I don’t think Emma is overtly evil (or at least she hasn’t been since her Hellfire Club days), she’s just a person who comes from a really hard place whose moral fiber has been frayed. She has a set of beliefs that many others would consider flawed or skewed, and she defends these beliefs with a ruthlessness born of a difficult past.
Emma frequently means well, but she often has problems with the means she uses to get to an end. The best example of this that I can think of was the abandonment of the depowered mutants following M-Day. Some of these folks had a long history and deep attachments to the X-Men, and considered them family, but were cast aside coldly nonetheless. Emma defended her decision by saying that she did it to protect those that were depowered (as she thought that being around the X-Men would prove dangerous to them). I have no doubt that she actually believed this, but there’s also no doubt that there were other options available, and that the whole thing could have been handled both differently and better. Emma may have meant well, but all she managed to do was add insult to injury, and wound up damaging these folks far worse than they already were. (Personally, I really hope this comes back to bite her in the ass someday.)
I have to be honest, I haven’t been a fan of Emma Frost since Generation X, but I’ve known a couple of folks like her in real life, and I think I can try to look at her objectively (every character deserves that) and figure out what makes her tick. She honestly tries to get to the same place as the other X-Men, but the path she chooses often takes her off the moral map. That’s the way she’s wired. At least until a different writer comes along.
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