Mixing Myth with Reality - 1. Dracula's Secrets

This is an idea that first appeared in the Confusing English thread and at Tree's advice I gave it its own topic. Here we can discuss legends, see how they translate to other cultures and get to analyze them a bit.

As a proud Romanian, I'll take the freedom and provide some info on our beloved Count Dracula.

So, let's see where it all began, and how he grew to be this immortal figure everyone knows today.

It's certainly no coincidence that Bram Stoker chose the Balkans as home of his famous character, Count Dracula the vampire. The region was still quite behind with the new trends of the Occident, finding itself in a situation not so different to the Dark Ages. Legends and accounts of the supernatural, mostly springing from pre-Christian beliefs still throned over rules and order as the people basically fought for survival.

Vampirism became an epidemic in that part of the world and soon the bug spread to the neighbor countries. The stories of immortals and demons soon took over the hearts of the eager, and it finally became a new fashion to venture into the Balkans looking for people that could suck out your blood and turn into bats. Bram Stoker wasn't the only one to write about this kind of creatures, but he was the only one capable of weaving such a story around them that it never got erased from history. He was the one that ignited the modern hunger for supernatural.



Most believe that Stoker's Dracula was based on the historical figure Vlad Tepes (read Tse-Pesh), one of the 15th century rulers of Wallachia, a Balkanic region which is now part of the modern Romania.

The idea is backed up by a lot of historical proof which underlines the striking similarities between the two. 'Tepes', the name his people gave to him can be translated as 'the Impaler', name he received because of his gruesome hobby of impaling his enemies on stokes and displaying them publicly to frighten and warn the others. He is credited with killing between 40000-100000 people during his reign.



King Sigismund of Hungary, who became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410, founded a secret order of knights called The Order of the Dragon to fight for Christianity against the Ottoman Turks. The order's emblem was a dragon with its wings extended, which stood beneath a cross. Vlad II (Vlad the Impaler's father) was admitted to the order in 1431 because of the bravery he had shown in previous battles against the Turks.

After that, he took the name of Dracul - Drac being an old Romanian word for Dragon, and -ul being a definite article. Therefore, his name was Vlad the Dragon. Tepes took the name of Dracul after his father, under a form that changed a bit due to tradition. '-ulea' is a Romanian termination that gives a name the meaning 'the son of', therefore Vlad III got dubbed Vlad Dracula, Vlad the Son of the Dragon.



Vlad III was born in 1431 (November or December) in the Transylvanian city of Sighisoara while his father (Vlad Dracul) was living in exile in Transylvania. He had an older brother, Mircea and a younger one, Radu ( called the Handsome ). After his father won back the Wallachian throne from rivals, Vlad was appointed the best teachers to provide him with a proper education for a Christian knight.

At the age of 13, in 1444; young Vlad and his brother Radu were sent to Adrianopole as hostages. He returned home after four years, having Turkish support for acceding to Wallachia's throne. His initial reign only lasted for about two weeks, but he later reclaimed it with the help of the Kingdom of Hungary. He made Targoviste the capital and started what remained known in history as his reign of terror.



More than anything else, the historical Dracula is known for his inhuman cruelty. Impalement was Vlad III's preferred method of torture and execution. Impalement was and is one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable, as it was typically slow and painful.

- Click this link for more info on impalement. Be warned that the following info is rated R for violence. -

Vlad Tepes often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common was a ring of concentric circles at the outskirts of a city that was his target. The hight of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The decaying corpses were often left up for months. It was once r�ported that an invading Turkish army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. This moment is remembered in history as the 'Forest of the Impaled'.

Thousands were sometimes impaled at the same time. Ten thousand were killed in the Trensylvanian city of Sibiu in 1460. In 1459, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Vlad III had thirty thousand merchants and boyars of the Transylvanian city of Brasov impaled. His victims included women and children, peasants and great lords, ambassadors and merchants. However, the vast majority of his victims came from the merchants and boyars of Transylvania and his own Wallachia. To be noted that they were all guilty of some sort of crime, even though he was pretty harsh, he didn't kill innocents.

Although impalement was Vlad's favorite method of torture, it wasn't the only one he used. Nails in heads, cutting limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting of noses and ears, scalping, skinning and others were on his list too.

He died in 1476 while leading yet another battle against the Turks. His body was beheaded and his head taken to Constantinopole. Legend tells us that he was buried in a monastery in Snagov, somewhere near Bucharest. His alleged grave was excavated and was found apparently empty, even though some say the crew who investigated the site actually found a beheaded body dressed in rich garments.

That's about all for now. For further reading you can check out this site .

Tell me what you think..let's discuss on this. I'll post useful pictures soon enough.

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Fleur, that's a very cool topic! I love Dracula and all the history surrounding it. I also like gruesome stuff, so thumbs up to you, I'm loving that Razz

Post more infos! I'd link the pictures, though. Wink

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Post subject: Psycho? Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 09:21 PM

Oh oh! This is awesome! I love all things Dracula also! *Not to mention my favorite actor played in a movie about him ^_~*

He was a pretty messed up guy, huh? What made him like that? I'm not really keen on the full history behind him, but I know the jist of it. What made him so... blood-thirsty (nehe)? I mean, can you imagine the emotional damage that a person would undergo if they stumbled onto a whole field of rotting, bloody, impaled corpses (some of which might not be corpses, but still dieing!)?

<span style="color:009933;font-family:Kristen ITC;font-size:x-small;]~Maddie [/color]

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Post subject: Re: Psycho? Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:01 AM

That was exceedingly interesting. I admit to never having read Bram Stoker's Dracula but it's up there on the list of things I need to read. I am very fascinated with vampires but they tend to be more of the Anne Rice type.

I think the thing I like the most about vampires, whether they be old school or Rice created, is the eccentricity that is required to live forever. I could go on and on about Lestat and company but as it is I don't really have a focus and it would just be rambling and repetitive. I'll save you all from that.

EDIT - Because I can't type.

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Post subject: Re: Psycho? Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 06:39 AM

Heh, I'm just reading 'Interview with a Vampire' Emo. You should read Dracula though, you get to see a whole different view upon vampires. Dracula's a compilation of all those things Louis calls vampire myth. Wink

Anyway, I found a good map of the Balkans a bit after Vlad's time, from 1560. You can find both Transylvania and Wallachia on it. I'll post it now and get back to my research. I'll be back with more info soon. I'll bring up his castles, see where the real Dracula lived and maybe find out more about his background.

This is the crest of the Order of the Dragon

And this is Vlad Tepes.

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Post subject: Re: Psycho? Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 09:13 AM

Quote::

He was a pretty messed up guy, huh? What made him like that? I'm not really keen on the full history behind him, but I know the jist of it. What made him so... blood-thirsty (nehe)?

Well, first of all he did it from apparent necessity, even though I'm sure he could have come up with another method to kill all those men without remaining written in history for it.

That period was a dark one for the Balkans. The Turks were conquering everything that stood in their way toward the west. They brought another style of living, another religion, things that the Christian knights could not accept. What's more, even the inner-politics of a country were full of conspiracies, of traitors and spies for the Turks, and Vlad knew that, so he basically set out to eliminate corruption.

As I said before he didn't kill innocent people. He killed the boyars, the land owners that double crossed and outlived more that seven rulers each, he went after the merchants that took advantage of the poor and sucked all the valuable resources out of the country without giving anything back, and at last, he went after thieves of all kinds, from the really rich ones to the poor that preferred stealing to actually working for a decent living. And he also appears to have valued chastity among women, as he also impaled unfaithful wives and easy women, sometimes along with their bastard children.

He gave a lot to his people, and he awaited to be respected an obeyed in return. But nobody denies that he truly got some weird pleasure out of his gruesome acts. That's why he qualified for Dracula's character.

He did have a really messed up life, that much we know. He was given to the Turks as hostage when he was 13, his father and elder brother were killed due to a conspiracy - whose planners died eventually by Vlad's hand - , he was later exiled in Transylvania and saw his wife jump of the castle walls to her death refusing to surrender to the Turks, and had to fight his own younger brother Radu to get Wallachia's throne back. All these things can drive a person quite out of his mind.

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Post subject: Re: Psycho? Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 11:22 PM

Ugh, this is all kind of complicated. Most peoples' histories are complicated if you don't take the time to study them and I haven't studied very well... Anyway, So he basically killed all wrong-doers that he could get his hands on? Or just the Turkish wrong-doers? I've probably missed this somewhere, but where exactly was his main point of focus?

I could see where there could be a bit(heh) of insanity in him after you explained his past. It's kind of like everyone either turned on him or was killed by people who turned on him... Is it right to have a bit of sympathy? I certainly don't agree with the mass killing, but wasn't it kind of common back then?

<span style="color:009933;font-family:Kristen ITC;font-size:x-small;]~Maddie [/color]

<span style="color:996633;font-family:Socket;font-size:medium;]*You KNOW you wantsome *[/color]

Post subject: Re: Re: Psycho? Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2004 05:14 AM

Well, he basically killed both turks and his own kind when he had a reason for it. He saw no difference between enemies and traitors, so he just took them all out.

And I guess it was kind of common. In other parts of the world they burnt people, they beheaded them, but he still stood out of the crowd because he didn't kill one person at a time, he wouldn't settle for anything under a thousand. *shivers*

And I guess that a little sympathy is understandable, I feel the same way, he was just another tragic hero. Plus he died so young, what was he, 30 something..I hope he found his rest in the after life.

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Post subject: Re: Re: Psycho? Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2004 03:16 PM

Wow Fleur! This is a really cool topic! Thanks a lot for the interesting, and for those of us with a limited attention span like myself, concise information! I am in awe.

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I read Braham Stoker's Dracula a few years ago. I generally avoid horror of any kind (am a wimp when it comes to horror movies etc.), which is why I hadn't read it before. However, I figured that I am an adult, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were good, and back then, they didn't have horror like they do today, so it's gotta be alright. Ha! I tell you! Ha!

OK, it wasn't gruesome, just  eerie. The whole atmosphere of the book was quite frightening, despite the lack of graphic scenes. It was absolutely brilliant in that sense. I've actually gotten up the courage to watch a couple of Dracula movies since, but none of them were as scary as that book is. I had to force myself to stick with the book, even though it gave me nightmares - almost as bad (but not quite) as those I had during my Holocaust Lit. class at uni - but the atmosphere held me until the end. Although I must say that I'm not keen on reading it again.

Anyway, it's really great to have the background information on the guy. There is a little info in the book I have, but nowhere near as well presented as yours is.

Vlad sounds like he had a lot of problems. OK, I can sympathise with the problems of the day and age as with his horrid childhood, and you can't fault him for being like everyone else was back then, but that still doesn't give me any fuzzy, warm feelings about him.

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