Gillian Darmody is the mother of Jimmy Darmody, who she had at a very young age after being raped by The Commodore Louis Kaestner when she was 13. She caught his eye at a Neptune's Bounty parade and then-Sheriff Nucky Thompson brought her to him. She raised Jimmy on her own, with no real acknowledgement from the Commodore that Jimmy was his son. Gillian went on to become a burlesque dancer at the Cafe Beaux Arts and eventually would run a brothel.Despite her troubled past, Gillian is a proud mother who feels she has done everything she could to make a comfortable life for her son. Nonetheless, her relationship with and protectiveness of Jimmy borders on odd and disturbing and reaches one particularly uncomfortable moment before he goes off to fight in World War I.Gillian's relationship with Nucky is a troubled and complicated one. Nucky has been a father figure to Jimmy, but Gillian has never forgotten Nucky's role in bringing her to the Commodore and the resulting encounter that changed her life forever. She resents Nucky for this, but relies on him financially, as does most of the town.Her experience, for better or worse, has made Gillian a shrewd businesswoman in her own right and she's learned the process of getting ahead in Atlantic City through coercion and opportunism.