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It strikes me that most people do not realize that Count Dracula is a historical figure and not just a figment of Abraham Stoker’s overfired imagination. The difficulty in unearthing the “real Dracula,” however, is in attempting to separate factual, documented history from myth and legend. And that gets sticky. Cause writing it down don’t make it history.

Here is some verifiable history, though (as verifiable as history gets, anyway). In 1408 Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary Sigismund of Luxemburg established the Order of the Dragon, a group of nobles dedicated to protecting Christianity from its enemies, particularly the Ottoman Empire. (The Order of the Dragon itself has an interesting history, but as it isn’t particularly relevant to Count Dracula, I leave it to the reader to dig that up yourself. ) As its emblem, the Order adopted a dragon with its tail coiled around its back to symbolize The Beast from the Book of Revelations and a cross down its back to symbolize Christ’s victory over evil, which members of the Order were to wear at all times.

In 1431 Vlad II, a Romanian noble and military commander, was inducted into the Order of the Dragon. Because he displayed the Dragon emblem on everything from flags and banners to coins, helmets, and tunics, his own people began to call him “Vlad Dracul,” Dracul meaning “dragon” in Romanian. Romania in those times was divided into two parts, Wallachia and Transylvannia; with Emperor Sigismund’s support, Vlad II was soon elected Prince of Wallachia. That winter, a son was born to Vlad II in Sighisoara, Transylvannia — Vlad III, who was himself inducted into the Order at the age of five.

Vlad II soon found himself threatened with invasion from the Ottoman sultan. In exchange for leaving Wallachia alone, Vlad II agreed to become the sultan’s vassal and gave up his two sons, Vlad III and Radu (later known as Radu the Handsome) as collateral for his promise. As a hostage of the Ottomans, Vlad III was subjected to cruel treatment himself and also witnessed all manner of torture inflicted on other prisoners, particularly the practice known as impaling. It is suggested that these early experiences were what first gave Vlad III a taste for torture.

Upon the death of his father in 1447, the Ottoman sultan released Vlad III and placed him on the throne of Wallachia, intending to rule Vlad II’s kingdom through the sixteen-year-old. It was during his reign (or, more precisely, reigns — there were technically three) that he gained the moniker “Vlad Draculea,” Draculea meaning “son of Dracul” or “son of the dragon.” Dracula is a later transliteration of Draculea.

Vlad Dracula also gained a reputation for cruelty and bloodlust, though this is where the waters get a bit murky in terms of historical accuracy. Attrocities attributed to him by popular legend and folk history include a variety of torture methods such as dismemberment, nails in the head, skinning, scalping, boiling alive, blinding, strangulation, mutilation, and having the prisoner buried up to his waist and then shot at. His favorite by far was said to be impaling, a method of execution that often took days to kill its victims; the prisoner was impaled alive from one end of the body through the other, and then the spear was set in the ground. Vlad was said to leave the spears with their rotting corpses up for months at a time, sometimes arranged in geometrical patterns that suited him. He was also said to have enjoyed dining amonst the impaled corpses.

For this reason, he was give the post-mortem title of Vlad Ţepeş, meaning “Vlad the Impaler.” Additionally, the Romanian word for dragon, “Dracul,” literally means “serpent,” and was the same word used for Satan or Devil in religious contexts. Combine this with Vlad’s subjects abject fear of him and the stories of his brutality, and it isn’t hard to see why the name Vlad Dracula later came to be interpretted by some as “Vlad, son of the Devil.”

Given the political climate in which he lived, Vlad the Impaler’s life and true nature are likely to have been the subject of much exaggeration and sensationalism. In spite of the debatable stories of cruelty and torture, he is remembered in Romania as a national hero who defended his kingdom against the Hungarians and Turks.

So why, then, did Stoker choose Dracula and Transylvannia for his vampire story?

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…or at least that I consider having been worth mine. Then again, I can’t so much as walk into a bookstore without coming out with something. These are my “two thumbs up” picks. (more…)