English Rose was born in 1875 somewhere in the East End of London. She vaguely remembers her mother and knows that she was named Jane, but she never remembers ever seeing her father and has no idea of her real surname. In 1880 her mother grew ill and died one day while Jane was out playing. She came back late to find her mother gone and no-one around to look after her. For days she wandered the streets, nearly starving to death before she fell in with a gang of other street children who lived by petty crime. She became a sort of unofficial mascot for the group, and learnt how to live like they did. However, like the rest of the group she was prey to the many diseases (of both the infectious and deficiency kind) circulating at the time, and once or twice, like many other members of the group, she nearly died. However, early in 1881 she stopped becoming ill, and began to recover from the effects of various deficiency diseases, although this was not at all obvious and she still went hungry much of the time. Then she had the accident. One day late in 1881 the gang of children had wandered into one of the richer areas of London. A policeman spotted them and ordered them to go away. They just taunted him, like they usually did with policemen, and he gave chase. Unfortunately, that day the streets were rather crowded and the only way out was across a busy street. All the children made it across, apart from Jane, the youngest and slowest, who was run down by an Omnibus. Despite the policeman attempting to administer first aid, Jane died within minutes and her body was taken to the mortuary of the local hospital.
Several hours later Jane revived on a slab as her healing powers came into action for the first time. All the doctors were flabbergasted at her recovery and she was moved to a bed in an observation ward. Several days later, after the hospital had been besieged by reporters wanting the full details of this resurrection, two men from the government arrived. They told Jane she would join the new Royal Elite Guard which was being set up, although they made it obvious what they thought of the idea of a small child in such a unit. Jane took an instant dislike to them, especially when they had her smuggled out of the hospital to Chelsea Barracks for the start of her training. About one day later, after Jane had been introduced to Excalibur (and been unimpressed) and been put through some fairly rigourous training, she decided she had had enough. She told the government men she wanted to leave. They told her to stop being a silly child. She tried to run past, but was grabbed and held. Furious, Jane hit out at the man holding her, to little effect, then suddenly discovered a new aspect of her powers as she reversed her healing effect and knocked him out. While the other man stood there gaping, Jane ran off and escaped.
She made her way back to her old haunts and soon met up with her old gang of friends, who thought she was a ghost for a while, until she was able to convince them otherwise, and went back to living by petty crime. She soon discovered that her healing powers were also good for healing other people, when she aided some of her friends after they got into some of their frequent scrapes, and that she was able to detect and recognise living things all around her. After this she noticed that her friends were getting more and more distant from her, almost as if they were becoming afraid of her, and the more she tried to make them accept her again, the more distant they became, and the more unhappy she became. However, she stayed with them as she had nowhere else to go.
Meanwhile, British government agents were desperately searching for Jane. Exasperated by their failure before, and realising that their petty prejudices against age and sex had probably lost Britain a valuable asset, Excalibur took over the hunt personally. About two weeks later, Excalibur tracked Jane down to the East End, and confronted her in the street. By this time Jane's friends had almost totally dissociated themselves from her, and she was feeling very lost, so when Excalibur, being far nicer than the government agents had been before, offered her a place in the Royal Elite Guard, and told her about all the nice things which came with it, she grudgingly went along with him, becoming the second member of the Royal Elite Guard under the name English Rose.
In the course of her service with the guard it was discovered that English Rose's healing powers allowed her to recover from any injury, even death, with great speed. As a side effect of this she is unaging, and has a physiological age of eight (the age at which she gained her powers) despite being chronologically about one hundred and fifteen. In 1892 she became the adopted daughter of John Featherstone-Haugh (also known as Excalibur) the leader of the Royal Elite Guard. After most of the members of the Royal Elite Guard died in WWII, she was recruited into the British secret service, with whom she worked until 1964. However, during WWIII she was captured by the Nazi's and tortured to death repeatedly over a period of several months, an experience which left her completely insane and only gradually able to recover. After this she wished to leave British government service, but by several means they prevented her from leaving until in 1964 she was finally able to escape into hiding. She resurfaced one year later after writing her biography, and set up the Detective agency Rose Investigations, which now operates out of the 146th floor of the Empire State Building. Many of the profits from Rose Investigations go to charities which help the poor and oppressed around the world, and in addition to this English Rose has aided the relief efforts at many natural disasters since 1964.
Tissue samples from English Rose were an integral part of the program which led to the creation of the members of Cloud Nine, and the development of the medical regeneration technique. However, she destroyed these samples when she escaped from the British government.
Before her capture by the Nazi's, English Rose had remained fairly childish in her attitude to life, despite being a hugely qualified intelligence operative. After her rehabilitation she became far harder and more cynical as an armour against the world, even now retains a fairly cold and arrogant demeanour.
English Rose appears to a fairly normal child of about eight years old, with light brown hair and brown eyes. These days she usually wears expensive suits and clothes tailored for her small build, although depending on what she is doing she could be wearing almost anything. She has been known to wear a combat suit of unknown origin when in a war-zone or otherwise expecting trouble.
English Rose in Champions terms as she was in 1883 and 1995.