Even though we know Count Dracula as the famous vampire who Bram Stoker He introduced us in his novel "Dracula", the origin of this character is more complex. Its roots are in Romania, where there are very old legends of wizards who dominated dragons and churches with murals dedicated to the Devil , really disturbing, but the true story of Count Dracula, the character that inspired his character, has much more real and less fiction.
The true story of Count Dracula it's not about vampires or anything supernatural, it's just about a man so bloodthirsty and ruthless, whose terribly cruel acts far outweigh the fiction embodied in the movies. Some of his contemporaries might have preferred it to be a being that fed on blood ... Meet Vlad Tepes, the real Count Dracula.
The true story of Count Dracula
Vlad Tepes III, born in 1413 in the historic region of Transylvania, was Prince of Wallachia and a great fighter against Ottoman expansionism.
He was nicknamed by his enemies as "Vlad the impaler" and the writer Bram Stoker was inspired by this prince to create the famous character of Count Dracula .
His father Count Dracul (which in ancient Romanian means "Dragon"), handed over two of his sons, Vlad and Radu, to the Turks as a guarantee of their submission to the Sultan. So Prince's childhood it was marked by death, assassinations, mistreatment and torture and it is said that he learned from the Turks the technique of impalement, which would later make him famous.
Vlad became Prince of Wallachia thanks to the support of the Turks, from there he became one of the monarchs most feared of the time, his enemies and anyone who did not comply with what the Prince stipulated died in one of the slowest and most painful ways there could be.
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It is said that he massacred Between 40,000 and 100,000 people . He was implacable, in the cities where he was not accepted as his new Prince, he proceeded to impale men, women and children alike. He always did this with large numbers of people, setting macabre "forests impaled" that freeze the blood of their enemies (and imagine that also their supporters).
In the true story of Count Dracula, this prince who inspired the character used to organize massive impalements With geometric shapes, a series of concentric rings around the city was the most common form. The technique that I used to use was to introduce a stick approximately 3.50 meters long by the rectum of people, fixed it in the flesh with a nail and then lifted it so that the victim died very slowly, it is believed that many of its victims were with life when their bodies touched the ground, which suggests that they were extremely careful not to pierce their hearts and thus the agony was much greater.
The other tortures of Vlad
But Prince Vlad not only impaled his enemies, but also he liked other torture techniques , which usually applied in the privacy of his castle. Some of those techniques were: extraction of eyes with hot hooks, amputation of limbs, ears and nostrils, strangulation, burning alive victims, in the case of women, he especially liked to amputate their breasts and cut their genitals.
The death of Vlad "The Impaler"
Vlad's greatest enemy, the one he could not defeat, was Mehmed II. After being defeated, The Impaler spent some years in prison and exiled.
In 1476, he tried to recover Wallachia with the support of the Moldavians and obtained, for a brief time, the throne that belonged to him. The victory was very short, because very soon after he was killed.
There are many versions of the death of the protagonist of the true story of Count Dracula. Some say he died on his way to fight another battle against the Ottomans. He fell into an ambush and his enemies definitively ended his life. According to the anecdotes about Vlad collected by Antonio Bonfini in Pannonian History (1495), Vlad The Impaler was beheaded and his head sent to Mehmed II.
In any case, it is unknown where his mortal remains lie.
Did Vlad Tepes live in Transylvania?
Although he was supposedly born in Transylvania, his connection to this region of Romania is very tenuous. According to the professor of Medieval History at the University of Florida, although Transylvania was the birthplace of Vlad "the Impaler", he never had any real possession in this area.
The typical Transylvanian Dracula castle, the Bran Castle , never served as a place of residence for Vlad III. In fact, possibly never got to step on it.
According to Curta, in fact, it is not clear that Vlad III was actually born in Transylvania, specifically in Sighişoara. The logical thing would be that he was born in Târgovişte, the place from which the principality of Wallachia used to be governed.
The Order of the Dragon and the nickname "Dracul"
In 1431, the father of the protagonist of the story of the true Count Dracula joined the Order of the Dragon, after being invited to it by King Segismundo of Hungary. This Order was aimed at defeating the Ottoman Empire that threatened to expand.
If you want to know more about this order of knights, discover: The order of the Dragon, the military group to which Vlad Tepes belonged "
Belonging to the Order of the Dragon earned him the nickname "Dracul", which as we mentioned earlier, means in ancient Romanian "dragon". Hence, Vlad Tepes III was known as "Drăculea", son of Dragon.
You may be interested to know that today "drac" means devil, so the nickname still takes more disturbing tints.
The true story Count Dracula, the Prince who inspired his character, is much more sinister and terrifying than the fictional character. What do you think about the story of Vlad Tepes III?
Image: phototouring , CristianChirita (Emblem of the Order of the Dragon)