Valerie was born in Nottingham in 1957 to a working class family. It was during her teenaged years that she first dreamt of being an actor. She also learned she was a lesbian when she became attracted to a fellow student named Sara. A Mr. Hird from the school persuaded Sara she was simply in a confused phase and the relationship ended.
Valerie came out to her family in 1976 by bringing home a girl named Christine to meet them. Her parents took the news poorly, and Valerie moved to London a week later. There she found happiness small roles on stage and dissatisfaction with the club scene. In time, her roles improved and in 1986 she starred in the critically “Salt Flats.”
It was while working on “Salt Flats” that Valerie met Ruth. The two fell in love and soon moved in together. During their relationship Ruth gave roses to Valerie on Valentine’s Day.
A terrible war broke out in 1988, and Norsefire. a Nationalist Socialist movement, came to power in Great Britain, enacting measures to curtail freedoms in the promise of saving the country. In 1992 the government began a round up of LGBT citizens. Ruth was soon captured while away from home. She was tortured by burning cigarette butts pressed into her skin, and coerced to give Valerie’s name to her torturers.
Ruth killed herself for the betrayal without knowing that Valerie hadn’t blamed her. Valerie was abducted and told that her films would be burned. Her head was shaved, and she was taken to the Larkhill camp, where she was drugged. Larkill was this fascist England’s equivalent of Nazi Germany’s experimentations on “undesirables.”
It was during Valerie’s imprisonment at Larkhill that she wrote her autobiography written on toilet paper with a pencil stub she secreted on herself, somewhat in the form of a love letter to the unknown prisoner (and humanity) in the next cell. That prisoner was V.
Valerie died at Larkhill. One passage of her letter reads: “It is strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to nobody. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish except one. An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world that’s worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it away from us.”
Valerie’s first appearance in issue #3 occurs while V is watching a preserved copy of her film, Salt Flats. She appears on a poster of the same movie in V’s Shadow Gallery in issue #4. Her sexual orientation is confirmed in issue #6.
This character and V For Vendetta were created by Alan Moore and Dave Lloyd.
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