John Carter

c. 1875

### Relatives

Dejah Thoris (wife); Edger Rice Burroughs (grandson); Randolph Carter (grandson); Nick Carter (son); Chick Carter (grandson); Lord Greystoke (distant descendant); Cathorsis (son); Tara (daughter)

## Professional Information

### Occupation

Jeddak (Martian warlord); Confederate fugitive

### Allies

Randolph Carter; Dejah Thoris; Edger Rice Burroughs; Gullivar Jones; Tars Tarkus

### Enemies

The American government; The Warhoons; The kingdom of Zodanga

## Real Information

### Creator

Edger Rice Burroughs (John Carter); Edwin Lester Arnold (Phra the Phoenician)

### First Story

Under The Moons of Mars, 1912 (Burroughs); The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician, 1890 (Arnold)

**Crown Prince, Cpt. John Carter**, once known as **Phra the Phoenician**, is one of the most influential people of all time. He is an immortal being, like Orlando or Lo Pan, and has been worshipped across time as an supernatural warrior. However, not unlike the other immortal beings, this came with a drawback; Phra suffers from a loss of memory and personality. Regardless, having fought in wars in England for over a millennium, and later in America for several more centuries, he is often regarded as the most skilled soldier and warrior of all time.

## Life Before 1869

Phra was born to a wealthy merchant family in Phoenicia. He started his life as a merchant sailing the Mediterranean, exploring the sea. When he had turned 20, he discovered a Celtic girl just off of the Balearic Islands. The girl, Blodwen, who was captured by slavers, sailed with Phra back to her homeland in Britain, where she revealed she was the chieftainess of a British tribe. They married and had one child. Soon after, Julius Caesar launched his invasion of of Britain and in the confusion Phra was branded as a traitor and the Celts put him to death. Post-mortem, Blodwen and the druids loyal to her create a magic tattoo which allows Phra to enter state of regenerative hibernation after what would have been a fatal experience, and this brought him back to life. But as he would enter this state, his core memories and feelings would disappear.

Phra awoke in 408 C. E. during the pullout of Roman troops from Britain. Phra, able to speak Old Latin and Brythonic (on top of Punic), struggles but succeeds to acclimate to this new time. His personality changed and he chose to become a guard for a roman noblewoman, the Lady Electra. They attempt to leave Britain but are attacked by the rebelling Celts, and Phra nearly dies, slipping into another healing coma. His body shows no sign of decay after he "dies" and is taken in by townspeople to be preserved, believing him to be divine. Waking up on the eve of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Phra began to lose his original personality and memories even more. He is sent on mission by a hermit to join William the Conqueror at Hastings. Arriving only moments after the battle, Phra saved a Saxon noblewoman named Editha, who was loyal to Harold Godwinson. They fled to her estate at Voewood where they married and lived a happy and simple life, fostering two children and growing crops on their land. To keep his lands loyal and the nobles Norman, King William launched a campaign in eliminating any nobles still loyal to Godwinson, starting with Voewood. In the ensuing attack, Phra helped his family escape but was mortally wounded in the process, once again falling into another deep slumber of convalescence.

Yet again, he came out of his coma a changed man. Now 1346, Phra is kept in a glass coffin in a monastery, believed to be one of the incorruptible saints. He rediscovers the memories he had lost at this time, which shock him so much that he joins the army of King Edward in an attempt to end his life through battle. In France, Phra meets Isobel who he tries to win the hand of with the help of his fellow knight Flamaucoer. But at the battle of Crecy, Flamaucoer takes a charge meant for Phra and reveals that he, is a she, and was Isobel all along. Phra is thrown overboard during a storm on the trip back to England. Washing up on the original site of his first "death", he climbs into his burial tomb to sleep, but is crushed by falling marble, causing another coma. Phra awoke yet again, this time in 1589, set free from his marble tomb by graverobbers. He traveled north to London where he met a old scholar named Adam Faulkner and his daughter Elizabeth, whom he falls in love with. Staying with them, Phra aids the Faulkners in their scientific endeavors while he writes his memoirs. The Faulkners build a new steam-powered mechanical man who turns out to be a monstrosity and Phra destroys it and Adam, who had gone mad. The mechanical genius of Adam Faulkner had enraged the Spaniard Emmanuel Marcena and vowed revenged. Elizabeth and Phra were wed soon after, but they drank wine poisoned by Marcena which caused the death of Elizabeth. Phra avenged her by killing Marcena and he fled to the Faulkners' old home. With the poison taking hold, Phra finished his memoirs as he slipped in and out of consciousness, and each time he lost consciousness, his memories were lost and his personality altered. He sealed himself in a crate as a makeshift casket, intending to sleep forever.

But the Fey had other plans. Mischievous Brownies and Elfs moved the crate as a prank, putting it by the harbor. On accident, he was shipped to the new world in 1766, eventually making his way to Virginia where he woke up and was taken in by a family of colonists. Edward Carter, the head of the family helped acclimate the completely amnestic Phra. Taking the new name John. John Carter would learn about the world he now lived in, becoming one of innumerable people to live in a modern, changing colony. He was inspired by the American people's spirit of endurance. John was one of the first men to enlist in a militia company and he saw the whole war through. From the Revolution to the American intervention in Canada; from the Orleanian Revolution to boarder skirmishes with the Ten Nations, John Carter had fought in it. He was always a great father for his many generations of children and led the idealistic simple life of a southern farmer.

All of this came to stop when the American Civil War broke out. John Carter feared the societal changes that a dominant North would bring to the south, so he rebelled. He fought in several small companies for the Confederate States and he became one of the most renowned soldiers of the war; he was "A Southern Henry Fleming", as A. L. Stevenson puts it. By the end of the war, John Carter became a vigilante trying to keep the Southern order from "Northern oppression".

## 1869 And After

Needing money, John Carter journeyed to Texas to prospect for gold in Arizona, still pursued by US forces for being an ex-Confederate fugitive. In Arizona, he struck a rich vein of gold but, unfortunately, couldn't collect it because he was attacked the Apache. Wounded, he fled into a sacred cave where he would fall into another period of healing stasis. However, the magic from his coma interacted with magic of the cave and the Arizona desert and his mind was not wiped of memory, but instead was made into a physical astral projection on Mars. On Mars he met the Thither princess of Helium, Dejah Thoris (whom he married and fathered two children with), fought several invading armies single-handedly, and saved the planet from destruction. When he returned to Earth, he moved to New York and learned to astral project. He also had two more children on Earth, adding to his growing family. He returned to Mars, but this time met a man, a human man. He introduced himself as Gullivar Jones and they began a friendly rivalry on Mars.

John Carter would continue to live like this until 1870, when he and a Hither and Thither alliance of city-states and nomadic hordes would fight the subterranean Martians, forcing several armies of them to flee to Earth, starting the First Martian Invasion. Gullivar Jones had returned after the invasion to tell Carter of it. Enraged, Carter created a new alliance, with the help of Gullivar Jones, to destroy the underground society of the Martians. Hithers, Thithers, Okar, and First Born, led by Jones and Carter, launched a second and final campaign on the Martians. The fighting was brutal and resulted in the complete destruction of the Martian cities. This would also result in the Second Martian Invasion, in 1887. Following the war, Carter returned to Earth, to cope with the second war he had started. In 1908, he went to Massachusetts to meet with his antiquarian grandson. There, he learned of his past lives as Phra and returned to Mars, where he would stay.