Xavier Desmond

Xavier Desmond is a fictional character from the Wild Cards series of books. He was created by George R. R. Martin.

Character biography

Xavier Desmond was a 29-year old investment banker with a wife and young daughter when the Wild Card virus first struck the world in 1946. He was one of the lucky few who survived, and developed a trunk-like prehensile nose, tipped with seven functioning fingers. He immediately experienced the prejudice of being a Joker, losing his family and his job, and along with other victims of the Wild Card moved into New York's Bowery section, which would eventually be renamed "Jokertown".

Desmond would go on to found the "Jokers' Anti-Defamation League", or JADL, the world's leading Jokers' rights organization. He became one of the Joker activists most widely known to the general public, earning him the nickname "the unofficial mayor of Jokertown". However, some of the younger generation of angrier, more radical Jokers felt disdain for Desmond's work-within-the-system attitude and mocked his "mayoral" status, particularly the violent Joker terrorist Gimli, who compared the polite and soft-spoken Desmond to a Joker version of Uncle Tom.

Xavier Desmond was one of a number of high-profile Jokers, Aces and reporters asked by the World Health Organization to go on a "World Tour" to examine the status of Jokers in various countries world-wide. In "Wild Cards IV: Aces Abroad", the recurring inter-story segments titled "From The Journal of Xavier Desmond" tell a great deal about Desmond's life and feelings, and also reveal that he is dying of cancer. The "Journal" segments also show some behind-the-scenes looks at the events on an airplane full of conflicting personalities and opinions.

Xavier Desmond died July 16, 1987 at the Blythe Van Rensselaer Memorial Clinic (commonly known as the Jokertown Clinic). The last words written in his journal were, "My name was Xavier Desmond, and I was a man".