Prudence Halliwell was born on October 28, 1970[episodes 4] in San Francisco, California. She was the firstborn child of Patty Halliwell, a witch, and Victor Bennett, a mortal. She is named after Prudence Warren, the daughter of Melinda Warren, founder of the Warren witch line.
As a witch, Prue developed the magical power of telekinesis, which allowed her to move things with her mind. On March 24, 1975, she was visited by a future version of herself. Also on that day, Patty signed a pact with the warlock Nicholas to bless a ring that made him immune to her daughters' powers.[episodes 1]
In November 1975, after Phoebe had been born, their grandmother Penny bound their powers to keep Nicholas from killing them and taking their powers. Penny also erased their memory of having powers.[episodes 1] When Patty was drowned by a water demon three years later, Prue was particularly devastated; for many years afterward she was unable to say "I love you" to anyone because it had been the last thing she'd said to her mother.
In high school, Prue was a very popular A student, president of the Student Council and a cheerleader. At some point, she also became rebellious,[episodes 5] but it did not stop her from learning how to be responsible and protective of her family. Prue longed to be a professional photographer when she was young, perhaps as a psychic echo of her past life in the 1920s as one of Penny's aunts.[episodes 4] At age 21, she got into a car accident and blamed herself for hurting Phoebe, who was hospitalized after the incident. She'd had plans of going East to study photography, but Grams forced her stay on the West Coast, where she attended Gold State University.
When they went to college, Piper and Prue moved into an apartment together in North Beach. Prue took up history and was a serious student but still became popular in college, as she dated the captain of the football team (who later trains to be a demonized human), star receiver Tom Peters.[episodes 6] She graduated with honors from Gold State University.[episodes 4] The two girls stayed in North Beach until 1997 when Penny became ill and they moved back in with Grams and Phoebe at the manor. Prue became engaged to her boss Roger and she asked Piper to be her maid of honor after stating that she would love for both of her sisters to be her best friends and have them both as maids of honor. However, Roger began coming on to Phoebe secretly, then claimed Phoebe had come on to him. Prue broke off the engagement shortly afterward. About this time, Penny took a picture of the three of them together in front of the manor. After the girls received their powers, the images of the girls in the picture moved closer together than they originally had been. Penny planned to use a potion to bind the girls' powers forever because she didn't think they'd ever stop bickering long enough to fulfill their destiny. However, Penny died just after making the potion, but before giving it to the sisters.[episodes 7]
On the show, she drives 4 cars- 1991 Mazda MX-5 Miata (1x01-2x16), 1999 Mazda MX-5 Miata (2x01-2x19), 1986 Ford Taurus Rental Car (2x16), and 2000 BMW X5 (2x20-3x22).
[edit]Revelation as a Charmed One
Prue came into her power with a mixture of shock and anger at her sister Phoebe, whom she blamed for her introduction to the Craft.[episodes 8] However, when Prue did embrace her destiny, she did so with all of her energy. Prue even sacrificed most of her personal life so she could carry out her charmed destiny and work to help pay the bills. As the oldest sister, Prue was fiercely protective of Piper and Phoebe and was very much first among equals in their Charmed duties, where she would often sacrifice herself in order to protect Piper and Phoebe.
[edit]Powers and abilities
Prue originally had the power to move objects with her mind or telekinesis. She was actually the first to (re)discover her powers in the series premiere. Her boss Roger had taken credit for her work. She glared at him, causing his pen to explode in his pocket.[episodes 8] Hertelekinesis was originally focused by squinting her eyes. By the end of the first season, she learned to channel the ability with her hands, like Grams had been able to do.[episodes 9] She'd been able to channel the power through her hands when she was younger. Over time, she grew powerful enough that she could move objects with a mere crook or twitch of her finger.
The limits of Prue's telekinetic powers were unclear, but she appeared to be able to move up to 400 pounds (180 kg) with her mind, sufficient to lift and throw two normal sized adults. She seldom used her powers in complex manipulations (one example of such is in episode 'Secrets and Guys' from Season 1, when the sisters are spring cleaning in the attic), preferring to simply lift and throw. Like her sisters, her powers were linked to her emotions. In Prue's case, the trigger was anger.[episodes 10] Once, while frustrated by a crowd obstructing her passage to the hospital to transport the mortally wounded Piper, she telekinetically hurled several people out of the way, up to two at a time, in rapid succession.[episodes 11] This incident also marked the only time she employed her power on innocents. Prue's telekinetic powers depended on a direct line of sight, or at least an intimate knowledge of the object's location in order to be manipulated. She could not telekinetically move an object if she didn't know where it was.
In the pilot episode Prue was able to display a facet of her telekinesis that she was never able to duplicate since, namely the ability to use her telekinesis to teleport one object to another area without it moving through the space between. Prue as able to do this when she telekinetically caused cream to transfer from a creamer container directly into her coffee without it going through the air. Whether this could have been expanded upon as the series progressed will never be known.
As her powers developed she acquired the power of Astral Projection, the ability to project her consciousness from her body in a tangible state on the physical plane.[episodes 12] In this state, the original Prue becomes unconscious while her consciousness projects into a solid body. (Although in the episode Primrose Empath she awoke and smiled at her astral self)[episodes 13] This power is triggered when she wants to be in two different places at once. Prue's astral self is identical with herself except that she doesn't have the original Prue's telekinetic power.[episodes 12] While Prue's astral self is normally tangible, she can apparently become intangible in this state if she wished, as when she projected herself into the "unstoppable" demon Vinceres. She was also shot by a stalker in astral form but was unaffected. It's also been seen that injuries sustained by Prue do not appear on her astral self. When a stalker rendered Prue nearly blind by thrusting her face in a pan of photographic developer, her astral self showed no signs of the injury or the impairment, which were obvious on Prue's actual form.[episodes 14]
It should also be noted that Prue's telekinetic powers were not the strongest in the family line. An ancestor of hers, Brianna, reportedly was able to telekinetically move a sword (belonging to one of the Lords of War, Gabriel) "hundreds of miles,"[episodes 15] a feat which Prue admitted she probably couldn't duplicate. In a visit to the past, Grams, believing Prue, Piper and Phoebe to be warlocks, telekinetically maneuvered them in a complex path to expel them from the manor. Prue had never moved more than two at a time, and never performed anything more complex than lifting and throwing with more than one person.
In a trip to the future, Prue blasted out an entire wall of the attic, a sample of telekinetic blast [episodes 16] showing her future self's telekinetic powers to be several times more powerful than she had ever displayed up until the time she died.
In contrast to the limits on her telekinetic powers, she could astrally project herself several miles away and didn't need to know anything about the destination.[episodes 12] She once projected herself to Cole's side without intimate knowledge of his location. While kidnapped by Bane Jessup, she could astrally project herself to the manor to alert her sisters, without knowing the direction and distance.[episodes 17]
When Phoebe takes a trip to the past it is shown that Prue (in a past life) had the ability of cryokinesis aka ice breathing. She was able to project a cloud of super-chilled vapor, which she could direct by raising her hand to her lips and blowing across it. This cloud appeared to be highly cohesive, since it did not dissipate in the air, nor seem to significantly lower the temperature of the room.[episodes 18]
Prue, being the eldest sister, saw herself as the head of the household and felt the need to protect her two younger sisters. She was businesslike, cautious and disliked surprises.[episodes 19] She had a somewhat chilly relationship with Phoebe for most of her life even before her engagement to Roger fell apart, and generally had little patience for her until she turned her life around. Prue long thought Phoebe was immature, irresponsible and unpredictable. For her part, Phoebe thought Prue acted less as a sister than a mother. Piper, the middle sister, frequently had to arbitrate between Prue and Phoebe. Over time, Prue and Phoebe became much closer due to their destiny as Charmed Ones,[episodes 20] as well as Phoebe's intimate knowledge of the Book of Shadows.
[edit]Charmed life
[edit]Leading the Charmed Ones
Prue had trouble with the right balance of work and play during her entire life as a Charmed One. She spent a lot of time and energy becoming a more powerful witch, referred to sometimes as the "superwitch" and "Wicca Wonder" of the family. This is probably because Prue took it upon herself to protect her younger sisters after their mother's death.
Dantalian, a dark priestess, wanted to get the Book, but by this time evil could not even touch it. To get around this, she tricked Prudence into marrying a warlock, Zile. Because of this dark bond, Prue turned into a warlock. The Charmed Ones' magic was so intertwined by this time that Dantalian's spell also turned Piper and Phoebe into warlocks, and the evil flowed through the Book as well. However, Piper and Phoebe killed Zile, breaking the evil bond and restoring the sisters to good.[episodes 21]
[edit]Becoming the "Superwitch"
In the Season 3 premiere, Prue first displayed martial arts skills on-screen while battling a court room full of demonically-possessed humans.[episodes 22]
In "Primrose Empath", she had her first battle with a demon. She channeled her temporary empathic powers into her telekinetic powers, enabling her to perform martial-arts feats that surpassed even those of Phoebe. After the battle, she thought that she'd gotten a preview of what her powers would be like once they grew to their full potential.[episodes 13]
Prue also seemed to have magical troubles, even with non-magical beings. She was kidnapped by former gangster Bane Jessup, to help him fend off against the Ordo Malorum.[episodes 17] On another occasion, Prue started having recurring dreams of a dangerous man named T.J. that hung out in a nearby bar, without knowing that her astral form was being used by her repressed emotions to get away from her responsibilities. After a murder outside the bar was blamed on Prue, the police started to look for her. At Piper and Leo's wedding, the police came after Prue, and T.J. crashed the wedding on a motorcycle to rescue her. Phoebe talked Prue into getting herself together and Darryl, Leo and Cole found the real killer.[episodes 23]
As if those other troubles weren't enough, Prue was affected by some of her sisters' own spells, which caused her to be transformed. Once, when Phoebe started to get hot flashes linked to visions of men being killed, the sisters learned that a Succubus was hunting in San Francisco. They cast a spell to attract the Succubus, which turned Prue into a man ("Manny Hanks"). Prue was then able to lure the Succubus to her doom.[episodes 24] Also, when the sisters discovered a Banshee demon was killing people who were grieving, they cast a spell to track the Banshee, which ended up turning Prue into a dog.[episodes 25]
Even after her death, Prue continues to be the "Superwitch" against whom Paige especially feels that she must compete, and Piper feels she must live up to.
[edit]Romantic life
Once Prue came into her powers, she invariably became involved in criminal cases involving murdered, missing, or otherwise harmed innocents. This led her to reunite with her high school sweetheart and her first love, Andy Trudeau,[episodes 8] who had become an inspector with the SFPD. Their feelings for each other rekindled, they began dating again. On their first date in years, they picked up just where they had left off (sleeping together), but afterward they decided to slow it down. Their relationship was turbulent – Prue's secret powers of witchcraft caused them a lot of difficulty. She was regularly late or a no-show for dates and appointments with Andy much to his frustration, and even more puzzling for him was Prue's inexplicable involvement in his cases. This caused Andy to start a secret file that contained his own hypothesis about Prue and her sisters, which was startlingly accurate.
Eventually, Prue cast a truth spell on Andy without his knowledge, whereby 24 hours later, he would remember nothing from the past day. She used this to tell him the truth about herself to see if he could accept it.[episodes 26] In the last three minutes of the day before the spell ended, he could not tell her that he could overcome it because he wanted a normal family, and so she called the relationship off. Andy grew hostile toward Prue after her many involvements with his cases without explanations. He finally caught her using magic to fight a demon, and she was forced to tell him everything.[episodes 9] Andy was in a state of shock for a long time, but his feelings had not changed since she had placed him under the truth spell; Andy still wanted a normal life with a normal family and nothing to do with magic. Prue accepted this, and they remained close. Despite the lack of a romantic relationship, Prue and Andy still loved each other deeply. Things looked hopeful, but at the end of season one Andy dies to save Prue.[episodes 27] Andy's spirit visits Prue in a dream, assuring her that his death wasn't her fault, and that it was meant to be. While Prue initially accepts this, her viewpoint changes with grief. She soon begins to think there is no use to being a witch if she cannot save her loved ones from evil. Piper and Phoebe reminded her that she warned Andy to stay out of harm's way, but he chose to get involved, and he died a hero.
After Andy's death Prue dated a coworker who, unlike Andy, was an irritaing, unorthodox character named Jack Sheridan. At one point, she suspected Jack was a warlock when she believed she saw him in two places at once. As it turns out, Jack had a twin brother, who had impersonated Jack just for fun. Though she hated him at first, he won her over with his charm. Jack helped her loosen up and stop taking herself so seriously, but when his immaturity and lack of professional ethics did not match with where Prue wanted to go with her life, she broke it off with Jack. Another involvement, though not a true relationship, was with crime boss Bane Jessup. Prue disguised herself as an assassin,[episodes 12] and later, Bane kidnapped her to get her to help him clear his name.[episodes 17] Their time together was based on sexual heat and was short-lived, more of a flirtation than anything else.
