Just twenty years ago, Eleanor Ashbury was a fairly average young teenage girl, with two loving parents and a big sister she practically idolized. Then her world was turned upside down -- first, she discovered that Kim had been called as the Slayer, that vampires and demons were real and it was her big sister's job to fight them; and then again when Kim died just a couple years later in the midst of her Cruciamentum. Eleanor was close enough to hear her dying screams.

The experience transformed her. She began to pursue her schoolwork with a new, single-minded zeal, acing her classes and studying the occult in her spare time. When she was eighteen years old, she was accepted to Oxford University and immediately attempted to contact the Watchers Council -- which rejected her as soon as their background check revealed precisely who she was. Despite this setback, she became active in the occult community, writing countless letters protesting the Council's actions and continuing her studies relentlessly. In 1999, she was at last granted a tenure-track professorship in the Department of Occult Studies at Greyson University, and returned to her hometown of Shadowgard to continue her work and to watch over the Hellmouth that the Council had apparently abandoned.

In late 2003, for the first time in years, the Council -- or at least one Rupert Giles, a man claiming to represent a 'new' Council -- contacted her. Giles explained that the situation had changed, that the old Council had been destroyed through terrorist actions and that the Slayer was no longer alone. New Watchers were needed, and quickly; he remembered her letters, her disgust at the barbaric practices of the old Council and their callous treatment of their champion, and felt that she was exactly what the new Council wanted in their agents. After some hesitation, Ashbury accepted, and at Giles' suggestion, she began to lay the groundwork for a Slayer training program based out of Greyson University itself, so that young women of the proper age could pursue higher education while continuing to hone their skills and defend against the forces of darkness.

For all of that, Ashbury still harbors her grudges, and views the new Council warily at best. For now, to be sure, it seems better than its predecessor, but she knows all too well that appearances can be deceiving. The years since her sister's death have transformed her into a suspicious, secretive and frequently prickly individual, haunted by her past and hiding her lingering pain with an intellectual and sometimes cold demeanor. Though she is fiercely protective of her self-appointed charge, Taryn Maddock, she tends to keep a great deal to herself, which has frequently led to conflict between the relatively inexperienced Watcher and her newly empowered Slayer.