in case anyone cares; this is what I wrote up for the game I originally played her in.

Timeline

1848 - Born in Nanjing, China
1864 - Nanjing falls; Grace taken against her will to France by a member of the Lancea Sanctum to be his pet project.
1874 - Sophia frees Grace from the Lance coterie, who Grace kills; the two flee France.
1878 - Grace Embraced and inducted as a full member of the Sept.
1885 - Grace leaves for the United States.
1886 - Grace settles in Los Angeles, and joins the Ordo Dracul.
1905 - Grace becomes a Sworn of the Mysteries.
1918 - The plague hits; Grace becomes part of the Los Angeles research team.
1920 - Sophia falls out of contact.
1921 - Promoted to Oracle in the Sworn of the Mysteries.
1922 - Grace leaves to travel to other Ordo Dracul academies in the Americas and visit other members of the Sept. Stopping through New Mexico, she encounters an indian boarding school run by the Lancea Sanctum containing horrible things, burns it to the ground, and acquires an apprentice, one of the older students named Iris.
1927(isn?) - Iris is Embraced, and made a full member of the Sept; she stays in South America to study sorcery with another member of the Sept.
1934 - Grace returns to Los Angeles and is not displeased by the changes; she comes into contact with the Engelharts, decides she likes them, and supports Sterling in his bid for Prince after finding she liked his platform quite a bit. She and Elizabeth become friends during the campcaign.
1950 - Grace meets Eve, a vampire newly-embraced by a Crone Daeva named Damian Silvanus who wants to escape her sire. She swipes her for the Ordo Dracul.
1953 - Grace, in investigating a meddling Lance priest, meets Paula Pacheco Ruiz, and becomes concerned for her welfare.
1955 - Grace funds Paula's undergraduate education.
1958 - Grace unearths some papers on a "Coil of the Soul" in the files of a long-dead Elder, and takes an interest in them and their possible applications for furthering the moral development of young vampires.
1959 - Paula moves on to law school, and Grace reveals her true nature and her interest in Embracing Paula once she's done with school.
1960 - Paula gets her J.D., undergoes the Embrace and begins training for the Coil of the Soul.
1962 - Paula undergoes the Chrysalis for the Coil of the Soul. It goes poorly.
1963 - Paula, tired of Grace's fruitless and invasive attempts to fix what went wrong, storms off. Grace confesses her guilt to the Ordo's Confessor, and is introduced to the secret society of the Ladder-Sworn
1973 - Grace achieves middle-rung membership in the Ladder-Sworn after refusing to renounce them in a secret test.
1973-Present - Continues improving her Humanity, secretly helping Paula, and working to improve the world around her.

Backstory

Grace Yi was born Du Miaoshan in Nanjing, China, in about 1848 by Western reckoning. Her family was of Hakka ethnicity, and common laborers; Miaoshan was their first child and the eldest of three. Clever, dutiful and hard-working, Miaoshan was a favorite of both her parents; her father once quietly expressed the wish that she had been a boy, since it would have suited her better.

Originally the Du family espoused traditional Confucian values, but the family converted to Christianity when Miaoshan was in her early adolescence as the religion was made popular by the charismatic leader Hong Xiuquan of the Taiping Rebellion, who additionally preached that he was the second son of God, and said that he had been charged to remove the "evils" of the current Manchu regime and Confucianism from China.

Miaoshan herself was pleased by the fact that men and women had been made equal before the law, since she had always secretly dreamed of holding an important position in society, since she felt she had some very good ideas. (As many teenagers are, she was somewhat self-important.) She was, however, drawn to the lessons of the Bible that she read in her studies; something about the New Testament resonated with her; she'd disliked the classic interpretation of Confucian teachings that said that women ought to follow the lead of men in their families and that they ought to be obedient and silent. She liked much better the idea that if you had a gift, God gave it to you so that you could use it.

However, her youthful dreams were interrupted in 1864 as the faltering, poorly-managed regime quickly fell to pieces, particularly after the Qing administration requested the assistance of the French and English in ending the Taiping Rebellion. The final battle of Nanjing erupted into vicious street-to-street fighting, and Miaoshan tried to escape with her mother, who'd come down with a poorly-timed illness. Cornered, Miaoshan tried to defend her mother with only a simple sword she'd managed to grab from a fallen soldier.

For better or for worse, though, she found herself spared; her pursuer was a member of the French forces, but not just any common soldier—an Inquisitor of the Lancea Sanctum, who'd felt called to defend the Christian faith from heterodoxy. Amused by her spirit, he killed her mother but spared her, deciding to bring her back to France to educate in the "proper" ways.

She was ghouled and kept under control for the next ten years via a combination of Majesty and blood-binding; several times the Inquisitor attempted to see if the full blood-bond was still really necessary, only to find out that it really, really was. Even under all of that, Miaoshan (who had been dubbed "Michèle" as none of them could properly pronounce her real name) was still fighting, and held a resentment for anyone she wasn't forced to not hold one for. Meanwhile, the Inquisitor instructed her in the correct ways of faith, and began thinking of her as an apprentice. As a result, she learned a lot of highly unpleasant ways to kill people.

And perhaps too well, for her captors. It was their misfortune that a wandering member of an ancient organization called the Sept calling herself Sophia wandered their way and took notice of their mortal thrall who was clearly trying to struggle. Using a special mystical technique she later said she was unable to teach, Sophia destroyed Miaoshan's blood bindings, freeing her from the forced affection that had kept her under control. Taking up the sword, she put it to the Inquisitor and his coterie—but found that ending their existences filled her with only regret that it was necessary, rather than elation.

Sophia, seeing the conflict within her, assured her that taking a life—even an unlife—should never be easy, but that the world would be better for her having destroyed those that would have caused more suffering than they would have done good. And she told Miaoshan of an organization called the Sept, formed in the early days of Christianity.

They had originally been an offshoot branch of Gnostic Christianity, formed entirely of vampires. In those days there were many different factions and beliefs within the Lancea Sanctum, and they had originated as one of them. They saw Longinus as an emissary of a being called the Demiurge, who had created this world as an imperfect copy of the spiritual "true" world, which had been emanated by God. Furthermore, they began to disagree with the Lancea Sanctum's core philosophy of needing to be the wolves policing the flock, considering it to be going against the principles of Christianity and only a means to justify doing what they wanted in the name of God.

Naturally, the Lancea Sanctum had them hunted to near-extinction. The seven survivors (though their names and specific deeds have become lost to time, they are generally regarded to all have been women) called themselves the Sept, and dedicated themselves, in addition to bringing Gnosis to the world and opposing evil in general, to fighting the evil specific to the Lancea Sanctum, which is what had brought Sophia there.

Sophia took Miaoshan under her wing after they fled France and gave her a proper education as they traveled the world; eventually, Miaoshan asked to be Embraced so that she could fight with the power that Sophia had. Sophia agreed, and Miaoshan was inducted as a full member of the Sept, taking up the new name Grace.

Eventually the two parted ways; as few members as the Sept had, they generally were spread thin, though they kept in touch through mail in this modern era. Grace headed to the United States, where she would quickly join the Ordo Dracul, interested in their ability to overcome some parts of the Curse. Particularly, due to the fact that she felt that it was wrong to take blood from the unwilling, she hoped to reduce her dependence on it. Eventually she ensconced herself in Los Angeles, with its large Chinese population that made it easy for her to blend in, as she was not entirely certain that all tracks had been covered when they left France, though she's sure everyone who knew her face is dead.

When the Plague struck, Grace, as a member of the Ordo Dracul, was put on research of the disease, trying to discover its origin and how to prevent it. During this time, she lost contact with Sophia—indeed, many of the older members of the Sept dropped out of sight. And as quickly as the Plague came, it went away, leaving vampire society in something of a power vacuum; Grace herself received an early promotion in the Sworn of the Mysteries. She has always held mixed feelings on the deaths of so many Kindred; on one hand, there were many she was not sorry to see go, but she still feels that it's a shame that many went to their eternal rest without redemption.

Grace took it upon herself just shy of a decade later later to go visit some of the chapters of the Ordo Dracul scattered throughout Central and South America, and help them rebuild during a time of upheaval in both the mortal and vampire worlds; she had an extra motive for this trip, though, which was to visit her sisters in the Sept and assist their efforts in this time of opportunity, with Los Angeles having proven itself fairly stable.

On her trip south, she stopped over in New Mexico. Hearing the rumor that the Lancea Sanctum had involved themselves in some sort of charitable schooling project, she was both surprised and mildly suspicious that they would be doing anything good for anyone. She decided to pay a visit herself, posing as a member of the Lancea Sanctum passing through (to her distaste, she could still convincingly act as a member) and asked to see their work.

The school was a boarding school situated on a local Indian reservation, purportedly for making sure all the children there got an education. In practice, though, it was there to strip them of their native culture, whether willingly or unwillingly, under the philosophy of "Kill the Indian, save the man," which reminded Grace unfavorably of her own experiences. She spoke to several of the students; one, called Iris, was one of the eldest there in her mid-teens, and seemed to already be able to tell there was something off about the school's administration, which was unsurprising, considering a fair number of the children displayed signs of being blood dolls or at least of having been fed upon, in addition to the beatings administered to them whenever they acted out.

Grace made up her mind. She found Iris, who seemed clever and to be trying to put up a form of resistance, to round up the rest of the kids and take anything they wanted that they could carry, and to get out of the area; she'd be back to take them somewhere else soon. Grace then set to work carefully blocking off all the doors as she headed out of the building and setting things alight behind her. She was almost finished, the building already well caught on fire, when she was attacked by one of the vampire staff that she hadn't accounted for.

They struggled—he was a decent combat sorcerer, enough to be a match for her in melee, and Grace started to worry that she'd be caught in the blaze as well as the fire started to burn through to them, and even the Coils couldn't completely protect her from Frenzy. She was saved, however, by the surprise arrival of Iris, who had returned armed with a makeshift weapon, crippling Grace's opponent long enough for her to deal a killing blow and giving them enough time to escape.

Grace was surprised—especially when Iris asked if she could follow her. Iris known something was off about her school's staff before; seeing one of the instructors fighting with a whip made of his own blood only was extra confirmation. Grace gently tried to convince her that she ought to return to her family, but Iris had been separated from them so long she didn't feel any real attachment to them, and—seeing a fair bit of herself in the girl—took her along as she continued on to Central America, and gave her the new surname Verga, after her sire.

They traveled southward, stopping every now and then in major cities for Grace to check in with the Ordo Dracul there. Having less of a stake in mortal politics, the Ordo Dracul had been less affected by the upheavals than the Carthians and the Invictus, who were bitterly struggling for control in many places. Grace rarely took Iris along for these visits, as she wasn't a member of the Ordo Dracul and was a more vulnerable mortal; she usually dropped her off with the nearest member of the Sept when she could, and asked that they teach her accidental apprentice what they could.

Iris came of age, and was interested in the Embrace and joining the Sept, and was therefore inducted. She was, however, interested in learning the sorcery that had been shown to her by some of the other members, something that Grace had learned very little of. She needed a master, so Grace found her the best one nearby, and said her (tearful) goodbyes, promising to write—even in a few years, she'd become very fond of Iris.

Los Angeles was, thankfully, still standing when she got back, having overthrown the old Prince and installing democracy much for the better. During this time Grace came into contact with the Engelharts; while she was initially leery of the Circle of the Crone, she found them to be reasonable, likable people, and thought Sterling's platform for his Prince candidacy was very good. As one of those now moving in the circles of the newly-powerful, she ran into them more and more often, and found she got along with Elizabeth very well. They became fast friends over time due to their similar sensibilities and interests.

Grace continued to keep in touch with Iris, though communication was made difficult by political turmoil, and was pleased to hear of her childe's progress in her studies, even though the situation on the ground was increasingly bad in some areas. She also took a fledgling vampire named Eve under her wing who'd been embraced by Damian Silvanus, a Daeva member of the Circle of the Crone who she already found to be somewhat unpleasant; he'd embraced the young woman with the intention of having a new shiny toy to hang on his arm, but it was clear she was having none of it now that the Entrancement had worn off. Grace gave her a very strong pitch for the Ordo Dracul, and whisked her off, meanwhile delivering a letter with some suggestions regarding... correction of Mr. Silvanus's behavior toward women to Elizabeth Engelhart.

Eve turned out to be a capable administrator on top of her keen desire for knowledge, which helped Grace find time for other things... like interfering with the activities of the Lancea Sanctum. In particular, she started watching very carefully the activities of a Lance priest, Father Faustino Gaspar, that had domain over a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood, and who was keen on trying to reinforce Traditional Values, especially those related to a woman's place. Grace herself knew a few people there, as she had a few connections in the Latin-American Catholic churches due to her work in Central and South America, and began going to church events near there to feel out the situation.

At one of these events, she met a bright young woman named Paula Pacheco Ruiz; she was an awkward teenager, but very intelligent, and had a strong desire to rise above the roles that society had prescribed for her, something that resonated with Grace. Something that also resonated, as she investigated, was that Paula's life had become not entirely her own—a series of misfortunes had befallen her family, including the death of her brother. Her parents, fearing for Paula's safety, pressured her harder to give up her ambitions.

Feeling that Paula was in increasing danger the longer she stayed, Grace offered to help take care of the funds required for a college education in law away from Father Gaspar while Grace cut off his influence from the shadows and eventually forced him into torpor. Grace, knowing she was quite intelligent and seeing perhaps the makings of a potential childe and another recruit for the Sept, began tutoring her in philosophy and foreign languages. She also mentioned a secret society dedicated to this kind of learning and the advancement of the world—Paula, later, likely thought she referred to the Ordo Dracul, but in reality it was the Sept she meant.

As time went on, it became more and more difficult for Grace to hide her nature from the bright Paula; eventually she revealed to her what she was, and brought up the question of whether Paula would like to be like her. Paula agreed, and Grace found her a job that would give her something to write home about but would ostensibly keep her busy enough such that she wouldn't be able to visit, and went about instructing her in the ways of vampirism. Sort of.

Grace had the idea that perhaps she could influence the direction of a young vampire's moral development by making sure they were highly prepared right out of the gate for the challenges of vampire life. She'd unearthed some papers left behind by an elder dead to the Plague in the process of cleaning out some of the Order's files that spoke of a Coil of the Soul, and thought perhaps that it might be a good starting point, as it promised that the learner would find themselves buttressed against the mental decay that went along with the difficult decisions that vampires often found themselves needing to make.

She went along with most of the recommendations for preparation, although murder was right out, obviously, because that was terrible. She focused Paula instead on feeding on animals, meditation, interaction with mortals, study of philosophy relating to the soul and morality, doing good deeds (why lower your humanity when you can raise it?), and intense psychoanalysis. She had a lot of trouble getting Paula to go along with the meditation; Grace herself had never had a problem with it, so she was at a bit of a loss as to what to Paula couldn't handle about being in a small, dark closed room for a few hours at a time. (...look, when you're occasionally awake for several days at a time you start forgetting how being a human works a little.) It was also impressed upon Paula that she should behave as closely as she could to how she did when she was a mortal and was isolated from other vampires (no one even knew she was Embraced, save the Prince and whatever bureaucrats handled the paperwork); Grace only informed her what Disciplines were after she started manifesting them, and told her not to use them—particularly not Majesty. She was also told to never, ever feed from non-consenting humans.

Finally, Grace was satisfied that Paula was ready to undergo the Chrysalis, and they took a trip to the Wyrm's Nest where Grace waited in quiet anticipation while Paula went through the transformation. There was a small earthquake during that time, but nothing that Grace thought disturbed the ritual at the time.

However, Paula emerged from the Chrysalis withdrawn and a little off-kilter—not unusual, but not the celebratory atmosphere Grace had been hoping for. To test whether it had worked and to celebrate, Grace took Paula out to mingle with mortals, but Paula shortly became a nervous wreck, and Grace had to take her home lest she accidentally frenzy and harm anyone.

Clearly something had gone wrong, but Grace wasn't sure what. California was, after all, known for earthquakes, and people regularly underwent the Chrysalis there anyway without difficulty; perhaps she hadn't been ready? Whatever had gone wrong, though, she was determined to fix it. She subjected Paula to a battery of psychoanalysis, relaxation techniques, and meditation. However, Paula just wanted to leave, finding the situation so upsetting, and finally Grace could do nothing but let her storm off, not wanting to hold her against her will and still wondering what had gone wrong.

She was distraught by her failure, and it ate at her. She wanted to be able to help Paula, but Paula wouldn't let her. In the end, she went to the Confessor, another Sworn of the Mysteries named Eleanor Bunker. She told her of what had happened, and the tremendous guilt she felt over it. Eleanor was, unbeknownst to Grace, a member of the Sworn of the Ladder, and saw that Grace wasn't looking for someone to tell her things were fine, but rather for a way to fix the wrong that had been done, and thought she might be Ladder-Sworn material. She had already caught their attention, but had not yet fulfilled a necessary criterion until that point—extensive experience with her own weaknesses and failings.

Eleanor told her that there had been wrong done, no doubt; that her pride had led her to push a change on her pupil before she was ready, thinking she knew best. It was part of their curse—particularly that of the Daeva—to be so beholden to their vices. But even that could be overcome, if one was resolved to take a course of holding oneself to the highest of moral standards and self-denial. Grace hesitated—realizing that what she was about to undertake would be no easy path—and then asked to be taught this way. And so not long later she was made a first-rung member of the Ladder-Sworn.

During the next ten years she worked diligently to restore the Humanity she hadn't even noticed herself losing, and trying to do right. She secretly worked to make things go smoothly for Paula in the place she had settled, and devoted much of her free time to charitable work. She started teaching low-cost self-defense classes for women and put the lion's share of her funds into projects that would better the community, and made a name for herself in the Ordo Dracul as a prominent ethicist on matters relating to the Great Work with her publications. And Eleanor and she discussed the nature of the world, the soul, and vampirism, and whether they could truly be free of this curse.

When a little over ten years had passed, Grace was approached by another long-time member of the Sworn of the Mysteries senior to her, who confronted her about her involvement with the Sworn of the Ladder and told her that she could remain a member of the Academy—so long as she renounced their heretical ways. Grace sorted out her thoughts very carefully. The Ordo Dracul had helped her overcome many obstacles, true, but they could never take away her knowledge—and the Ladder had offered her truth that she never could have found in the rest of the Ordo Dracul. She could never forsake it. She said she'd start packing her bags.

At which point her examiner smiled, and told her that she'd passed the test; she was now a second-rung member of the Sworn of the Ladder. She was introduce to several others of their number—she doesn't know how many there are in the area, since due to their heretical nature membership is kept very need-to-know, but she's fairly certain the Plague thinned their numbers considerably, as she suspects she's far younger than the standard recruiting age.

And so, that brings us to the present day.