Victoria Lancaster
Sobriquet: Baroness of Lancaster and Greater London
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History: Victoria of Lancaster was born in the spring of 1471, the illegitimate offspring of Edward of Westminster - Prince of Wales and one of his mother's ladies-in-waiting. Unfortunately, Edward of Westminster had the dubious distinction of be the only heir apparent to the English throne ever to die in battle. He perished on the 4th of May - 1471 at the Battle of Tewkesbury, a decisive Lancastrian loss to the Yorkist faction during the middle years of the War of the Roses. While her paternal grandmother Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort of England was imprisoned with her husband Henry VI in the Tower of London, the infant Victoria was given over into the care of the Queen Consort's lady-in-waiting Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk who looked after her until her grandmother was released into the custody of Alice as well. Victoria was raised in comfort in Suffolk until Margaret was ransomed by her cousin King Louis XI of France in 1475. Margaret and Victoria lived in France for the next seven years as a poor relation of the king, until the death of Margaret, at which point Victoria was placed in a convent at Angers, in Pays de la Loire, France.
Victoria was only eleven when she entered the convent at Angers, but even at that early stage her course was set. She took after her grandmother Margaret and the strong women of the Anjou bloodline rather than that of her weak willed and mentally unstable grandfather Henry VI of Lancaster. Her grandmother instilled in the girl a strong sense of entitlement and spent every moment tutoring her in the finer points of political acumen. Thus Victoria was already prepared to play the game of kings when she became a nun, but took her imprisonment in the convent as an opportunity to practice her political skills upon the good sisters of Christ. Initially she earned considerable punishment from the abbess and was labeled demon-touched (cunning) and possessed {manipulative), but within a year she had taken advantage of perceived wrongs and petty jealousies among the rank and file of the convent to depose the abbess. It would take another year and the seduction of the local bishop to obtain the title of abbess herself.
Shortly thereafter, she began to receive letters from two separate noblemen, one in Paris and the other in London. Both offering to aid her in regaining the throne lost by her grandfather. Victoria wished more than anything to assume her grandmother's former position as queen of England. But, she understood that her claims to the throne were weak by comparison to the current claimant. Both of her noble correspondents assured her that they could and would aid her in obtaining the throne of England. Uncertain which of her allies could actually succeed in aiding her ambitions she held out for an ideal opportunity, this understandable mistake would cost her the throne, but opened the door to immortality. In 1483, while in the midst of the seduction of the Bishop of Angers, Victoria was far from prepared to take advantage of the sudden death of Edward IV of York. Due in part to her distant position from events unfolding in England and her youthful inexperience with international intrigue she was unable to prevent Edward's surviving brother Richard of Gloucester from being named Protector of England. Rather she banked upon placing the twelve year old Edward V upon the throne and arranging a marriage to the young prince. Regardless, Richard of Gloucester had other plans and captured the young prince and imprisoned him and his brother the nine year old Richard, Duke of York in the Tower of London. Thereafter Gloucester had the young princes declared illegitimate through the invalidation of their mother's marriage to his late brother and assumed the throne of England himself.
With this rather sudden turn of events, her ally in Paris became disinterested, leaving Victoria with only her English friend to aid her in her plots. For a time she simply stewed in rage over the cruelties of fortune, before hitting upon a potential solution to her problem. After Gloucester was named Richard III by parliament, his two nephews vanished without a trace, while many at court believed Richard had ordered their deaths, no one seemed to know for certain and no trial or judicial inquest was ever held on the matter. It would take another six years of scheming to enact Victoria's plan to resurrect the younger of the two "Princes in the Tower", Richard, Duke of York. Although the agents of her 'friend' in London never discovered the ultimate fate of the doomed young princes, he was able to find a credible lookalike in the person of a man named Perkin Warbeck. Following Victoria's plan to the letter, her London ally provided Warbeck with all the necessary information he would need to impersonate the young Richard of Shrewsbury. While this ploy severely damaged Richard III's reign and threatened the legitimacy of the newly found Tudor dynasty, it ultimately failed. But it would take another seven years for this to play out and in 1490 as Perkin Warbeck was declaring himself the rightful king of England, Victoria was traveling to London to meet with her noble ally.
In 1490, Victoria of Lancaster was just nineteen years old, but with her arrival in London she would come to finally learn the identity of her longtime ally as none other than Valerius, Seneschal to the Ventrue prince of London, Mithras. Of course Victoria was shocked to discover that her ally was in fact a member of the undead, but it didn't prevent her from accepting his offer of agelessness and so she became one of his blood-bound thralls. Over the next seven years Valerius and Victoria would plot and scheme together to overthrow Richard III, only to discover in the end that Richard was the current favorite proxy of Mithras himself. Rather than angry, Mithras was amused and took Victoria from Valerius as the spoils of war, he made her own ghoul and when she proved loyal over the succeeding decades, he ultimately Embraced her. It was Mithras' theft of Victoria that ultimately pushed Valerius to question his loyalties to Mithras and begin plotting against the ancient prince by Embracing Lady Anne Bowesley almost two centuries later.
In 1525, Victoria was Embraced by Mithras to replace is rebellious childer, the Duke of Amber and Duchess of Amber who had been summarily dismissed from Mithras' service and banished from London for their part in the Giovanni Affair and the death of Lord Camden. Upon her Embrace, she was granted hereditary domain in Lancashire where she resided in name only.
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