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For the basis of Stoker's "Count Dracula of Bistritz," there was a real Dracula. Not a count, but a prince, one whose life is the topic of much controversy even today. Though there is no historic connection between Prince Dracula and vampires, even in Romanian myth, his actions could almost be seen as vampiric. For it was his actions that inspired Bram Stoker to subtly base his 1897 novel on the mysterious Vlad the Impaler.
(Full name: Vlad Draculea III, AKA Vlad Tepes/Tsepesh) Dracula/Draculea (variant spellings) means "Son of the Dragon," as "Dracul" means "Dragon" and the "a" signifies the "offspring of." Tepes is pronounced "tse-pesh." As his father’s name was Vlad Dracul, that is where "Dracula" is derived from. There is controversy over whether "Dracul" means "Dragon" or actually "Devil," as the two words are basically synonymous in Romania.
Born in in the Transylvanian town of Sighisoara/Schassburg in 1431 to Vlad Dracul II ("Vlad the Great") and Princess Cneajna, Vlad III was heir to his father’s throne in Wallachia and a voivode (warlord prince/governor) who joined the Order of the Dragon, an order founded by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1387 for the objectives of protecting the German king, defending Catholicism against the partisans of Jan Hus and other heretics, and crusading against the infidel Ottoman Turks. His father preceded him as a member of the order.
For the sake of Wallachia’s safety, Vlad Dracula III’s
father turned he and his brother over to the Turks, the mortal
enemies of his family and country. In late 1447, both Prince Vlad
Dracul II and Mircea Dracula, Vlad III’s older brother, broke
their pact with the Turkish Sultan and were caught and assassinated
in marshes near Bucharest. Vlad Dracula was eventually allowed
to claim power in Wallachia in 1448, but was soon overthrown.
His mind set on vengeance and his heart pumping with rage, Vlad
returned to Wallachia in 1456 with the support of Hungary, claimed
his birthright, and showed his enemies no mercy in a reign that
lasted until 1462. Taking up the ruthless practice of impaling
his enemies (for which he will always be known historically as
"Vlad the Impaler"; Vlad Tepes), he decorated his entire
courtyard with hundreds upon hundreds of long stakes, an impaled
victim on every one. Romanian folklore says his mad hatred went
beyond the enemies of his homeland into his own country—that
he’d carve unborn babies from their unwed mothers, hammer
nails into the skulls of ambassadors sent on errands of peace,
seal and burn down halls where the poor would gather to eat and
rest, among just a few of the grisly acts he was said to perform
on whomever he deemed it justified on.
The papal legate Modrussa reported to Pope Pius II how, in his years of reign before 1462, Dracula had killed 40,000 of his political foes:
He killed some of them by breaking them under the wheels of carts; others, stripped of their clothes, were skinned alive up to their entrails; others placed on stakes, or roasted on red-hot coals placed under them; others punctured with stakes piercing their head, their navel, breast, and, what is even unworthy of relating, their buttocks and the middle of their entrails, and, emerging from their mouths; in order that no form of cruelty be missing, be stuck stakes in both breasts of mothers and thrust their babies onto them; he killed others in other ferocious ways, torturing them with varied instruments such as the atrocious cruelties of the most frightful tyrants could devise.
One event demonstrating Vlad's "respect of diplomatic usage" during a reception of a Genoese delegation from Caffa, narrarated by Michael Beheim:
I have found that some Italians [i.e., Genoese] came as ambassadors to his court. As they came to him they took off their hats and hoods facing the prince. Under the hat, each of them wore a coif or a little skullcap that he did not take off, as is the habit among Italians. Dracula then asked them for an explanation of why they had only taken their hats off, leaving their skullcaps on their heads. To which they answered: "This is our custom. We are not obliged to take our skullcaps off under any circumstances, even an audience with the sultan or the Holy Roman Emperor." Dracula then said, "In all fairness, I want to strengthen and recognize your customs." They thanked him bowing to him and added, "Sire we shall always serve you with your interests if you show us such goodness, and we shall praise your greatness everywhere." Then in a deliberate manner this tyrant and killer did the following: he took some big iron nails and planted them in a circle in the head of each ambassador. "Believe me," he said while his attendants nailed the skullcaps on the heads of the envoys, "this is the manner in which I will strengthen your customs."
A paraphrased Romanian peasant ballad:
One day Dracula met a peasant who was wearing too short a shirt. One could also notice his homespun peasant trousers, which were glued to his legs, and one could make out the sides of his thighs. When he saw him [dressed] in this manner, Dracula immediately ordered him to be brought to his court. "Are you married?" he inquired. "Yes, I am, Your Highness." "Your wife is assuredly of the kind who remains idle. How is it possible that your shirt does not cover the calf of your leg? She is not worthy of living in my realm. May she perish!" "Beg forgiveness, my lord, but I am satisfied with her. She never leaves home and she is honest." "You will be more satisfied with another since you are a decent and hardworking man." Two of Dracula's men had in the meantime brought the wretched woman to him, and she was immediately impaled. Then bringing another woman, he gave her away to be married to the peasant widower. Dracula, however, was careful to show the new wife what had happened to her predecessor and explain to her the reasons why she had incurred the princely wrath. Consequently, the new wife worked so hard she had no time to eat. She placed the bread on one shoulder, the salt on another, and worked in this fashion. She tried hard to give greater satisfaction to her new husband than the first wife and not to incur the curse of Dracula.
One example of Vlad Dracula's cruelty in Romanian folklore:
If any wife had an affair outside of marriage, Dracula ordered her sexual organs cut. She was then skinned alive and exposed in her skinless flesh in a public square, her skin hanging separately from a pole or placed on a table in the middle of the marketplace. The same punishment applied to maidens who did not keep their virginity, and also to unchaste widows. For lesser offenses, Dracula was known to have the nipple of a woman's breast cut off. He also once had a red-hot iron stake shoved into a woman's vagina, making the instrument penetrate her entrails and emerge from her mouth. He then had the woman tied to a pole naked and left her exposed there until the flesh fell from the body, and the bones detached themselves from their sockets.
A description of Vlad's "forest of the impaled" from Tursun Bey, a late fifteenth century Turkish chronicler:
In front of the wooden fortress where he had his residence, he set up at a distance of six leagues two rows of fence with impaled Hungarians, Moldavians and Wallachians. In addition, since the neighboring area was forested, innumerable people were hanging from each tree branch, and he ordered that if anyone should take one of the hanging victims down, he would hang in his place.
A story confirming thievery was virtually unknown in Wallachia throughout Vlad's reign:
A golden cup was purposely left by Dracula near a certain fountain located near the source of a river. Travelers from many lands came to drink at this fountain, because the water was cool and sweet. Dracula had intentionally put this fountain in a deserted place to test dishonest wayfarers. So great was the fear of impalement, however, that so long as he lived no one dared to steal the cup, and it was left at its place.
Vlad Dracula's life would
indeed know many sacrifices and hardships, but it would also know
many victories. 1453 saw the fall of the Roman fortress at Constantinople,
though that was not a battle without consequence. Nevertheless,
it was a battle Vlad and his army played a pivotal role in. A
series of overwhelmingly victorious attacks made through both
Wallachia and Transylvania in 1456 made Prince Dracula a feared
and hated name to many. In the winter of 1459 Dracula organized
one of his most devastating raids on Transylvanian soil, with
the clear intention of trying to seize Dan III and his supporters,
burning villages, forts, towns, and crops to deprive the population
of food, and killed men, women, and children as he progressed
along the valley of the Prahova River. Dan III was captured in
1460 by Wallachians and forced to dig his own grave before Vlad
personally beheaded him. 1462 saw the suicide of his Transylvanian
first wife (though it is unclear if they were actually ever wed),
who threw herself into the river and killed herself after hearing
false news of her husband’s death. It is said a Turk firing
an arrow with a scroll through her window relayed this false news.
At
the end of 1462, however, the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus
began to fear Vlad’s restlessness and willpower, so he had
him imprisoned for a period of twelve years, not releasing him
until 1474. It was not until November of 1476 that Vlad was able
to reclaim the title of voivode. During the course of his
conflicts, Dracula had to abandon the Orthodox Christian faith
and become a Roman Catholic to secure a much needed hard-and-fast
military alliance with the Hungarians. This was secured with the
marriage of his second wife, King Matthias’ cousin, Ilona
Szilágy, in 1475.
His bloody campaign against the Turks going on for decades, his battles finally came to an end one December in 1476. Decapitated in a marsh near Snagov by a Turkish assassin disguised as one of his own men, Vlad’s head was allegedly taken back to Constantinople to be displayed before his enemies. His remains later buried near a monastery in Snagov, Vlad was thought laid to rest for eternity.
When excavation digs turned up empty centuries later, the mystery then began: what happened to the body?
Bram Stoker had his own answer, written and told to the ages in the form of his famous novel, Dracula. Undead after a rebirth, his memories of his former life only a vague recollection in the back of his mind, Vlad Dracula embraced his vampirism, using his genius to the cause of evil and his own arcane purposes.
During his lifetime he had three children with two women. The first was with his first wife, an unknown Transylvanian noblewoman [rumored to be named ‘Elisabeta’] who committed suicide in 1462. By this woman he had Mihnea "the Bad" Dracula, who was the Prince of Wallachia from 1508 to 1510, had two wives (first Smaranda, then Voica), had two sons and a daughter by Voica, and then was stabbed to death by the Serbian assassin, Dimitrije Iaxici. The second and third was with Ilona Szilágy, the cousin of the King of Hungary whom he married in 1475. From Ilona, Dracula fathered Vlad Dracula IV, another claimant to the Wallachian throne, and then an unknown third child who lived much of his life with the Bishop of Oradea before dying of unknown causes (written to be an unspecified mortal ailment of some kind) in 1482. Mixing history with Bram Stoker and then with CastleVania, it could be said that the mysterious third child of Vlad Dracula is Alucard (whose fictionally real name is Adrian Fahrenheights Tepes), the "forgotten son of Dracula" who first assisted Trevor C. Belmont in Dracula’s Curse, became the main character in Symphony of the Night, and was then seen in the Dracula’s Curse prequel, Legends.
Which brings us to Count Dracula, the Belmont Clan, and CastleVania itself...
Prince Vlad Dracula III died in December of 1476. This we know. But the lingering question remains, embroidered in American myth: did he survive? And if so, and that answer lay in his becoming a vampire, then how did that transpire? How did Dracula defy the grave?
There are two popularized explanations for how Dracula became a vampire.
The first can be found in Francis Ford Coppola’s somewhat recent Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie. This film depicted a grief-stricken Vlad returning from a victorious campaign against the Ottoman Turks in 1462 to find his wife dead, having committed suicide after thinking her husband killed. When he is told that his wife could not ascend to Heaven as a result of her suicide, he renounced God and swore to rise from his death to avenge hers with all the powers of darkness. It could be conjectured that when Vlad was assassinated fourteen years later on 1476, he did, in fact, rise from his death, then given the virtual immortality that comes with being a vampire.
The second, and more interesting, can be found in Topps Comics’ Dracula: Vlad the Impaler mini-series. In issue 3 of 3, the final moments of Vlad’s life in 1476 are depicted, in which a Turkish assassin beheads him. Over fifty years later, while Vlad’s headless corpse was kept in Snagov Monastery, Radu, son of Alexandru, the deceased Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, retrieved and brought the head to the monastery. Attempting to resurrect Vlad through an incantation he began to chant, his words were interrupted by one of the monks he had thought dead, who lunged and stabbed Radu in the back. As Radu’s blood spilled onto the corpse of Vlad, the deceased prince rose from his coffin, resurrected through the life’s blood of his lineage. Vlad then put one of the dead monks’ bodies into his now-empty coffin, hoping to retain the mystery of his rebirth.
