John Byrne on Rachel & DoFP

John Byrne was asked about creating Rachel Summers for Days of Future Past on his message board:

Question: When you came up with DOFP, was Rachel supposed to be the daughter of Scott and Jean or was that something that got tacked on later?

John Byrne: As originally plotted by me, months before "The Fate of the Phoenix", Rachel was supposed to be Scott and Jean's daughter. As issue 137 turned out, that became impossible, but she was too central to the story to be eliminated, so I just left her as a generic telepath, and assumed Chris would not use the Scottt & Jean connection since it no longer worked.

Byrne continues on with later in the thread with more background information about Days of Future Past (caution, lots of Rachel and Chris Claremont bashing).