The first thing any fan writing fiction featuring Cordelia has to understand is the relationship between appearance and reality.

While on the surface, Cordy may appear to be a rich, spoiled airhead, vapid and shallow and caring for no-one but herself, the facts reveal her to be a smart, capable, caring young woman who is adept at judging situations and how best to achieve her goals. In High School, she knew the importance of appearances. She could not afford to be branded a "brain", so although she worked hard, always did the reading, and aced her SATs, she always made sure she wasn't quite too smart in front of a handsome guy or an entire classroom of her peers. She graduated in the top ten percent of her class, but was very careful about maintaining a specific façade. She dated the right boys—the lead singer of the band, the jock, the rich college boy— but she never fell in love except for all the wrong boys, and even then, she knew it would cost her dear and weighed that against her own happiness. In a way, she was ruthless. Yet she was also as much a slave to her passions as any teenaged girl, and it's easy to forget how young she is as she battles evil alongside her friends and family at Angel Investigations.

She is young. But she is also strong. Cordy does still need to grow—both as a person, and as a Good Guy. However she may present herself, however, in reality she is fiercely loyal, quick on her feet, determined, and she doesn't wallow or stew, and it takes a lot tog et her to carry a grudge.

I respect Cordelia Chase. Because no matter what life throws at her, Cordy is a survivor. She may complain about it, but she'll do what needs to be done. That's not to say that Cordy was without fault...

the story thus far...

There seems to have been plenty of reason for Xander, Willow and Jesse to have formed the "We Hate Cordelia" Club in grammar school. The Cordelia that audiences were first introduced to in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a tad shallow, a tad cruel. She was young, rich, beautiful, privileged, and she knew it and enjoyed pointing it out to those less fortunate.

As time wore on and Cordelia became embroiled in the Slayer's fight against evil we saw a different side of Cordy. She still said exactly what she thought at all times, and she still seemed to exist in a universe where she was the star at the centre. However, she fought, researched, and ran away alongside the Scoobies for two years. She survived the Master, Spike and Dru, and Angelus. Cordelia genuinely cared about Xander Harris and was devastated when she discovered Xander was cheating on her with Willow Rosenberg.

Surviving becoming the laughingstock of her former social circle and climbing back to the top of Sunnydale High School's food chain, Cordelia had one last personal challenge to face in Sunnydale. During her senior year of high school, her father was convicted of tax fraud and she lost everything. She successfully hid her fall from grace from her peers, until Xander found her working in a local dress shop in order to afford a prom dress. Xander kept her secret, and even paid off the balance on her prom dress. Despite fantastic SAT scores that had gotten her accepted at a number of top schools across the country, Cordy could no longer afford to continue on to college so she set her sights on a new goal: stardom.

Moving to Los Angeles, Cordelia Chase got herself an agent and became an actress. As an aspiring starlet, she met a woman named Margo, who invited her to a very exclusive party. There, Cordy was shocked to run into Angel, who had accompanied another party-guest. Unbeknownst to Cordy, Angel was there to try and protect his "Date" a young woman named Tina who was trying to escape her mysterious "benefactor", Russell Winters. Cordy exchanged pleasantries with Angel (more pleasant from his end, as Cordy was trying to maintain her old façade of rich girl from Sunnydale High School) and then after the party went back to her real life: sitting by a phone that never rings, surviving on cereal and hoarded hors d'oeuvres in a cockroach-infested one room studio in a lousy neighbourhood.

After Winters killed Tina, he set his sights on Cordelia. She was thrilled and a little frightened by his attentions. But she wanted desperately to regain her fortunes, and accepted his invitation to his mansion. However, once there Cordy twigged the fact that Winters was a vampire and escaped only with help from an unexpected quarter: Angel. They sped away from Russell's house, Doyle at the wheel, and an entirely new life began for Cordelia. After Angel dispatched Winters, Cordy decided that she wanted to work with Angel and Doyle at Angel Investigations—if they would have her. Doyle was all in favour of this idea, telling Angel that Cordelia will keep the vampire grounded and be a vital humanising influence.

Angel noted with some amusement Doyle's crush on Cordy, who was not immune to Doyle's charms. Doyle was something of a charmer, despite being hammered by painful visions of people in trouble from the Powers That Be. Doyle served as a buffer between Cordy and Angel, and was a good friend to them both. While she had sworn never ever to date a fixer-upper again after Xander Harris, Doyle and Cordelia grew very close working with Angel, and Cordy even begins to see a romantic future for the two of them when he was killed fighting a demon army called the Scourge. Before he died, Doyle and Cordelia shared a passionate kiss which, unbeknownst to the both of them, passed his visions to Cordelia.

In the wake of Doyle's death, Cordelia and Angel forged a very strong friendship. They were joined by former Watcher Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, who had been working as a rogue demon hunter since being sacked by the Council. The Angel Investigations family continued to "fight the good fight" and help the hopeless until the sinister law firm Wolfram & Hart employed the demon Vocah to separate Angel from the Powers That Be. Vocah touched Cordelia's hand, leaving a mark that forced her to have non-stop visions that would have eventually driven her mad. Wesley was caught in the explosion that destroyed the AI offices, and Vocah slaughtered the Oracles in the Netherworld of Eternal Watching.

However, Angel found out from Sister's ghost (who is not enjoying being dead one little bit) how to cure Cordelia and while he did not stop Wolfram & Hart from completing the "Raising," he was able to save his friends. Upon waking from her ordeal, Cordelia was more determined than ever to do her part in helping Angle fight evil. The AI offices briefly relocated to her haunted Silverlake apartment, until they rid the abandoned Hyperion Hotel of its resident paranoia demon and moved in.

However, the well-oiled machine of Angel Investigations (which then included Charles Gunn, leader of a vampire-slaying street gang) was thrown into disarray by the creature Wolfram & Hart raised: Angel's sire, Darla. After being unable to save the then-human Darla from being turned by Drusilla, Angel gave in to his dark side and allowed the two vampires to slaughter Holland Manners' house full of guests and fellow lawyers. Shocked by their boss's behaviour, Cordy, Wes and Gunn were even more shocked when Angel fires them.

Refusing to lose hope, Cordy, Wes and Gunn re-opened the agency and continue to fight on their own.

Thanks to Wesley's girlfriend Ginny, Angel Investigations manages to pay the bills, and Cordy, Wes, and Gunn become even closer as they fight evil without the benefit of a vampire with a soul. However, all three miss Angel, and are upset to find him sinking deeper and deeper into his dangerous obsession with Darla and Wolfram & Hart. Matters only worsen when Wesley is shot when he and Gunn are investigating an increase in police brutality towards the street kids that frequent a shelter run by a friend of Gunn's called Anne. When Angel appears at the hospital, Cordelia is distraught and furious with Angel. Fearing her friend is going to die, she lits into Angel for leaving them to do his job. "Wesley doesn't need you right now," she tells him. "We don't need you. You walked away. Do us a favour and just... stay away."

Hurt by her words, Angel leaves—only to reappear in the new Angel Investigations offices a week later to threaten and intimidate Cordy and the wheelchair bound Wesley in order to get the reference book he needed to try and discover the truth behind Wolfram & Hart's "Home Office." His treatment of his former friends was callous, cold, and deadly. Any hope of a reconciliation is pretty much dashed and Wesley stands up to Angel—literally—and pulls his stitches in the process, and is taken back to the hospital in an ambulance.

After hitting bottom, Angel has an epiphany and returns to the Angel Investigations offices only to find that Cordelia is missing—and Wes and Gunn don't give a damn about anything except getting her back. Angel tags along, feeling lost, as they discover that Cordelia had been kidnapped by Skilosh demons in retaliation for their offspring that were killed by the team after one of the demons implanted its young in the back of a 12 year old girl's head. In the end, Cordy is rescued by Angel, but that does not (despite Angel's hopes) magically make everything "all better."

After Doyle's death, Angel and the agency were Cordy's entire world and she was fiercely loyal to her vampy boss. Even when she doubted his sanity, she defended him to all comers. Therefore, it is only logical that Cordy was particularly hurt and betrayed by Angel's behaviour. And those sort of wounds took time (and half of Dolce & Gabanna) to heal. However, the team seems to be on the mend once more, despite Cordelia's lengthening recovery time post visions...

When a portal opens up in Caritas and deposits a Drokken (a vicious flesh-eating monster from another dimension) the Host goes to Angel and co. to hunt it down. Cordelia has a vision of a young librarian and physicist named Fred, and that vision leads to the Foreign Language Section of the Stewert Branch Public Library. They find an ancient book and when Cordy reads from it, another portal is opened, depositing Landok of the Deathwok Clan. The gang discovers that the Host came from the fairy-tale dimension of Pylea. It seems that five years earlier, Fred had opened a portal and she was sucked through, while the Host (then known as Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok Clan) was dumped into the abandoned warehouse he turned into Caritas karaoke bar.

Angel kills the Drokken, and they open another portal in Caritas to take Landok home, except there's one small problem... Cordy gets sucked through the portal as well, and wakes up in a forest in Pylea. In the Host's home dimension, humans are a slave race, called "cows" by the natives. Cordelia is sold to a farm where she is put to work muck out stalls in the barn when a runaway human—Fred—tries to warn her. When Cordelia suffers a vision of one of the townspeople being attacked by a Drokken, she is rushed to the priests of the Covenant of the Trombli who test her to see if she is truly "cursed." When they are convinced that Cordy is indeed a seer, she is made a princess. When Angel, the Host, Wesley and Gunn follow to Pylea, they are brought before her to be judged, and she frees them with a smile.

The fact is, Cordy likes being a Princess, as it's a much sweeter gig than the constant rejection and objectification of being a struggling actress back in L.A. She's in no hurry to get back until Wesley discovers she is meant to mate with the Groosalugg, a half-human, half-demon champion. Wes, Gunn and Cordy attempt escape, but Cordy doesn't make it out and comes face to face with the Groosalugg, who turns out to be built like an Adonis, and sweet as pie. She begins to fall for him, but is upset when she learns that on their wedding night Groo will absorb her visions. The priests plan to put her to death after her gift has been passed on to Groo, but Cordy doesn't want to part with them. She knows that she needs the visions to help Angel fight evil, and they make her feel special.

In the end, Cordy defeats the evil priests, makes Groo King and heads back where she belongs; to L.A. with Angel, Wesley, Gunn, the Host, and Fred. However, Willow Rosenberg is waiting for the travellers when they return. And she doesn't have good news.

When Angel takes off for a monastery in Sri Lanka, to deal with his grief over Buffy's death, Cordelia, Gunn, and Wesley continue to keep Angel Investigations open, further streamlining their motus operandi and kicking major demon booty, while newcomer Fred keeps to herself in her rooms. Cordelia is concerned about both Angel and Fred, but when Angel returns Fred perks up and starts to come out of her shell, while Cordy is simply sceptical of the ease with which Angel seems to be functioning. Confronting her former boss and friend, Angel reveals that the fact that he is okay is what is really upsetting him.

When Lilah Morgan uses a demon psychic to send false messages from the Powers That Be to trick Angel into freeing a mysterious boy named Billy from a prison of flame in a demon dimension, Cordelia suffers physical effects of the visions—including cuts and burns. Angel frees Billy in order to save Cordelia, who is haunted knowing that her life came at the cost of whatever evil Billy would perpetrate on innocents. Angel, however, is even more protective toward Cordelia than ever.

At Angel's behest, Cordelia makes a special effort to befriend Fred, and the two girls develop a sibling-like relationship. Cordy is also slightly jealous of Fred's close relationship with her parents.

On Cordelia's twenty-first birthday, she received a Vision that sent her into a state of catatonia. Her friends discovered that for over a year, she had been taking powerful migraine medication, and had several MRIs and CAT scans done which showed that the Visions were slowly killing her. While unconscious, Cordy "astral projected" out of her body, and was offered a choice by Skip, a Guide from the Powers. Skip explained that humans were never meant to have the Visions, and introduced her to the last human seer, a seventeenth century English girl called Tammy who had the Visions for two years before a particularly powerful vision blew out the back of her skull, killing her.

Skip explained that Doyle passing the Visions on to Cordelia had been a mistake, and that he could correct that mistake. Skip showed her a simulation an alternate universe where Cordelia had never met Angel and Doyle, but instead had become a 2 time Emmy Award Winning star of a sitcom called Cordy. However, Cordy's subconscious fought the simulation, and in the end, she chose to keep her Visions, knowing they would kill her. However, there was a loop hole. Since only demons can withstand the Visions, Skip offered to alter Cordelia, in effect making her part demon. She accepted, and is now able to withstand the visions without any pain at all, but does not know what is in store for her.

Cordelia and Angel grew closer, and Angel's feelings for Cordy grew stronger. But when the Groosalugg arrived from Pylea where he had given up his throne, Cordy was thrilled that her handsome knight in shining armour had returned. Angel helped Cordelia create a mystical potion so that her visions would not pass to Groo when they, ah.... com-shuck, and then gave Cordelia a few weeks vacation, to spend with Groo.

However, when Cordelia and Groo returned to Angel Investigations, it was to find Conner missing, the gang estranged from Wesley, and Angel a basket case after Holtz had escaped to a hell-dimension with his infant son. Cordelia helped her friend and boss to begin recovering from the crushing blow of losing Conner, and was surprised to discover that, in addition to granting her pain-free visions, her demon-half comes with surprising powers. She emits an unearthly glow that can be used to banish creepy crawlies from other dimensions, heal and cleanse the souls of people in pain, and makes a very effective night-light.

The Groosalugg, however, observed Cordelia and Angel together and realised that she loved the vampire. He struggled with telling her, but finally, out of love for his princess, opened her eyes to how she felt and graciously bowed out of the picture so that she could be with the vampire.

Cordy then had a vision where she saw herself declaring her love for Angel. Gathering her courage, she rang Angel and arranged to meet at Point Doom, so that she could tell him how she felt, and learn if he felt the same. However, while enroute, she was visited by Skip, the Emissary of the Powers That Be, who informed her that the Powers are calling her to another plane of existence to fight evil. She had pulled a Kes—and is now a higher being. Cordy struggled with this knowledge, and was upset that Angel will never know how she feels, but she accepted the Powers decision, and ascended.

just the facts

• Cordelia was born in Sunnydale in December 1980.
  
  
• In high school, Cordy was elected May Queen and Queen of the Winter Ball, but lost out Homecoming her senior year to Holly Charleston and Michelle Blake.
  
  
• When she was sixteen years old, her mother was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr, although it's more than likely that she simply didn't feel like getting out of bed.
  
  
• She briefly had a medically prescribed diet lunch that her doctor shipped daily.
  
  
• Cordy's folks took Cordelia on luxury vacations each summer. The summer between her sophomore and junior year, they promised to take her to St. Croix but chose to go to Tuscany instead. Then to Las Palmas the summer between her junior and senior years of High School that involved boredom, cockroaches big enough to own property, and organised "fun" that was anything but.
  
  
• Cordy's father had just had his car detailed when Cordy and Xander were attacked by a werewolf who shredded the roof while they were out necking beneath the almost full moon one night.
  
  
• Her grandmother was still alive during her junior year, and she talked her grandmother into switching cars with her after Angel lost his soul.
  
  
• Very little is known about her parents, other than the fact that they had money and now have none. As she told Xander when he discovered her working at April Showers to pay for a prom dress, "I have nothing, okay? No dresses. No cell phone. No car. Everything's been taken away because Daddy made a little mistake on his taxes. For the last twelve years."
  
  
• Cordelia's agent is named "Joe."
  
  
• Cordelia played Nora (very, very badly) in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House at a small theatre in Los Angeles in spring of 2000.
  
  
• Cordelia has been taking acting classes, and has improved considerably
  
  
• She has appeared in a local commercial for a business called Tan n' Screen, and auditioned for a national spot for Stain Be Gone, but blew the audition when she had her first vision right in the middle of it.
  
  
• Cordelia's current address is 141 Embury Street, Apt 212, Silverlake CA 90026, and her telephone number is 323-555-0175.
  
  
• According to Angel, Cordelia can apparently actually smell money. It's uncanny.
  
  
• She takes two sugars in her coffee.
  
  
• Cordelia has landed a national commercial for suntan lotion, which was directed by a boorish asshole Angel wanted to dismember after he was viciously evil to Queen C. The experience is causing her to re-think her chosen path to stardom.
  
  
• Wesley carries a photo of her and Angel and himself in his wallet.
  
  
• She totally killed on her SATs.
  
  
• Since receiving the visions from Doyle, Cordelia's brain began deteriorating.
  
  
• Cordelia was put onto several prescription migraine medications, including Seltrax, since at least Christmas, 2000 and received several CAT scans and MRIs.
  
  
• She is now part demon, no longer experiences blinding pain when receiving a Vision, and can apparently involuntarily float a foot off the floor.
  
  
• She has a cousin Timmy, on whom she used to practice cutting hair

  her relationships

  the scooby gang
  the fang gang
  the cordettes
  la la land
  boy slayer