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The following link shows how mainstream Culture is altering.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293851/Inspiration-Bram-Stokers-Dracula-bad-simply-misunderstood-new-exhibition-claimed.html

So was he a victim of the ancient press? or a man who used the Occult to protect kith and kin from the Turks?
Or just used as a scapegoat to hide a wider truth?
Your views.

In truth it is a bad rep because of the dramatization of Bram Stoker. In that time period, cruelty was common place. War was brutal, and there was no better psychological weapon then just out right savagery.

Do any kind of research on any great warlord or military leader of that time period (or really any time period) and you will find similar (if not worse) canidates. Even the great Richard I (The Lion Hearted) did things during his campaigns in the Middle East that are a far cry from his noble idolization.

Dear Green Night, I value deeply the fact that you brought this subject to the VR members and I thank you for that.

However no one should just give an opinion based on a simple reading of such an article.
Or IF he/she does it has absolutely no relevance and no other person with a good reason would take it into consideration.


The truth is hard to be found in the mist of history.

I invite all the VR members who really want to find the truth (not only the ones who post in the forums opinions for gaining a faster leveling up) to join me in the quest for finding more about this "dominus" who was a fascinating (I avoid to say good or bad) medieval figure.

I didn`t use just his well-known image (as another group on VR does), but I tried to read more about him and share a few of my findings in the books of historians about Vlad, the person who served of one of the inspiration sources for the modern myth of vampires.

Please visit this VR page here:

https://www.vampirerave.com/houses/house_page.php?house=fruit&page=4626


I have a constant preoccupation about this and I share information with the members of The Coven Of The Forbidden Fruit and my mentorship : Transilvanian Dark Romanticism.

I would share this rare information with all the Vampire Members on this site on the present forums but they are closed sometimes too early or many people just post based their opinion and this shortens the life of the thread.







My response on your question:

Yes!

Vlad II Tepes AKA Dracula was the victim of the first press campaign in history since the spreading of the modern printing technology.

This doesn`t mean he didn`t killed people in battle or applied the bloody laws of the political adversaries on themselves even when these laws implied torturing them until death.

If you really want to find out the truth READ, don`t just post impressions.
READ studies and books about the past.They will give you a healthy reason and will give you sane dreams.


Read many books on a single subject, or even better, read the original old sources! Many are cited or reprinted today.
In my view, translatig the books of historians on the subject and translating the original medieval chronicles has at least the same importance with writing tones of vampire erotica.Sadly the English speaking world is more interesting in the second right now, so you don`t have also the information related to the man who made Stoker, and us all, dream!

I can not edit my messages but it`s Vlad III Tepes, not Vlad II Tepes(At least this is the now-days accepted title of some historians, because in the medieval times, Vallachian princes were not numbered, but distinguished between them- when they bear the same name - by nicknames).

It would be wonderful if everyone could edit it`s own response messages (not all of them) if this would be technically possible. If not, I think it`s ok to post twice here.
Thank you.

No, I don't think it's just a question of PR, because I've never confused Vlad Tepes with the Count. Even as a child a cursory reading of Tepes' history indicated that he was just an obscure jumping off point for Stoker's imagination.

Tepes is boring. The fictional count is immortal.

im romania he is seen as a hero.very few countrys could match the turkish war machine.and he beat them with some romany soldiers.only the knights of malta and the langstrecht mercinaries can really say they could take the turks on like that.apart from vlad tepes.

the problem i have is the same one of saying that the SS in world war two were terrific soldiers. They were without a doubt outstanding soldiers but the crimes they committed in the name of their regime blackens their reputations.

Vlad would a fine warrior without a doubt. He also is at least accused of doing such things as killing and cooking children and forcing the parents to eat them. The question becomes if such tales are simply lies or if Vlad's fans are going to justify such actions.

While Richard I had a cruel side, and when taking a city could allow his men to go wild, I dont recall any tales of him dining under the bodies of those he had ordered killed.

~W~

Yes Vlad III was a victim of the press
Yes he did crimes that was reported to do
No he was not a vampire

and only time he is a vampire is when authors of vampire novels stories etc use his name to be a vampire I have read many vampire stories where his name was used and they all were mostly the same plot trying to bring his wife back from the dead and/or kept finding her soul and spirit reborn again sometimes they fell in love again till she discovered the truth and refuses to take his gift and wants nothing more to do with him tell he found her spirit in the 1980s to today depends when the story was published

It was his own PR that we consider to be bad...

At least I am pretty darn sure of that. It was one of those cases of someone finding it better to be fearer than loved. Oddly enough, it did earn him much love from his people.

bloodtrope


If after you read, your imagination stops there you are boring!
Or maybe the ones who like to read more then one classic fictional books are boring?
People who don`t like to read are boring, not Tepes`s REAL life and deeds which sometimes are even better then Stoker`s imagination!

Ignorant people are boring.
Ignorant people who recommend others to be ignorant are worse.



catseye


In Romania, Vlad Tepes is a disputed character. Since the XVIIIth century Romanian Historiography he was not considered an evil ruler but a harsh personality.
Tepes did use the Romany (aka Gypsies - who have an Indian descendance) maybe as executioners and not in the army.The army was formed by Romanians(at that time named Vallachians and thay have Latin origins).
Confusing Romany with Romanians, even if it is a usual confusion between people with no general culture, is surprising coming from you and offending for both Gypsies and Romanians.




LordWolf


"killing and cooking children and forcing the parents to eat them"???
I think you have a really good proof for it!
I think he is still a victim of that press campaign fropm middle ages!
Read more, talk less please!You just spread the old lies making them even bigger!
I am not a Vlad fan (I am wondering where are they hiding? lol) but a fan of the truth.



WolfWhisperer

Why the Romanians of that time should hate him?
He didn`t protect their interests? He didn`t protected their childrento be given to the turks to serve them in their army?He didn`t refused to pay tribute and put in the peril his own head for the prosperity of the land?
He didn`t protected the Othodox Christian faith and didn`t he rised churches for them?
He didn`t protected their lands and the common properties? He didn`t gave lands to villagers?
He didn`t condemned the thieves and killers?Didn`t him encouraged commerce in the country and didn`t he raised the economical level so fast then in a few years the economical level was better then in Hungarian Kingdom and the Vallachian coin was better then theirs?

In my opinion he was feared by the evil people and greeted by the others, reach or poor, Saxons or not.
He named his Vallachians in the letters as " my poor ones" and I don`t think he was false about that!He felt as a duty to protect them and he did so.

Maybe you watch too many Hollywood movies(see the movie where Rudolf Martin Starred) or maybe you consider history to be boring too?


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I am amazed that everyone on this thread rushed to associate Vlad with Hitler but no one didn`t offered to join me in the quest for his real importance and deeds.
I do not defend a person I am defending the truth. And the truth is not good or bad. You just have to watch him as it is with all the good and bad stuff and learn from it.

LordWolf

Would you have prefered we talk about Alexander the Great? Or the atrocities of the Romans in their conquests? Or the campaigns to unify China? Or Maybe other noteable Generals of the time period? Attila the Hun? Temüjin "Genghis Khan"? Timur-i lang "Temur the Lame"? Or Even the practices of the Ottoman Turks themselves?

Vlad's tactics were no worse then anyother used throughout history. Torture and Abuse are apart of History. Vlad did not think his methods up on hisown. They were tried and true methods used by armies around the world.

War stories and ancient generals don't interest me much. Vampire stories do. I did enjoy the movies Spartacus and Gladiator, though, which were underdog stories. Someone needs to do a sweeping historical on Vlad depicting him as the underdog patriot who loves his wife and kids. Maybe they get cruelly raped and pillaged by the Turks. Vlad has no sex appeal.

orc...
yes, the ancient armies committed many atrocities (in our view)

but i dont think the romans killed and force parents to eat children...did almost everything else, but not that.
gaius julius caesar wouldnt nail your hat to your head in a fit of pique...
that said, you are correct that the ancient armies did what they felt was needed to end a war. and i get that.
i just feel that vlad dracula took it that extra step.
~W~

dragonrouge:
i said:
killing and cooking children and forcing the parents to eat them"???
you said:
I think you have a really good proof for it!


well, i have the original sources, and that is sort of the only thing we have to go on here.


you said: I think he is still a victim of that press campaign fropm middle ages!


why? what do you base your assumption on? wishful thinking? if you discount the original sources, then you just end up with whatever you just happen to want.




you said: Read more, talk less please!You just spread the old lies making them even bigger!

my first thought when i read this was to say something very rude. i am aware of that particular tidbit of info because i am cursed with the ability and desire to read. apparently repeating what the original sources state is repeating lies. shall i then say that he enjoyed throwing garden parties, wore lots of pastels and often sang the song "wimple the happy goblin"? true there is zero proof of that, but at least im not repeating any of those terrible lies (that were recorded during his lifetime) about him.
oh...the whole impailing thing....
actually just the rest of the world bending the truth about his sexual conquests....is that it?

you said:
I am not a Vlad fan (I am wondering where are they hiding? lol) but a fan of the truth.

so...i guess my question is, what exactly are you basing your "truth" on?
~W~

Gee, Dragonrouge, I think you're calling me boring. That hurts! I didn't say you were boring for being all into Vlad. Actually, your passionate defense of him is interesting, except for the patriotic part. Nationalism seems limiting to me. But truth be told, would most people have even heard of Romania if not for Stoker? All pr is good pr.

Lord Wolf was not in my intention to insult you! I am sorry and please accept my apologies!
It was only an invitation to read more, not intended to say that you don`t like to read! Thank you for not being rude!

I have to say that you only know the accusations that the Press Campaign (I will come with arguments about that) uttered against Vlad. Still you can`t judge someone only after the accuses.You have to listen all the stories not only a few of them. We have to read all the sources we can and put the pieces together to be closer to the truth.It`s obviously we are talking with a cruel lord, but was he so cruel as you say or was it a revenge of his enemies used by the King of Hungary?

The written sources about Vlad can be organized in five cathegories:

- documents of Vlad`s court (his letters, treaties, etc.);
- the German anonimous chronicles and Beheim`s poem;
- the Bysantine chronicles of Mihail Dukas and Laonic Chalcocondil, Chritobul of Imbros and Georgios Sphrantzes;
- the fragments of the Chronicle of Antonio Bonfini, from the chronicle of Jan Turchozy and from Cosmographia of Sebastian Munster;
- the Turkish chronicles.

Why we can`t read them all in English and everybody reads only a summary or all the text of the German chronicles?
Simple! They are impressive and terrifying.They contain many atrocities and some are beyond imagining!In other words, people read what is SEXY! And ONLY that!
No matter that it turns that they are false or exaggerate and manipulate the truth when we compare them with other sources.They impress and they sell!

I was referring at those German Chronicles as an organized Press Campaign.
It all started at short time after Vlad`s imprisionement by his allied the King Matias of Hungary.
The King promised his help in Vlad`s campaign against the Turks from the summer-winter of 1462.
At the end of 1462 campaign, when Dracula is forced to leave his army formed by vallachian inhabitants at home for the winter, and he withdrew with his mercenaries towards Transilvania.Matias tricks him offering him a part of Hungarian army lead by the experimented general Jan Jriska to take him captive by surprise.

At that time Vlad was a hero of Christianity in the eyes of the Pope and of other Christians, so this measure of Matias was strange and the Pope asked why Matias did that.
Mattias presents the Papal emissary an obviously false letter that proved that Vlad wanted to betray Matias and the Christian cause.However the emissary was not very convinced and nor the Pope who later asked for more details.The same story goes about Venice who wanted to know more about the hero imprisionment.

After all Venice and Papacy sent money to Matias and The Austrian Emperor Frederic to join their forces with Vlad`s in a war against the Turks.
Instead of that Matias and Frederic quarreled about the right to rule in Hungary and because Matias didn`t had the crown of Hungary he can not be considered official a king.

In June 1463, Matias send some nobles with the money to Viena, to the Emperor Frederic to buy the crown as Frederic finally agreed(maybe Pope`s money).
But at that time the Emperor was besieged in his own capital by a faction that included his own brother so he couldn`t receive the Hungarian money for the crown.

This is the moment and the place where the first issue of the German chronicle appears.Strange coincidence.In Viena, June 1453!

What does it contains?
They were anonymously issued by a traveling printer (maybe Ulrich Han, as Matei Cazacu shows in "Geschichte Drakole Waide - Un incunabule imprime a Vienne en 1463", Paris 1981).It contained a few pages with 36 articles of really terrifying stories against the most evil man since Nero.The original were lost but they were fast reprinted and there are at least three of them preserved until today: one in Brittish Library (Great Britain), one inthe Swiss monastery of Saint Gall and one in France (Colmar Library).

The great majority of the chapters presents the atrocities of Vlad against the saxons from Siebenburgen(Transilvania), some of them speak about the atrocities against the Turks(25, 32), Gypsies (18;32) catholic monks(20, 31), noblemen(7, 29), poor-men(33), a paysant (30),
Vald`s mistress (22).One of it indeed speaks about forcing the mothers to eat their fried babies (34).
Quite impressive at the first view.
What shocks me is the total lack of causes and logic between the facts.Vlad seems posessed by a blind madness and impales and slaughters all in his way.Why he attacks the Transilvanians? Why he tortures the Turks?What about the monks, the paysan or the Gypsies? It is nothing more then a catalogue of horrors!
It`s not a story, just a presentation of cruelty and madness.
Only two events are dated and many of the stories are inspired from older stories (some from antiquity) and/or exagerrated.

He chronicle was included by Thomas Ebendorfer in his "Chronica Regnum Romanorum"(12 January 1464) so the story spread even more through a History Chronicle.Later Michael Beheim (the official minstrel of Matias) wrote a poem based on this chronicle and spread the terrors about Vlad even more.In Beheim`s poem Vlad was proved as a traitor even before he reach to talk with Matias: obviously a lie because the Pope emissary doesn`t tell the people anything like that at that time.





In reality Vlad was used as a scapegoat by Matias to justify why he didn`t continues the crusade against Turksand for hiding the fact that he used the money on their purposes.because that was not enough he informed himself the emissaries of Venice and because that was not enough either, the terrible and impressing printed version was spread so everyone should consider him mad.Because at that time the atrocities were a usual thing in a Europe full of wars the stories had to be very shocking to impress.

And if you read even more about him(please don`t ask me to translate whole history books) you will find out that Vlad was not mad even if he was extremely cruel.Obviously though his cruelties were exaggerated from political meanings.Just one more proof: Vlad was always present at the peace negotiations between Matias and the Turk emissaries to intimidate them and in 1474 put Vlad back on the throne of Vallachia.

If you read Radu Constantinescu`s "Codex Altenberger" you will see that in the war against the Saxons he applied the captives their own laws that were very very harsh, but that is another story.
Already this post is too long.

I agree with the Orc... there are MANY MANY other leaders who were just as brutal if not more so! He just happened to be the one that people chose to make stories about... thats pretty much it, really.

dragonrouge:
thank you for the explanation and i gladly accept your apologies.
your last post was long, but filled with good information. i have read most of it before (altho not the one at the end you mentioned about the saxon wars) and i understand why you interpret things as you do.
i certainly do believe that some of the tracts written were exaggerated for propaganda purposes, but my problem is knowing which were and which werent.

your words have made me at least far less sure than i was when we started this discussion, and for the time being i think i shall withdraw from it. i do need to read more on the subject, and i have to admit, i havent closely studied vlad in years.

again dragonrouge, good post.
~W~

LordWolf

I am pretty sure he did not create the Brazen Bull, or use forced beastiality for public entertainment.

can any leader or army be said not to committ atrocities?at any time in history?marshall ney said rules in war is madness.the whole point of a war is to defeat your enemy.and do anything at all to win.that is what vlad tepes did.and he won.i did read that many of his soldiers where romanys.if the historian i read is wrong then hes wrong.
the purpose of war is to achieve a political end by force.

Not everybody agrees with the author of Dracula`s framing.

link


This researcher William Layher argues against Cazacu`s idea that the German pamphlets were written from Corvin`s order.
However he still suspects that the Saxons were implied in this.

He doesn`t have many proves for the existence of a chronicle before 1463, but deductions.

One of the interesting aspects is the fact that Corvinus would condemn himself because he didn`t intervene in time for stopping his vassal, Dracula.
So the cronicle from 1463 incriminates him too.
This is a good argument.

The argument that we don`t know about a mobile printing in Vienna is a weak one.
This doesn`t demonstrates that the printing didn`t existed in fact. Not very possible does not mean it couldn`t exist one.
Plus, the document could be printed elsewhere and destined to be sold in Vienna.



However even if the 1463 chronicle wasn`t the work of Matias Corvinus to really frame Dracula for good, it is accepted by this researcher that the Saxons from Transilvania must be the source of it.
So Dracula was still framed and put in a bad light by his detractors and that caused the sudden change of the image from the hero of the Christianity, into the bloody traitor and mad bloodthirsty ruler.

PLease read the material with care.

@Catseye, no I would say that no leader or army is innocent, there are things people do because at the time it seems like it was the best option, or the atrocities are discovered and the person responsible is a pariah but then years later everyone treats them as a hero.

I don't know what stretched this page but I have an article by a scholar that tells how he became well know. He was known in his immediate area but brought into view by the Communists and then with the mistake in identification linking him to the book Dracula he became more well known. People back then did a lot of atrocities including the Ottoman empire. I think things need to be put in perspective considering all the man went through. It could harden any individual after their family is killed cruelly and all the political oneupsmanship that went on. It was a sign of those times and whether right or wrong he did what he felt was right even though some of it included vengence. He was treated horrendously by family and the enemy. He went a little overboard killing so many people but I guess his hatred out weighed good judgement at times...I think many tales sprang up around it and over time he is portrayed to be a much more evil person than he was in reality. This is how it is. A writer did that with Bathory stating she drank blood and bathed in it when it was never in the actual court records. It has snowballed and everyone parrots that about her. She has legends that sprang up that have no basis in fact and so does this personage.

Thank you Dragonrouge. Wonderful information.

As for My opinion.....War is hell. People would catapult severed heads into towns as a fear tactic. Scythians used to drink the blood of their enemies and turn their skulls into drinking goblets. Vlad was no worse then anything I have read about the Romans doing to people. So.....I am going to say bad rep.

Thank you Green Night!
I am going to visit the exhibition!!!


A section of this exhibition is dedicated to the vampire image and I heard that there are some original posters from famous vampire movies like Herzog`s Nosferatu.

The portrait of Dracula will be brought from Austria by the head of the Art and History Museum of Vienna himself!
There will be many interesting things to be seen and they say it`s the original stuff.
If you are a true vampire lover(lol) I think it will worth a few dollars to see it.
And maybe after seeing it you will be able to find an answer yourself to this question: Was Dracula a victim of a press campaign? I say that he is still one.

For Fate Unseen

PAY ATTENTION !

If he was a bad or a good person is irrelevant.The question is if his deeds were or were not manipulated, interpreted badly and exaggerated by the press of the time!!!

For Azuredark

I stretched the page! With arguments and speculations! Read both and judge for yourself!

"He was known in his immediate area" - The subject among historian`s circles in Romania dates to the XIXth century when Balcescu, Xenopol, Hasdeu, Odobescu, Gane and others wrote about Vald. They were not communists!This was long before the communism. In the end the communists wanted to cover all up because of a possible identification of Ceausescu with a vampire.

"mistake in identification linking him to the book Dracula"
Sorry, no mistake here.
"Dracula" is the title of Bram Stoker`s novel. Unfortunately we know that miss Miller the renown researcher is mistaken. Stoker had some information about Dracula. They were scarce and from the third hand sources , it`s true, but it`s no doubt there.Stoker new about the existence of an exotic but real nobleman named DRACULA of ill repute and considered it so important to change the title of the novel and fundamentally(!!) modify the plot!
At his time was pretty hard to know more but he didn`t need to know a lot about the real character .It was a fiction novel after all.
"He was treated horrendously by family" I`m not sure what you are talking about.

Erszebet Bathory`s case was VERY different from Dracula`s. No doubt here! The reasons, meanings and numbers of the victims were very different!


Machete

My pleasure! It took me a lot of time and I`m glad when somebody appreciate it.
So true: war is hell!

Here is an URL with some photos from the launching of the exhibition.
The last three pics are not from Bucharest exhibition but from Vlad`s supposed house in Sighisoara.

http://www.modernism.ro/2010/07/08/dracula-voievod-si-vampir/

I think it would be hard to view something like this objectively if your not living in the time and place that Dracula lived. You can't really put yourself into his shoes and see life how he saw it. The world has to create villains and I think in this case Dracula's legend was much larger than the individual.

i recently saw the deadliest warrior episode where vlad went up against sun tzu.

i just found it annoying that they had vlad making evil laughing noises for most of the fight.

dragon rouge...that was some impressive research you have done there sir.
well done
~W~

i just thought that that episode was messed up on the hole as sun tsu was smarter but vlad was a better in your face fighter, it wasn't a fair fight

i agree...would have been more interesting to set vlad against richard I of england, or perhaps nathan bedford forest...that would have been interesting indeed. if they want him to fight someone eastern, might be fun to see him fight against musashi.

~W~

Dragonrouge, most informative you obviously know your stuff so many thanks, but something troubles me;
What of the History Channels take on Eleonore Von Schwartzenburg and their conclusion Bram Stokers book was based upon this Austrian Princess?
(who still has living relatives in the UK)
Do you think History merged to cause confusion?

That is so true Tahirah

i do not think it is a question about pr, vlad may be considered the c ount in many peoples minds, but we will never know what the true story is behind that. that fact is that if the count is vlad, then he is the one that made that image. nif the count is someone completly different, then it is just a case of mistaken identity.

I am completely with Dragonrogue, Vlad Tepes did his "subjects" a great deal of good defending them for the Turks, well some of his tactics are questionable it not don't sent a message seeing as how we are still discussing his rule.
On the note of Bram's book, Well it is a good piece of classic vampire fiction it is just that, he named it Dracula for whatever reason and since then the fictional Count has been confused with the true being and protector of Wallachia.

I recently bought, read, and entered into the database the following book:

https://www.vampirerave.com/db/entry.php?id=28135&category=10

It is a very intense book to read, and was written after a great deal of research and investigation by the author. I will agree that much of the interpersonal narrative may be embroidered to tell the story, a great deal of the book is historically accurate. It also details how treacherous some of Vlad's fellow Wallachians were in printing pamphlets that detailed him as a traitor to his country etc.

I highly recommend it as much for the history as for the good read that it is.

AUG 2010:Sam Worthington has added Alex Prayas’ Dracula: Year Zero to his roster of upcoming flicks.
Last we heard, Worthington was merely considering the part. And with the flick set to be shot early in 2011 in Australia, it didn’t seem likely Worthington would be able to fang-up thanks to his Clash Of The Titans 2 commitments.
But it appears that there will be no, ahem, clashes in Worthington's schedule after all, and Dracula will go in front of cameras next June, with the actor starring as Prince Vlad of Transylvania.
“As written it’s literally on the scale of Braveheart with Dracula,” producer Mike De Luca told Collider earlier this year. “So it’s a lot of…it’s armies. It’s an invading Turkish army.
“It’s a lot of supernatural action. It’s wonderful. Like it’s an epic love story. It’s got everything you want in a movie like this but it’s tricky and it’s big so we’re trying to figure out how to do it in the most efficient way.
~Mmm is that precog~?

Will this be another adaptation of the book or about the man so many erroneously associate the book to? I noticed when they made the version of Dracula with Gary Oldman they embellished upon it and made it connect back to the Romanian personage. They found the working notes and yet websites and people are still plodding away with the connection to the book. He used the name because he believed it meant devil. It is written in his notes, not because of Vlad.

It isn't about him and I am sure his acts were embellished upon but even so it was the sign of the times and considering what the Turks did I feel he was pushed over the edge. He went through a lot. Many times from what scholars have written he used the punishment that was of the type from where the person was from for whatever infraction he thought the person had done. He did impale a lot of people but he did a lot of other things just as other warlords did at that time. It was a harsh period.

As for the Count of book fame, he labels him right in the book as a Székely, which was not a Romanian anything. His character was inspired by a number of things and all written in his notes and some of it copied out of other books. Americans and some other countries can sort of re-write things depending on copyright. Here in the US Stoker never copyrighted the book so they could even make him actually a woman disguising herself as a man if they wanted to and change things with the characters which they have in lesser known movie versions.

They did write some nasty pamphlets about Vlad Tepes that were circulated around Europe. I talked to a college professor who used them to write his history of him. I had a Romanian friend who took exception to some things written in them but this was a few years ago so I don't remember the details anymore. The only reason they talk about him so much is because of that book and it has been blown all out of proportion in my opinion, especially since they know now the character is not based on him. It was just an assumption people made due to the name of the book.

If that is true why would he write a book with a count that lives in Romania is the same area as the Bran Castle. Obvious the book is to be linked to the Vlad Tepes of Wallachia, Furthermore, I understand the that the name Dracul means "son of the devil" as of now but it did means, "the dragon. Vlad's family took this name of being part of the Order of the dragons.

Stoker, had to have some knowledge of Romanian history as the Count in the novels history bears resemblance to the of Vlad Tepes since in the novel his back story is given as such

"Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkey-land; who, when'' he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph!" (Chapter 3, pp 19) The Count's intended identity is later expicitly confirmed by Professor Van Helsing:

"He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land." (Chapter 18, pp 145)

Historical facts which unequivocally point to Vlad III

While Stoker get the idea for the mannerisms from the Count from an English man, Sir Henry Irving.

Stoker knew that he had intertwined the Count and Vlad III, he did not chose the title Dracula until after Reading William Wilkenson's book Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Political Observations Relative to Them.

FireyTiger, thanks for that but if so, why do the History Channel say that Van Helsing was actually the Senior Physician prescribed to the Austrian monarchy?

They allege he was brought in to stop the wave of unrest across Eastern Europe and investigate Vampirism after their beloved princess Eleonore was turned by a traveller?

There is no real Van Helsing , The character may have been based or a Physician of the Monarchy but I assure they is no one named Abraham of Gabriel Van Helsing, he is a character made popular but mass media and Stoker.

If you honestly feel that I have made a grievous mistake link me something that says he is real, Keep in mind I am from Romania and I know both the legend of Vlad Tepes and the order of the Dragon as well as read Stoker's Dracula.

Dracul was a product of his time

Agree Dracul, Vlad was a product of the monstrosity of Violence in Wallachia from the Turks!

The Royal Austrian Scwartzenburg family rejected Eleonore as she drank wolves milk and kept wolves at her castle, she resided in Bohemia (hence Bohemian practices).
Shew was known to be heavily involved in witchcraft.
Then she became pale and ill and was given 2000 Gilders a month to live on; Rumours said she had been turned.
When she died 5 doctors (including Van Sweden)performed the autopsy to find the cause of death.They said it was Cancer of the Ovary.
Her will was altered the week before her death so she was the only Royal NOT to be buried in the Austrian capital.
They found the fees paid to the Doctors for the Post Mortem 140, thousand gilders....way too much for such a simple procedure that was 1/4 million each.
They have now opened her tomb and she WAS given a full vampire burial held in brick tomb with a large stone upon her severed body under soil that had been blessed.
Clearly the authorities and Royals were worried about something so they quite literally covered it up.
It would have been very bad P.R. if a Royal could be turned

Wow, great discussion. I haven't read all of the posts yet, as there are so many, but I'll catch up in a bit. So if I repeat anything, I apologize.


I don't really have a source for this information, as most of it comes from what I've channeled after meeting the guy. So proof? It's probably out there, but I can't site it.

Dracula was a title given to Vlad by his father, who's title was Dracul. Dracul translates to "Dragon", therefore Dracula translates to "Son of the Dragon." Their line was a part of The Order of the Dragon, which was a chivalry order that dates back to the early 15th century. It is actually a descendant from holy roman imperial dogmas. The order was dedicated to destroying heretics and was charged with keeping many religious and cultural traditions and secrets, many of which involved things that the church made great efforts into hiding.

Anyway, and this part you have to believe at your own discretion, Vlad held a special place in this order, because it was one of his past incarnations that created it. In a past life, Vlad Tepes III was Constantine I, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. During his reign, he became the first christian roman empire, and called to order the Council of Nicea, which established orthodox christianity as we know it today. His incarnation as Vlad the Impaler was a karmic evolution of his soul concerning the destruction and persecution brought upon by the tide of religious war that has followed ever since his reign as Constantine. The rest of his lives follow a very similar trend.

So you can believe as much of that as you'd like, it really makes no difference. I don't even really think he got bad press, as there's no such thing as bad publicity. He's certainly famous enough!

To me, the metaphor of Dracula was always that he represented a primal force of sexuality and animalism that was being stifled and repressed by the Victorian ideology. As Vlad, he represents a force of zealistic idealism dedicated to tradition and national patriotism. Good, bad. It's all relative.

Where is the factory when you want them?

umm Vlad Tepes would not thought he was Constantine i he was an avid christian, so I don't know that the last bit is true.

AN what factory??

The first mistake was reading the Daily Mail. That, and I am fairly certain that Vlad Tepes didn't 'hail from Transylvania', given that he was Prince of Walachia.
Yes, history is bloody and cruel, entirely unlike our modern way of thinking. At least, the civilised parts of the world in which most of us undoubtedly live.
There are similarly as hideous stories of men and women all throughout history in all parts of the world, plenty in Europe alone. It is rather remarkable. It was just I suppose, unfortunate one could say, that Vlad had a fictional story character based on him hundreds of years after his death. Vlad Tepes and Count Dracula are obviously very dissimilar, given that the Prince wasn't actually a vampire.

He was undeniably a bloody horrid man, but probably little or no worse than many other historical figures, who did not later have fictional characters based on them.

Perhaps, there are many Historical smudges about Vlad, but you failed to deal with the History Channels version of the Vampire Princess.
I have yet to hear of anyone who has contradictory evidence? But I will wait.

honestly, I am looking into in and when I find it, or something to refute it I will let you know, but I can tell you superstition runs rampant through that area so I dont doubt that someone was given a vampire burial, I am looking into the dr, and how he effected VanHelsing.

i personally think he caused all of this on his own. if he had the ability to he could put a stop to it all, but instead he let it go. he must have liked the attention.

^ I may be misunderstand you, Who could have stopped what?

first...many many times, ive found the history channel isnt good history. its very biased and then the people making the shows will bend the facts to back up the bias.

the examples would make this post very long indeed


dracula means son of dracul..... fact

dracul was the nickname of vlad II because he was inducted into the order of the dragon.....fact

there exist at least three documents where vlad III signed his name as dracula....fact


id say that is pretty strong evidence that even tho stoker got some details wrong, overall, he was basing his character at least roughly on vlad III.
~W~

Why is it automatically assumed that it was "bad" pr? In that day and age, a larger than life reputation for cruelty and violence was a guaranteed way to keep everybody under your reign under control. Many of Vlad's atrocities were committed in order to make people fear him. Who's to say that the rest of it wasn't the same thing?

What Vlad did was NOT to scare his people it was to scare his enemies, other than that Vlad lived to earn his peoples love, Vlad had a lot going on in his personal life as well as being Prince of Wallachia!

I found some interesting information:

"Though Vlad was to reign for less than seven years, his reputation throughout Europe was widespread. There are several primary sources of information, which offer a variety of representations, from Vlad as a cruel, even psychopathic tyrant to Vlad as a hero who put the needs of his country above all else. Consequently, it is a virtually impossible task to reconstruct his political and military activities with certainty. "

"The most influential in establishing his notoriety throughout Europe, were the German sources, dating from as early as 1463 (while Vlad was still alive). The most popular were several pamphlets that began to appear late in the fifteenth century and which were widely circulated because of the recent invention of the printing press. Indeed, some of the earliest secular texts to roll off the presses were horror stories about Vlad Dracula. Written in German and published at major centres such as Nuremburg, Bamberg, and Strassburg, these had such unsavory titles as The Frightening and Truly Extraordinary Story of a Wicked Blood-drinking Tyrant Called Prince Dracula. Researchers have discovered at least thirteen of these pamphlets dating from 1488 to 1521. The printers of the Dracula tales also included woodcut portraits of the prince and, in some cases, illustrations of his atrocities."

"Other historical documents include Russian sources, notably one which presented not only the cruel side of Vlad's behavior but also his sense of justice and his determination to restore order. Turkish chronicles, not surprisingly, emphasize the horrors that Dracula inflicted on his enemies, especially during the battles of 1461-62. By contrast there are the Romanian oral narratives, still preserved in the villages near the ruins of Vlad Dracula's fortress on the Arges River. Here we find a very different Vlad: a prince who repeatedly defended his homeland from the Turks at a time when just about every other principality in the region had been subjected to Ottoman rule; and a leader who succeeded in maintaining law and order in what were indeed lawless and disorderly times."

"All of these sources are biased. In the case of the German reports, the German Saxons of Transylvania were victims of inccursions by Vlad into what was an independent state and the imposition of his harsh economic measures. One could hardly expect then to be objective informants. The Turkish chroniclers are hardly any more objective, downplaying Vlad's military successes and stressing their own demonstrations of bravery and cunning. Russian narratives were generally more unbiased. The Romanian narratives, by contrast, present a very different Vlad: a folk hero who endeavored to save his people not only from the invading Turks but from the treacherous boyars."

From the following link:

http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/vlad.html

Thank you, Doru, for the great information. And your source is a great one: Dr. Elizabeth Miller, one of the more prolific vampirologists of our day.

Forgive me, devils advocate but unless documents are carbon dated and independently verified they may well just be those produced by special interest groups.
So who would do such a thing?
1. Tourism boards.
2. Dracula specialists(it's their living)
3. Those that have covered the Truth and paid millions to do so for 300yrs~ the Austrian Royal family.

So using Occam's Razor, the mathematical amongst you will say 1 No 2. err No 3?
The truth is One Two and three. Hence the Clever mist; gotta love the vamps they're so smart.

AlieNation... this evening alone I have counted at least three forum entries of yours where, like here, all you do is disagree apparently just for the sake of disagreement, alone.

The person who wrote the information referenced in Doru's entry above is none other than Dr. Elizabeth Miller, "Professor Emerita" of Memorial University of Newfoundland and an absolute expert most specifically in the area of Vlad Tepes, himself, as well evidenced by such highly acclaimed literary contributions on the subject such as:

Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Documentary Journey into Vampire Country and the Dracula Phenomenon. New York: Pegasus, 2009.

Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition. Co-edited, transcribed & annotated with Robert Eighteen-Bisang. Published in USA and UK by McFarland.

Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Documentary Volume. Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol 304. Detroit: Gale, 2005.

Lecture: "Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula." National Library of Ireland, April 2009.

Conference paper: "Dracula: From Notes to Novel." International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando FL 2008.

Lecture: Bram Stoker and the Writing of Dracula." Purdue University, April 2006.

Lecture: "Dracula: Fact and Fiction". Mensa National Convention, May 2005

Lecture: "Dracula: Fact and Fiction". Mensa (Toronto), September 2005

I am going to agree with him on this AN, Elizabeth Miller is well respected and noted on this type of work!

Well experts and all their "friends" are never wrong, after all, they all play golf and attend the same social circles.
Look, I am not saying it is all nonsense, I am saying there is something else, something being hidden, something worth looking into but nobody wants to! It is just like a kid saying Lah Lah Lah I,m not listening.
Everyone is happy with the 'Status Quo' not me Matey, I question it all and often it seems to pay dividends.
Why do I question the great and good? because Colonel Russell Williams was shaking hands with them whilst jacking off in their panties.Sorry, harsh but true.

Hey, I'm all for delving into a juicy conspiracy theory... assuming there is strong evidence for such. So far, you have done nothing to offer any except to disparage the research of actual doctorate-level professionals.

Should you have another theory, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would greatly enjoy hearing what you have to offer... assuming you have more to back it up than just opinion and speculation.

My opinion is that he did it both because he was trying to protect his people and the fact that he liked controlling things and was evil. he wanted to scare people into doing what he wanted as well.

Dr Miller is obviously a rich and powerful women who has hosted many dinner parties.
No doubt she has made many rich and powerful friends, Like any little devil I would love to show up as a manipulating Fraud but I cannot.
Yet.

P.s remember those amazing doctors who were paid a fortune for giving people Heroin and leeches. Those who know me know I do not deal with could be, maybe, should bees.I like to conj our the real thing.i.e Cloaks, daggers, candles and humming just make me angry.

I agree that brutal war tactics were used by him and at the time it was the best possible weapon against the invading armies. If his people saw him as a hero, perhaps the darker tales came from those he defeated. Think about the possibility that to his victims he may have seemed much like an immortal monster in battle. Unable to be defeated in battle and therefore being called immortal by his enemies. Folklore grows and changes and has two different perspectives. In one he was a hero to his people; to the enemy he was an impaling blood drinking monster that they could not defeat.

Well if what they say is true about Dracula.. then his best bet was to bite his wife and change he to what he was. It was either that or watch her grow old and have to out live God only knows how many wives before he was able to die in his fashion. To me if i was given the choice to live for an eternity and be with the man that had my heart. i would chose to live with him always. i would not want him to be lonely or hurting because i died before his time on earth was up.

i think in a lot of ways he had a bad rap, but in other ways everyone hit it right on the mark. just depends on whose story you want to believe, because in all stories there is a grain of truth in them mixed in with the lies.
Only my point of view..