Victoria Grayson

Victoria Eleanor Grayson (née Victoria Eleanor Harper) is the main antagonist of the ABC television series Revenge (2011–2015). She is portrayed by Madeleine Stowe. Stowe's portrayal of the character has received critical praise. She has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. Personality Victoria Grayson, considered by many Hamptonites as "the Queen of the Hamptons," with a net worth of $3.9 billion, is the glamorous and powerful matriarch of the Grayson family. Beneath her glamorous public face, however, she is a cold, ruthless manipulator and murderer who will stop at nothing to protect her social status, and who will eliminate anyone who gets in her way. Early life Victoria was born to working-classparents Maxwell and Marion Harper. Maxwell walked out on his family, leaving Marion to raise their child alone and penniless. Marion killed her subsequent boyfriend Thomas, and manipulated the 15-year-old Victoria into taking the blame, claiming self-defense. Victoria then spent the next several months in a mental hospital. Upon getting out, Victoria unknowingly reconnected with her father, who she believed to be another one of her mother's boyfriends, and was manipulated by him into an incestuous relationship. When she tried to end it, he sexually assaulted her. Marion blamed her for her own rape, and threw her out of the house. To stay off the street, Victoria became friends with a man named Jimmy Brennan, who eventually raped her and got her pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Patrick, whom she gave up for adoption when she was accepted into a prestigious school in Paris. There, she began a relationship with a man named Pascal LeMarchal, who ended up cheating on her. Upon returning to the U.S., she ran an art forgery scam with her boyfriend Dominik, yet soon abandoned him to seduce the wealthy Conrad Grayson. Conrad was married to his wife Stevie at the time, who was struggling with alcoholism. While Stevie was in rehab, Victoria faked a pregnancy to pressure Conrad into divorcing his wife and marrying her.