mutant nation of Krakoa, and something seems to be terribly wrong. Not a new enemy or threat, but the fact that the X-Men have betrayed everything they believe in. Xavier's Dream has always been about the fight for equality, but now the X-Men have embraced Magneto's goals (with a little less violence). In a telepathic message to the world, Xavier blames his loss of faith on the destruction of Genosha, where 16 million mutants were slain in a matter of minutes. But that's not where the credit should really go.
Powers of X #6 has revealed that something is indeed very wrong; Xavier has been corrupted by Moira MacTaggert's influence. Moira has been retconned as a secret mutant, gifted with the power of reincarnation so that whenever she dies, her consciousness returns to the point of her birth, retaining a perfect recollection of her past lives. Moira allowed Charles Xavier to read her mind, and told him he'd been dreaming the wrong dreams. She spent months working on Xavier, persuading him to support her cause. As the years passed, Moira realized the true effect she was having. "It is becoming clear to me that I am breaking Charles Xavier," she notes in her journal. "And if I do break him, how will he become the man I need him to be in the coming days?"
With Marvel having confirmed that the current X-Men books really are set in the current reality, that means Moira was working on Xavier from the shadows for as long as there have been X-Men. Which also means it's been years since this reality's Charles Xavier actually believed in his dream of coexistence. Interestingly, Hickman has already noted that Xavier twice used Cerebro to restore his mind to previous versions--could this potentially have been a desperate attempt to reverse Moira's influence?
Whatever the truth may be, the fact remains that this really isn't the Professor X readers thought they knew all this time. Moira has twisted and warped Charles Xavier into a man with a very different purpose, creating the mutant nation of Krakoa as a seat from which to rise as the dominant species on the planet, not one showing humanity the way forward. The X-Men are no longer guided by Xavier's Dream; they're all about Moira's dream now.
Powers of X #6 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.