Grandma Barksdale

Helen Morgendorffer's mother, who is never directly seen or heard from in the Daria series. Her presence, however, is felt from Erin's wedding onward ("I Don't"). It is implied that she is unable to travel, and also implied that she is well off enough financially to afford showering Rita and her daughter Erin with gifts and windfalls. (Glenn Eichler has said Helen didn't grow up in a wealthy household, but the show itself does show Barksdale with money)

Of her three daughters, she is closest to Rita Barksdale and appears to favor her over Helen and Amy. This spawned a long-running feud between the three sisters that is finally (one hopes) resolved in "Aunt Nauseam." Before then, Helen occasionally rants about the unfair treatment Rita gets, said rants being remarkably similar to her husband Jake Morgendorffer's rants against his father.

Fanfiction

The character was expanded in numerous fanfics, with many divergent names.

C.E. Forman gave her an equally wealthy half-sister, Aunt Eleanor, and the same rivalry that Helen/Rita had with Amy and Quinn with Daria. Kara Wild named her Evelyn in the Driven Wild Universe and made her generally crusty, but loving. Later, Richard Lobinske would create Tess Barksdale, the southern matriarch in the fanfiction series, Falling Into College. Roentgen introduced a Bethany Barksdale for The Hallowed Halls of Fielding, a connected upper-class matriach, paying for Quinn & Daria's Fielding Prep education and ignoring Helen's authority in her attempts to mould Quinn into a 'proper' high society lady. Brian Taylor's Moving Pictures has Edie Barksdale, a moderately wealthy woman who remarried in the 1980s and has a disintegrating relationship with her daughters Helen and Amy.