The Gothic Victorian age, or simply the Victorian Age, is the setting of Victorian Age: Vampire. The name "Gothic Victorian" references the two sensibilities that inform the setting: the brooding, doomed romanticism of classical Gothic fiction, and the reign of Queen Victoria I of the United Kingdom, who ruled the British Empire from June 20, 1837 until her death on January 22, 1901. These two sensibilities both infer a concern with radical social change as it alternately coexists and clashes with the repressive weight of tradition. The Gothic Victorian age as featured in Victorian Age: Vampire spans the time from 1890 to 1897, and ends not with Victoria's death but with the publication of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula - an event that rocked the world of the Kindred to its core.