DRACULA MONSTER OF HERO

Who has not heard of Dracula today, is a classic and iconic character in the world of cinema and novels. Dracula is a novel published in 1897 by the Irishman Bram Stoker, who has turned his antagonist into the most famous vampire. It is said that the writer relied on the conversations he had with a Hungarian scholar named Arminius Vámbéry, who told him about Vlad Drăculea. The novel, written in an epistolary way, presents other themes, such as the role of women in the Victorian era, sexuality, immigration, colonialism or folklore. As a curiosity, it should be noted that Bram Stoker did not invent the vampiric legend, but the influence of the novel has managed to reach the cinema, theater and television.

Anime Hellsing main charater

character that has inspired endless movies and series.

Bela Lugosi in Dracula.

but this iconic character would be inspired by a man who has transcended in history for their acts, that some might consider as acts of barbarism and others as acts that saved an entire nation this man was Vlad Tepes, better known as vlad the impaler.

Nikolaus Modrussa said "He was not very tall, but he was corpulent and muscular. His appearance was cold and inspired a certain horror. He had an aquiline nose, dilated nostrils, a reddish, thin face, and very long eyelashes that overshadowed big, wide, gray eyes; His black, bushy eyebrows made him look menacing. He wore a mustache, and his prominent cheekbones made his face look even more energetic. A bull's neck clutched his head, from which a curly black mane hung on broad shoulders".

He was born in the Burgundian-Roman city of Sighişoara (Transylvania), between November or December of 1431, although the exact date is unknown. He was one of the three legitimate sons of Vlad Dracul, who for his heroic deeds against the Ottoman Turks had received from the King of Hungary, along with other Wallachian nobles, land in the region of Transylvania (then controlled by the Kingdom of Hungary).

Vlad was prince of Wallachia (old Danubian principality, that formed with Moldova the kingdom of Rumania in 1881). Today, it constitutes two well-defined geographical regions: the Muntenia, located east of the Olt River, and the Oltenia, to the west, and historically were always two distinct Romanian regions.

His traumatic childhood was very determining when forming his future as a prince. At age 13, in 1444, he was handed over to the Turks as a hostage along with his brother Radu (in Romanian Radu cel Frumos) by his father, as a sign of submission to the Sultan and as a guarantee. He was raised by the same Murat II (father of Mehmed II, who had him as a brother) in cities such as Adrianople, Egniojsor, Ened and Ninfamén, in order to avoid a new betrayal by Vlad's father.

When he returned from exile he learned that in 1447 his father, Vlad Dracul, had been beaten to death and his brother Mircea had been burned with a red-hot iron before being buried alive. Both facts were ordered by the count Juan Hunyadi (in Romanian Ioan de Hunedoara and old ally of Vlad II,) and supported by the boyardos (the local aristocracy), to which Vlad had since then eternal hatred.

The Turks supported him until he became king of Wallachia (before he even became Prince of Transylvania, but only for a few months), in September 1448, but the Hungarians expelled him a few months later by order of Juan Hunyadi.

For eight years Vlad was traveling around the bordering places of Wallachia seeking support. It is known that at this time he contacted his cousin Esteban el Grande of Moldova, who would help him in the future against the Turks when he became voivode of his country. He also learned several political-military tactics.

He was in the court of Juan Hunyadi, who, impressed by his knowledge of the Turks and his hatred of the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, forgave him and took him as a counselor. Eventually he would become the Hungarian candidate for the throne of Wallachia.

Principality (1456-1462)

When Vlad learned that the Turks had been rejected by the Hungarians, he took to the seizure of power; held by Vladislav II, who was supported by the Hungarians and the population of German origin in addition to being a protege of the Turks. Together with a Transylvanian military contingent, led by a nobleman of the House of Báthory, he defeated the voivode and had him executed in the public square of Târguşor (near Târgovişte, the former capital of Wallachia, just where his brother had died. ). Once he became prince, in 1456, the Christian kingdoms recognized him as such.

The first part of Vlad's kingdom was dominated by the idea of ​​eliminating threats to his power, especially of groups of nobles, such as boyars. This was achieved by physical elimination, but also by reducing the economic role of the nobility: the most important positions in the Council of Princes, which normally went to the most powerful boyars, were given to unknown individuals, some of foreign origin, but loyal to Vlad.

For less important positions Vlad also ignored the boyars. One of the bases of the power of the nobility of Valaquia was its connections to the autonomous cities of Transylvania populated by people of Saxon origin. Vlad acted against them by eliminating their privileges in relation to Wallachia and organizing attacks against them.

It was ruthless and in the cities where they did not accept executions were carried out by impaling men, women and children, as in the cases of the Transylvanian city of Kronstadt (Braşov) and Hermannstadt (Sibiu), both cities inhabited by German settlers who did not want trade with him or they did not want to pay tribute. In 1459 he caused 30,000 German settlers (Saxons) and officers to be impaled.

With this he would begin his career of brutal massacres, among which are attributed the extermination of between 40,000 and 100,000 people between 1456 and 1462, facts detailed in documents and engravings of the time, which showed his taste for blood and the impalement, for what began to be called Ţepeş which means in Romanian: impaler.

Revenge against the noble boyars

One of his actions of massive impalement was in his revenge against the boyars, murderers of his father and his older brother. Vlad carried out this revenge at the Easter of 1459, inviting the boyars to a great Easter dinner and asking them to put on their best clothes. When they finished dinner, Vlad had the older ones impaled, while the youngsters were forced to go from Târgovişte to a ruined castle on a hill near the Argeş River. The boyars were on foot and many perished on the way, but those who arrived still alive were forced to build Dracula's castle and, thus, their precious gala clothes were turned into rags, while, forced to build the castle, they went dying of fatigue and exhaustion throughout the months before the Delight of the Impaler.

Vlad liked to organize mass impalements with geometric shapes. The most common was a series of concentric rings of impaling around the cities they were going to attack. The altitude of the stake indicated the rank the victim had had in life. Often, Vlad left them rotting for months. A Turkish army that tried to invade Wallachia turned back, terrified, when it found several thousand impaled decomposing at the top of its stakes, on both banks of the Danube, and because of that he save his people from being invaded and possibly devastated by the Turks.

National hero

Since the nineteenth century it has been considered by Romanian poets and painters as a ruler whose tyranny was justified by the cruelty of the times and the struggle against the Turks and the noble boyars. Ion Budai-Deleanu wrote an epic poem based on his figure: Ţiganiada (published posthumously in 1875, almost a century after its composition). In the same Vlad appears as a hero who fights the boyars, the Ottomans and the strigoi (vampires) in front of an army of angels and gypsies. In the mid-nineteenth century, the poet Dimitrie Bolintineanu glorified the triumphs of Dracula in his work "Battles of the Romanians", the savage actions of Vlad Tepes were considered necessary to prevent the despotism of the local nobility. The great Romanian poet, Mihai Eminescu, in his ballad "The Third Letter" refers to the courageous Vlachian princes among whom includes Vlad III.

In 1976, the government of Nicolae Ceauşescu declared him Hero of the nation on the fifth centenary of his death13 and the Romanian Communist Party reaffirmed Tepes as a hero and a statesman whose cruelty was justified for political purposes. No However, according to some researchers like Dr. Duncan Light, the importance of Vlad Tepes for Communist Romania has sometimes been exaggerated in the West:

"Vlad was a figure who could only perform limited service for the Romanian Communist Party [...] The short and ultimately unsuccessful reign of Vlad was insufficient to elevate him to the top of the pantheon of national heroes. Communist Romania were: Lucian Boia, Mircea the Elder, Michael the Brave, Esteban the Great, Tudor Vladimirescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Nicolae Bălcescu and also a significant number of Dacian kings, Vlad Ţepeş seems to have been considered a historical figure worthy of Mention for his attempts to defend the independence of Wallachia but whose other achievements were limited. [...] Vlad Ţepeş was not (as is sometimes claimed) an exalted and idealized figure of the first order in the national pantheon, but rather a hero of "second rank": someone esteemed, but whose utility for the regime was limited ".