Real Name: Victoria Wingate HellstromVICTORIA HELLSTROM
Real Name: Victoria Wingate Hellstrom
Identity/Class: Human, possible magic user
Occupation: homemaker; intended mother to the child of Satan
Affiliations: Chapel of Dresden
Enemies: Stephen Loss
Known Relatives: Daimon (Hellstorm, Son of Satan, son), Satana (daughter), Marduk Kurios ("Satan", husband), parents (unnamed)
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Fire Lake mansion, Greentown, Massachusetts
First Appearance: Marvel Spotlight I#13 (January, 1974)
Powers: Victoria may have been magically altered to make her better suited to mother the children of Satan. She was also quite mad.
History: (Hellstorm#16+18 (fb) - BTS) - The Hellstroms, throughout the generations were Satanists. Victoria was sold by her parents to the Chapel of Dresden, a group of occult psychopaths, once closely associated with Hitler. They sought to breed a new high priest and priestess: Half human , half hell--messiahs from the pit, to lead the Chapel into a new century...as rulers of men. To this end, they magically altered in brutal fashion, tattooing her womb with Satanic symbols, making her suitable to mother these children, as well as perhaps drawing "Satan" to her.
(Son of Satan#4 (fb) - BTS) - Victoria once considered a life of Holy abstinence and sought to enter a convent. The nuns there felt that she wasn't right: too young and too unsure.
(Marvel
Spotlight#13 (fb) / Hellstorm#2 (fb) / Hellstorm#16 (fb) / Terror
INC#2 (fb)) - Satan came to Earth in search of a wife--seeking one
to train as his heir. Likely drawn to Victoria by the Chapel's
magic, he took human form and seemingly seduced the innocent
woman. They were soon married, and moved almost immediately to
Fire Lake, Massachusetts. 
A little more then one year later, she gave birth to their son, Daimon, at home, tended by strangers who served her husband.
When Daimon was a year and a half, his father began taking extended trips, leaving Daimon alone with Victoria.
Another year and a half later, they gave birth to their daughter, Satana.
The Chapel of Dresden's plans were brought to a halt six months after Satana's birth, when Stephen Loss located and exterminated them.
Over the next six years, Daimon and Victoria grew closer, as Satan focused his efforts on Satana, who showed more interest in his teachings.
Victoria walked in on a ceremony in which Satana was sacrificing a cat for her father. At that point, Satan revealed his true presence to Victoria. She woke up screaming in a padded cell, and spent her remaining years clutching an ankh to protect her from her former husband. While locked away, Victoria wrote a diary for her son to read when he was old enough to understand it. However, Victoria had been driven quite mad by the realization of what she had done, and this caused her to create her own fantasy world in which she was not complicit in the creation of the dark messiah.
(Marvel Spotlight I#13 (fb)) - Victoria gave Daimon a chain of ankhs, telling him it was the only thing that could protect him from his father.
(Marvel Spotlight I#13 (fb) - BTS) - Victoria told Daimon that Netheranium, a metal existing only in Hell, could weaken Satan.
Victoria died in the mental hospital, nearly twenty-one years after the birth of her son. ??
(Hellstorm#16(fb)-BTS) - Stephen Loss exhumed Victoria's corpse and discovered (or confirmed) the work of the Temple of Dresden.
(Marvel Spotlight#13) - On his twenty-first birthday, Daimon inherited Fire Lake mansion. Shortly after returning there, he discovered his mother's diary and learned a slightly skewed version of his true nature.
(Hellstorm#16) - Stephen Loss confronted Daimon with the true history of his family.
Comments: Created by Gary Friedrich and Herb Trimpe. Revised by Warren Ellis.
According to the tombstone seen in Ghost Rider II#1, Victoria was born on March 4, died on August 21, and was 25 years old when she died. I can't think of any reason for the months to have been topical (though the years on the tombstone certainly were). However, as revealed, ret-conned in Hellstorm, she spent 14-15 years in the mental hospital, so her age at the time of her death is not accurate.
The classic origin of the Son of Satan is taken from Victoria's diary, as detailed in Marvel Spotlight I#13. In Hellstorm#16 (July, 1994), it is revealed that Victoria was prepared to be Satan's mate, but that she went and insane, unable to accept the reality of what she was doing. This is not entirely without precedent, as, even in the original story, 20 years before, Victoria wrote her diary AFTER entering an insane asylum.
Hellstorm#2, written by Rafael Nieves, reveals a slightly different version of events, as told by Hellstorm to Dr. Strange:
My mother's ancestor's came over on the Mayflower, did you know that? No, of course not. Hearty, New England stock. Very wealthy, very proper. She hated them. She longed for adventure, excitement. One day while strolling through the woods of Fire Lake, she found it. She never noticed the mansion before, nor its master. Both appeared suddenly, mysteriously.
The stranger appeared to be of European or Middle Eastern blood...very appealing to a woman in search of exotic pleasure. It all happened quite quickly. Courtship. Engagement. Seduction. Her parents were quite upset. They forbade her to marry. They died. Cancer. So sudden. Mother was aghast, but a week to the day after the funeral, she married the man..."
It also gives further detail on the young life of Daimon and
Satana, up to Victoria going insane--all of which is well written
and tells an interesting story, but I'm not going to get into it
here.
So, anyway, in Hellstorm#2's version, two pieces of information
are key: (1) Daimon is relating events as he knows them, from
memory, rather than reading it directly from the diary.
Hellstorm#2 may take place 6-10 years after Marvel Spotlight#13
in the Marvel Universe; (2) Daimon, after several drinks, is
relating the story to Dr. Strange, for whom he has a clear
disdain at the time. He may well be embellishing, or even
misrepresenting facts in order to manipulate/mislead Strange. In fact, after
Strange leaves the caption states: "Gone now. Strange is left. The charade is
over. A stone-cold sober Hellstorm rises from his table. How odd, he thinks, to
almost tell the whole truth. Almost. But that is the secret of a good lie; hook
them with the truth, reel them in with the facts, net them with the
fabrication".
However, even given that, there's not a whole lot that has to be
false. Could the Hellstroms have come over on the Mayflower?
Yes--although, most likely at that point, Victoria would have
been in the care of members of the Temple of Dresden, since her
parents had long ago sold her. Her adoptive parents could have
come over on the Mayflower, or they could have fed that info to
Victoria, or she could have made it up for her diary--nothing
contradicts any of this.
The information about her parents being proper would either be a
false pretense of her parents, or something that was made up for
her diary. They also could have put up mock opposition to the
relationship, and could have been killed by Satan, as well.
From Hellstorm#18, it would appear that the name Hellstrom is the familial name of Victoria's line, and that Daimon changed his own last name to Hellstrom for effect after reading his mother's diary. The name Wingate comes from the OHotMU Master Edition entry on Hellstorm--although it may have appeared elsewhere and I just don't know it. However, it's unclear what Daimon's last name was before he changed it. Is Wingate the last name "Satan" chose for the human form with which he "seduced" Victoria? Is it the name she adopted prior to meeting Satan, to throw off any suspicions that she was connected to a family of Satanists? I don't know.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Last updated: 06/02/05
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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