Virginia

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"Virginia is a deviless of particularly refined tastes, and particularly elaborate cunning."

Virginia is a fashionable, knowledgeable, and high-ranking deviless, and a former Lord Mayor of London.

Infernal Archaeology

Virginia is known for her forays in archaeology, and trades in the souls of the learned and well-known. Virginia has a significant interest in the histories of the Fallen Cities and the language of the Correspondence, so she can often be found conducting research in the Forgotten Quarter. This often put her in a rivalry with Dr Orthos, a well-read scholar and a fellow archaeologist who has headed many expeditions.

Virginia is a player of the Marvellous. She was a heroine of Hell's Season of Revolutions, as she helped to overthrow a Prince of Hell after having an affair with him. This one-time prince is actually still interested in her, and he's currently locked up as the sole prisoner of Corpsecage Island.

Infernal Elections

"Virginia's followers don't preach abstinence, nor even restraint. They advocate exercises, physical and spiritual, and spread the twin practices of penitence and callisthenics wherever they go."

Virginia successfully ran for Mayor of London in 1897, under the slogan Good for the Soul. Despite her being, well, a deviless, the Brass Embassy quickly disavowed any involvement related to her candidacy and made an official statement to the press saying that she "was [London's] problem now".

Virginia's platform encouraged a 'Clean Bill of Health', and promised to improve the lives and health of London's soul as a whole with modern medicine and by opening a public spa which will allow the "honing of the self, like a knife on a whetstone". Throught these reforms, she hoped to not only improve the physical health of Londoners, but their spiritual health as well, to improve the state of their souls. She wanted to make Londoners more ambitious, and willing to fully appreciate what the Neath could offer.

Despite their rivalry, Dr Orthos chose nonthless to help her campaign, partly out of support for her policies and partly because if she winst, then he "will have less competition in The Forgotten Quarter." He was not her only surprising ally; Viriginia supporters were an ecclectic group, with society figures, low-level devils and even some parts of the clergy who campaigned on her behalf. It wasn't an orderly bunch; Some of her most fervent supporters put up posters depicting as a new Queen Elizabeth, emblazoned with the caption "Rex Virginia". (Said posters were quickly confiscated by the Ministry.) Most surprising, a lot of the fundng for her campaign came from Temperance campaigners, who were nervous about Virginia's strategies but supported her agenda.

At the very end of the election The Jovial Contrarian, then the current mayor, said that the office of mayor was "corrupt, shambolic and altogether unfit for purpuse", and therefor that he had abolished it. He immediately declared that a new title had been created, that of Lord Mayor, and announced that Virginia would be the first person to hold it.

Rex Virginia

"Is this what London does to its mayors? Jenny's term was only three years ago. Did anything last? […] It doesn't matter. I refuse to be measured by the work of my predecessors. What I shall do will stand so high above them that it will not be necessary."

After the election, Virgnia immediately started working on her spa. She bought and renovated a townhouse to serve as the location and made an agreement with The Dynamite to hire a group of devil "physicians" of sort. Those who visited the place where often surprised by the odd treatments offered: clients were asked to do different tasks, such as: sit "in copper bathtubs and guessing the number of occupants the bath has ever held", stay in "waiting rooms stuffed with the terminally boring and of lengthy examinations of Rubbery physiognomy", "read a range of dreadful 'improving' works of literature. ", eat "some kind of sour-cream porridge", "drink a litre of room temperature water" and "lie still and think of anything – anything at all – other than a Rubbery Man." It didn't seem to have much of an effect at all. Towards the end of her term, she said: "I know that my Spas have not produced such immediate results as London might have hoped. The work proceeds."

During the Fruits of the Zee Festival, she serched for a mask used by an orderly in The Orphanage that Mrs Plenty was said to have taken with her after she left that place and gotten rid of shortly after. Virginia wanted to use the mask to take the memory of that event.

Her term advanced toward its end, with seemingly no improvement in the result of her spa. Then, out of the blue, she announced that a deal had been struck with Hell, It seem that electing a devil as Lord Mayor made Hell's attitude toward London more relaxed, and so Virginia negotiated the opening of the Hinterlands to Londoners, and created the Ministry of Upper River Development. This chain of events led to the foundation of the Great Hellbound Railway, which constructed a second rail line between London and Hell.

At the end of her term and of the Election of 1898, she announced that Londoners, in their "unique and incomprehensible genius" had chosen The Viscountess of the Viric Jungle as their next (and last) Lord Mayor.