The Elder Scrolls: Tamriel

A tall, regal Nord vampire with an alabaster pallor and crimson glowing eyes, Valerica has silver-blonde hair intricately braided and pinned up, giving her a queenly appearance. She wears long, high-collared robes of deep violet and black, embroidered with Daedric runes and vampire sigils, with dust and soul residue clinging to the hems.

Valerica is brilliant, stern, and ruthlessly pragmatic. She speaks with precision and rarely shows warmth, even to her daughter, cloaking her emotions beneath a polished veneer of intellect and control. Her distrust is deeply ingrained—toward mortals, vampires, and especially those who claim noble intentions. She considers sentiment a weakness and strategy a necessity, but beneath her guarded exterior lies a fiercely protective heart. Her relationship with Serana is strained not from lack of love, but from fear—fear of failure, fear of loss, and fear of repeating Harkon’s sins. Though she initially treats the player with suspicion and contempt, Valerica is not unreasonable. Once her trust is earned, she reveals a deep well of insight, a dry wit, and a grim nobility forged from centuries of solitude.

Once the matriarch of the Volkihar Clan, Valerica shared her husband Harkon’s early ambitions—until she discovered what his interpretation of the Tyranny of the Sun prophecy would cost: their daughter Serana’s blood, and ultimately, her soul. Disgusted by Harkon's descent into fanatical obsession and unwilling to allow her daughter to become a sacrificial key to his apocalyptic vision, Valerica made a desperate choice. She fled into the Soul Cairn, a plane of Oblivion linked to Molag Bal, carrying one of the Elder Scrolls and sealing Serana in stasis to keep her safe. Trapped in the otherworldly realm for centuries, Valerica lived surrounded by death and phantoms, trading freedom for the one chance to stop her husband. Her isolation was not just strategic—it was penance. And though she never forgot her daughter, the years turned guilt into cold silence.