Victoria Van Gale

General
**Gallery**

**Victoria Van Gale** is a meteorologist and scientist of the Trolberg Meteorological Bureau. She is first heard on the radio in "Chapter 7: The Lost Clan", before appearing in person in "Chapter 10: The Storm".

Hilda was a great fan of her, until the events of "Chapter 10: The Storm" after David found out her true intentions.

## Appearance

Victoria is a tall, skinny, Caucasian woman with long grey hair and black eyes. She wears a white lab coat.

## Personality

At first glance, Victoria comes off as a nice, if somewhat eccentric woman. She clearly loves her work and research, and will gladly give a tour to everybody who visits the Weather Station. She can also be somewhat clumsy, like accidentally bumping into a lever that turns on her Weather Machine.

However, she isn't above doing morally questionable things to achieve her goals, like abducting a baby Weather Spirit.

## Biography

* Animated series
* Novelization

### Season 1

Up until the events of "Chapter 10", Victoria worked in the Trolberg Weather Station. From here, she would broadcast the daily weather forecasts, which was known to be accurate to the second.

However, unsatisfied with simply predicting the weather, she turned her research towards finding ways to control it, believing humanity could greatly benefit from this. To this end, she build a weather control machine in the Trolberg Weather Station, and even abducted a baby Weather Spirit to lure more Weather Spirits to her.

Sadly, this plan worked too well and dozens of Weather Spirits showed up. They got into a heated argument above Trolberg, causing a severe snow storm. This was when Hilda, David, and The Great Raven came to visit her, believing Victoria might be in trouble. Victoria gave the two kids a tour, during which they discovered her weather machine. Hilda convinced Victoria to try and use her machine to blow the storm away from Trolberg and Victoria agreed, but it failed and her machines overheated. Hilda was eventually able to solve the problem by talking to the Weather Spirits, moderating their discussion and getting them to calm down.

Meanwhile, David discovered the captured baby Weather Spirit, and when Hilda returned he told her about this. This shattered Hilda's image of her idol, and she proclaimed Victoria to be a mad scientist. When the baby's father attacked the weather station, Hilda freed the baby. Victoria fled from the building, which moments later collapsed and fell down the mountain due to the damage caused by the Weather Spirit. This greatly upset Victoria.

### Season 2

In "Chapter 5: The Windmill", Victoria reappears now living in a windmill alongside some animals that were scared by the construction works of Trolberg. She is now accompanied by a Nisse that she built herself.

Hilda, Frida (who has never actually seen her before), and David encounter her during an assignment to photograph birds and she admits to have change and decided to redeem herself by creating a shelter of the animals in the windmill, though Hilda and company don't believe her. Despite this, Hilda decides to help her rebuild her new home in exchange of getting some photos from the animals in the shelter. David doubts her the most and his doubts are made real when after the repairs he founds some documents. Turns out that Victoria was working a way to enter the Nowhere Space and even summoned a Nisse to assist her in this work. After the repairs are done, she kidnaps Frida and activates a machine to open a portal to the Space, believing that since the city have been getting out of space to build maybe in the Nowhere the citizens can create new homes without destroying the forest. However, her machine gets destroyed when David tried to rescue Frida because of his fight with his assistant, creating another portal inside the Space that sends both Victoria and her assistant, who has now been reduced to a skull, to an unknown location, apparently a deserted island.

### Season 3

Season 3 reveals that the location Victoria van Gale has ended up at the end of "Chapter 5: The Windmill" is one of the outer islands of Fairy Country.

During the time between Season 2 and Season 3, Victoria has build a shelter for herself around a Watchtower on this island, and has started to use her scientific knowledge to experiment with the tower itself. She has dubbed the island "The Great Island Republic of Van Galea".

After Anders is pulled into Fairy Country by Phinium and Lydia, he is dropped on the same island and meets Victoria, who helps him survive in Fairy Country (like staying hidden from The Eyes). Victoria is able to build a radio transmitter, with which she and Anders try to contact the outside world. First by sending cryptic signals, but eventually Victoria is able to build a working microphone. In "Chapter 7: Strange Frequencies", Hilda's radio picks up their signals and with Alfur's help she begins to decode them. After Victoria gets the radio working, Hilda finds out her father is with Victoria and they might be in trouble. With Alfur's help, she is alble to deduce the radio signals are coming from the Fairy Mound in Tofoten.

In "Chapter 8: The Fairy Isle", Hilda enters the Fairy Mound and finds her way to the island, where she reunites with her father and Victoria. Hilda is grateful to Victoria for helping her father and actually feels sorry for stranding Victoria here. Victoria however holds no grudge against Hilda, as she considers coming to Fairy Country to be the best thing that could have happened to her. Here she has a strange new world full of scientific mysteries to explore. When Hilda and Anders make their way back to the human world, Victoria voluntarily stays behind. She continues her experiments with the watchtower, and is eventually able to create a portal that takes her directly to the lair of The Fairy Entity on Fairy Isle. She arrives just as Astrid is about to sacrifice herself to the Entity to save Johanna, and voluntarily swaps places with Astrid. Thus, the claim that The Fairy Entity had on Johanna's life is passed on to Victoria, who is now forced to stay on Fairy Isle forever, but she doesn't mind as that was her intention all along. When Hilda hears about what happened, she remarks that Fairy Country has no idea what it is in for with Victoria there now.

Victoria is last seen overlooking Fairy Isle, along with her Nisse, whom she has managed to rebuild.

In the Hilda Tie-In Series, Victoria is briefly mentioned in "Hilda and the Great Parade" when Hilda listens to her weather forecast on the radio.

She appears in person in the book "Hilda and the Ghost Ship", which adapts the events of "Chapter 5: The Windmill". The book reveals that the events from "Chapter 10: The Storm" also happened in this continuity, but they are not shown in detail, just briefly mentioned. According to Hilda, her mom holds a grudge against Victoria for her part in causing the snow storm. Victoria's role in the book is largely identical to that in Season 2 of the series. The adventure takes place simultaneously with Hilda's adventures involving the Draugen and the Kraken, and because of this it is mostly David that helps Victoria with repairing the Windmill while Hilda and Frida are elsewhere. He only does so to keep an eye on her. As in the series, he eventually figures out her true plan to open a breach to Nowhere Space, but is taken captive by Victoria and her Nisse the way Frida was captured by them in the series. He is found by Alfur, who warns Hilda, Frida and Tontu. As in the series, Victoria's plan ultimately fails and she remains behind in Nowhere Space as her machine malfunctions and the portal closes. The book does not reveal where (if anywhere) she ended up afterwards.

She reappears in "Hilda and the Fairy Village", which adapts chapters 7 and 8 of season 3. The book reveals that, like in the animated series, the botched nowhere space experiment has send Victoria to Fairy Country. Like in the series, she encounters Anders here, builds the radio transmitter, and helps Anders survive till Hilda comes to get him. The scene where Victoria van Gale confronts the Fairy Entity differs a bit from the series; here Victoria is more confrontational and demanding with the entity, and shows no fear for It. She offers the Entity her services and to use her scientific knowledge to help restore Fairy Isle, which is declining, but demands the Entity will stop bargaining for people's lives. Astrid is surprised to hear Victoria talk so boldly to the Entity and fully expects the Entity to smite Victoria, but much to her surprise the Entity submits to Victoria's demands, having met it's match.
## Appearances

**Novelization**

* "Hilda and the Ghost Ship"
* "Hilda and the Fairy Village"

## Trivia

* Victoria van Gale does not appear in any of the graphic novels. In "Hildafolk", Hilda can be seen listening to the weather forecast on the radio, but the identity of the forecaster is not revealed.
* In "Hilda's World: A guide to Trolberg, the wilderness, and beyond", a list of The Rat King's seven juiciest secrets states that Victoria was once struck by lightning and hasn't been the same since.
* Season 3 reveals she has a talent for playing the musical saw.

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