Dracula, one of the most famous characters in the world, is always linked to Romania. More precisely, with Transylvania (a Romanian province), which is believed to be a foggy mysterious land, with lots of vampires and castles.

The legend of this famous Dracula has its starting point in a historical character, who played a very important role in the 15th century in this part of the world. Several reasons were put together in order to transform the ruler of Wallachia (another Romanian province) in the bloody vampire of today.

The real history tells us that Vlad the Impaler (in Romanian: Vlad Tepes) ruled in Wallachia for three times (1448; 1456-1462; 1476), the last reign being finished with his death. Let`s not forget that in those times the rulers came to the throne and left it, according to the interests and the support of the boyars and of the Turks, too.

Vlad Tepes was born in November or December 1431, in the fortress of Sighisoara, Romania. His father, Vlad Dracul, at that time appointed military governor of Transylvania by the emperor Sigismund, had been inducted into the Order of the Dragon about one year before. The order - which could be compared to the Teutonic Order of Knights - was a semimilitary and religious society, originally created in 1387 by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli. The main goals of such a secret fraternal order of knights was mainly to protect the interests of Catholicism, and to crusade against the Turks. There are different reasons why this society is so important to us. First, it provides an explanation for the name "Dracula;" "Dracul" in Romanian language, means "Dragon", and the boyars of Romania, who knew of Vlad Tepes' father induction into the Order of the Dragon, decided to call him "Dracul." "Dracula," a diminutive which means "the son of Dracul," was a surname to be used ultimately by Vlad Tepes. A second major role of this Order as a source of inspiration for Stoker's evil character is the Order's official dress - a black cape over a red garment - to be worn only on Fridays or during the commemoration of Christ's Passion.

In the childhood, for about 6 years, from 1442 to 1448, Vlad and his brother Radu were hostages of the Turks. But in 1447 their father, Vlad Dracul was murdered at the order of Iancu of Hunedoara, ruler of Transylvania, who imposed another ruler for Wallachia, called Vladislav the 2nd. The year 1448 is the year of Vlad the Impaler`s first reign. Returned in the country, he took the throne of Wallachia, but only for a short period of time (2 months), as Vladislav the 2nd came back with an army in order to take back the throne. An exile period came next for Vlad, who wandered in Moldavia and Transylvania from 1448 to 1456. The years spent at the Turks, the years of exile, but the death of his father and elder brother (Mircea, buried alive) also, influenced his personality for ever.

In 1456, with help from Transylvania, it seems, Vlad the Impaler returned to rule Wallachia. His home policy was based on an idea which can be found in a letter written to the merchants from the city of Brasov: “When a man or a ruler is powerful and respected (inside the country), he can do the peace however he wants it, but when he has no power, a more powerful one will come over him and he`ll do whatever he`ll want with him”. In order to impose the honesty and the justice as values, Vlad used the impaling punishment. He didn`t only impale thieves, but he also impaled the unfaithful and dishonest boyars and obviously, the Turks. This punishment who brought this nickname for Vlad wasn`t though invented by the Romanians. It was very typical for those mediaeval times, characterized by cruelty and torture. The victims were tied with the hands and feet spread and a pale was sticked through their rectum. They were then lifted and let to die in agony. If Vlad had applied this punishment only to the Turks, so to the pagans, maybe it wouldn`t have seemed so unusual. Anyway, the fact that he used to impale not only the Turks, but the Christians also, was a real shock for those times.

The moment when Vlad revenged the death of his brother and father became famous. In the first Easter day of the year 1459 he impaled some of the boyars and he forced the rest of them to work at the building of the Poienari fortress. Another story tells how Vlad killed in the same way about 500 boyars, who have lived during more than 7 reigns, punishing them for their infidelity and treason proved like this. The beggars weren`t spared either. They were called at a feast in the city of Targoviste (the capital of Wallachia in those times) and asked if they want to be released from the difficulties of life. As the answer was affirmative, Vlad burnt them all, so none of them won`t suffer anymore.

There are many anecdotes about the philosophy of Vlad Tepes Dracula. He was for instance particularly known throughout his land for his fierce insistence on honesty and order. Almost any crime, from lying and stealing to killing, could be punished by impalement. Being so confident in the effectiveness of his law, Dracula placed a golden cup on display in the central square of Tirgoviste. The cup could be used by thirsty travelers, but had to remain on the square. According to the available historic sources, it was never stolen and remained entirely unmolested throughout Vlad's reign.

In these conditions, the thefts weren`t so common in Wallachia. A legend said that a merchant who was passing through Wallachia asked Vlad for protection. The ruler assured him that nothing bad would happen. As 160 golden coins had disappeared after the first night, the merchant complained to Vlad. The ruler caught the thief and impaled him, returning the money to the trader. He didn`t return 160, but 161 coins. The merchant saw that and said that he received one more golden coin. Then Vlad said to him that if he hadn`t told the truth, he also would have been impaled for fraud.

Very special relations were between Vlad the Impaler and the Saxon merchants from the cities of Sibiu and Brasov. The Saxons were brought to the south of Transylvania in the 12th and 13th centuries, in order to defend the borders with Wallachia, but also for colonizing the lands. Famous merchants, they had always benefited of commercial privileges. But in the year 1459 Vlad began a policy of protecting the merchants from Wallachia, which caused the conflict with the Saxons. This conflict was stressed by the fact that the Saxons always supported other claimants to the throne of Wallachia. One of these claimants, Dan the 3rd, was forced by Vlad to dig his own grave and then was beheaded and thrown into it. In his campaign against the merchants from Brasov, Vlad burnt the city and impaled them on the hills around.

The battle against the Turks began in 1459 with Vlad`s refusal to pay the requested tribute. More than this, the Impaler fixed by nails the Turkish messengers` turbans on their head, as they didn`t want to uncover themselves, saying that it was forbidden by their religion. The alliance with Mattia Corvin, king of Hungary, played a very important role for Vlad. In the winter of 1461-1462, he organized a surprise campaign in the south of Danube, during which more than 20.000 Turks were killed. In his letter to Mattia Corvin, the Impaler enumerated with a macabre accuracy the burnt places, but the number of victims also: 23.884 exactly, without counting the ones burnt alive in their houses or the ones whose heads weren`t presented to my officers. The reply came quickly. In the spring of 1462, the sultan Mehmed the 2nd crossed the Danube with a 60.000 soldiers army (almost the double of the army which Vlad had at his disposal) and went directly to Targoviste. The famous night attack of the Impaler`s army happened in June, this attack causing panic in the Turkish camp, making them retire. But this doesn’t prevent the Turkish army from going forward.

Finding himself without allies, Vlad, forced to retreat towards Tirgoviste, burned his own villages and poisoned the wells along the way, so that the Turkish army would find nothing to eat or drink. Moreover, when the Sultan, exhausted, finally reached the capital city, he was confronted by a most gruesome sight: thousands of stakes held the remaining carcasses of some 20,000 Turkish captives, a horror scene which was ultimately nicknamed the "Forest of the Impaled." This terror tactic deliberately stage-managed by Dracula was definitely successful; the scene had a strong effect on Mehmed's most stout-hearted officers, and the Sultan, tired and hungry, admitted defeat. Nevertheless, following his retreat from Wallachian territory, Mehmed left the next phase of the battle to Vlad's younger brother Radu, the Turkish favorite for the Wallachian throne. At the head of a Turkish army and joined by Vlad's detractors, Radu pursued his brother to Poenari castle on the Arges river.

According to the legend, this is when Dracula's wife, in order to escape Turkish capture, committed suicide by hurling herself from the upper battlements, her body falling down the precipice into the river below - a scene exploited by Francis Ford Coppola's production. Vlad, who was definitely not the kind of man to kill himself, managed to escape the siege of his fortress by using a secret passage into the mountain. Helped by some peasants of the Arefu village, he was able to reach Transylvania where he met the new king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus. However, instead of providing some help, Matthias arrested Dracula and imprisoned him at the Hungarian capital of Visegrad.

Vlad`s decline was due to a fake letter, written most probably by the Saxon merchants, letter which proved the ties between the Impaler and the Turks. Thus Vlad was accused of treason and arrested at the order of Mattia Corvin. There was also another reason for which the Hungarian king acted like this. In the winter of 1462, Vlad had asked for help from Mattia Corvin, who had received money from the Pope in that purpose. So, the accusing and arresting of the Wallachian ruler hid also the fact that Mattia Corvin didn`t help Vlad, but didn`t return the money received for the Crusade either. Between 1462 and 1474 Vlad the Impaler was prisoner at Visegrad and Pesta. Moreover, his defamation began. The German stories, spread by Mattia Corvin and the Saxon merchants would create a bloody and cruel image of Vlad in all the Western Europe.

In 1475, after the intervention of Stephan the Great (the Moldavian ruler), Vlad was released and he returned in 1476 on the throne of Wallachia. It would only last one month, as he was killed in December, after a conspiracy of the boyars. The legend goes that Vlad was buried at the Snagov monastery (only the body, as the head had been taken to the Turks, at Constantinople), but the archaeological research from 1930s only discovered some horse bones. His body lies in front of the altar. In 1935, a richly dressed but beheaded corpse was exhumed at Snagov, a fate known to have overtaken Dracula, whose head was supposedly wrapped, perfumed and dispatched as a gift to the Turkish sultan.

The legend of Dracula

The name of the already well-known Wallachian prince became even more famous after Bram Stoker from Dublin (1847-1912) has published his novel "Dracula" in 1897.

The author was a stage director, member in the Golden Down parapsychology association in London and a passionate researcher of Irish and Hindu vampirism. His novel, published in millions of copies, has as its main hero a vampire, Szekler count, named Dracula.

The action develops against a Transylvanian background about which the author himself says: " I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool."

In the first pages of this book we meet a young attorney (Jonathan Harker) who has been asked to journey out to Dracula's castle to arrange certain real estate transactions. Harker's carriage, driven by a man whose hands are claws, hurtles at the edges of precipices until he is finally discharged in the darkness to be met and taken to Dracula's castle. There, everything is more or less as we expect it, only much more so. His staying there becomes full of terror as he finds out part of Count's secrets. He writes a diary for his fiancee, Mina Murray, who is waiting for him in England. Think of the monstrous ego of the vampire. He thinks himself so important that he is willing to live forever, even under the dreary conditions imposed by his condition. Avoiding the sun, sleeping in coffins, feared by all, he nurses his resentments.

The Count leaves to London. One of his victims, Lucy Westenra, is a free spirit who has three suitors and is Mina's best friend. Lucy becomes an Un-Dead after her death. Her soul is saved by Lord Arthur and his friends: Dr. Seward, Professor Van Helsing and Quincey Morris. Mina becomes the next target. Professor Van Helsing is the brain behind all the actions against The Count. Using his magical powers, Dracula is cooling off his thirst with Mina's blood. Will she become an "undead" too? Her friends are decided to not let this happen. Without a safe place to rest Dracula is forced to go back home, in Transylvania.

The story has a happy end. After following for days the group in charge with delivering the chest containing Dracula's body, Dr. Steward, Quincey Morris, Jonathan and Van Helsing managed to do their job right in the last minute of the sunset. On the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife through his throat whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart.

Beside the negative fame brought by the name of Dracula and by the stories of the Transylvanian Saxon merchants, at the end of the 19th century another decisive element was added at the future renown of the Romanian ruler. The Bram Stoke’s book. Bram Stoker had never traveled to Romania. His information came from the London libraries, as Jonathan Harker himself, one of the main characters of the novel, stated: “Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. The region that Harker describes is the Bargau region, near Bistrita. He tells that just in the pass which links Transylvania with Moldavia, in the ruins of a castle, Dracula, a Transylvanian (!!) count lives and every night he turns into a vampire.

The place where the castle is isn`t identified: “I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps”. So, the famous Dracula`s castle is not located at Bran (wrongly linked to the legend)), but at Bargau, where, in order to exploit the legend, a mediaeval looking hotel, called “Dracula Castle” was built in the 1980s.