Most biographies I have seen on Spike have been . . . well . . . very literal and not at all very interesting. If you watch BTVS, you already know that he was once known as William The Bloody and how he got his nickname. We all know that he's Drusilla's boyfriend and Angel's 'spawn'. If you want to know those facts you can watch a re-run.
So, instead,  here is a slightly more in-depth look at our boy Spike. A bio with a little more 'bite', you might say.

William (we don't know his last name) was born in England somewhere around 1770. He probably grew up in London (as his accent is not that of the Northern English or a country person) and almost definitely came from rather meagre beginnings. If the vampire we know today is any indication, he was a real handful. Probably very cheeky and impetuous and distrustful of authority. With this said, I doubt he could have held down any job for very long before ticking off his supervisor and getting sacked. So William was most probably a thief, a thug, or a grifter (aka con man).

Some time around the mid 1790's a twenty-something William crossed paths with a vampire called Angelus. Something in William prompted Angelus to spare him from death and, instead, turn him into a vampire.

After he became a vampire he probably spent a few years with Angelus, learning the ropes and forming the bond that you can see between them in the first episode after Angel is changed. A strange hybrid of father-and-son and elder brother-younger brother. Whether they parted company for a while after that, I'm not going to say cos we don't know. (Joss probably knows, though a lot of good that'll do all of us).

As a vampire, all of William's worst or 'weakest' qualities were intensified and his most elemental humanity all but disappeared. He still knew love, devotion and tenderness but they were now skewed. A mutated or warped version of the originals. Since Angelus was compelled to kill everything that he had known as a human, I can guess that William might have done the same. Killing his parents and siblings, childhood friends and former lovers one by one.

There's a great, yawning fifty year hole in William's past that starts after he was created and (presumably) ends when Angelus created Drusilla. After Drusilla became a vampire, she, William and Angelus became a family and stalked the night together for at least a couple of decades. Whether William was allowed to touch his new 'sister' or not we don't know, though many things Angel has said make me believe that Angelus and Drusilla were exclusive for as long as the three were together. Leaving William to tactfully avert his gaze more than once, I'm sure.

Spike has never spoken of Angel's sire Darla or her sire (I think) The Master, so we can assume that he and Drusilla were never introduced to or told of either. This means that when Angel left his children to go globe trotting with Darla somewhere around the beginning on the twentieth century, he left them first and joined up with her after the fact. When he left they were almost definitely on good terms (inferred from their reaction to his return) and William and his baby sister struck out on their own. We can presume (since there's no one here to stop us) that not too long after Angelus left them, William and Drusilla became a couple.

The twentieth century was a very full nine and a half decades for William. He killed his first Slayer in 1900 in China during The Boxer Rebellion. He and Drusilla criss-crossed The Old World together; taking victims, throwing parties and generally having a good time. Somewhere along the way he picked up the nickname 'Spike' - thus named after his penchant for torturing unfortunate human who crossed his path with railroad spikes. Whether they trekked across the pond to the Americas during this time isn't very clear. Spike and Drusilla have mentioned many cities and countries where they used to reside, but none farther west than England. Sometime between 1900 and 1997 Spike bagged himself another Slayer and the two love birds moved to Prague where Drusilla's blood-drenched past finally caught up with her.

Spike is a very interesting character; he is thoroughly devoted to his family and will do anything for those he loves . . . just as long as they don't cross him. He is egotistical, violent, distrustful of authority and can't stand not being in control of a situation. He possesses a razor sharp wit and a remarkably human sense of honour and integrity.

Take all that, a love of John Simon Richie's tunes and Billy Idol's fashion sense, a beyond-wicked balance of dangerous demon and devoted boyfriend and you've got the recipe for One Hell Of A Guy.

(Not to mention a fool-proof formula for reeling in the love struck teenage girls and with that, the ratings!)
 

A lot of work went into researching and writing up this biography so if you're thinking of using part or all of it for your own page, please ask for permission first at pretty_moppet@yahoo.com  Please NEVER link back to this page. If Moppet or I find anyone who hasn't asked permission and is either using this page or has stolen excepts, we will go to your server!

Note: Any and all opinions and/or assumptions are mine and mine alone.

And, as Richard E. Grant once said, That Is All.