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Schule > Englisch > A comparisson of Dracula and Vlad the Impaler

Dracula and Vlad the Impaler

The Idea that Stoker based his vampire on Vlad III, a 15th century prince from the principality of Wallachia in modern day Romania, is a popular one, heard in almost every vampire documentary as well as multiple Dracula sequels of questionable literary value.
Even Stoker's van Helsing alludes to this theory:
"He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkeyland.( Stoker 2011, p. 253)
But how much of Vlad III, the Impaler, is really to be found in Bram Stoker's Dracula?

What's in a name?
"'I am Dracula. And I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house.'( Stoker 2011, p. 17)
Initially Stoker intended to name his Vampire "Count Wampyr", according to his personal notes. He likely encountered the name "Dracula" at the public library in Whitby while holidaying there with his family in 1880. In his notebooks he wrote:
"Dracula means devil. Wallachians were accustomed to give it as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous by courage, cruel actions or cunning. (Wikipedia)
While it is true, that the word "drac" can mean "devil" in modern day Romanian, the name's origin is not as clear cut.
The most common translation goes back to Wallachian woiwode Vlad II. He was made a member of the Order of the dragon by Sigismund of Luxembourg, who would later become the emperor of the holy roman empire, in 1431. The Order of the dragon was a chivalric order hat vowed to defend eastern Europe from the advancing ottoman empire. Although Vlad II's allegiances would soon shift to collaborating with the ottomans, this earned him the sobriquet Dracul, commonly translated as "the dragon". His then new born son was given a diminutive form, Dracul[e]a , as a sobriquet of his own, making Vlad III the son of the dragon.
It is noteworthy, however, that Stoker not once gives any indication that his vampire's name might be anything other than Dracula. It's not "Vlad Dracula", it's just "Dracula", while for Vlad III "Dracula" was clearly an honorific, not his first or last name.

Where the vampires live
With Dracula remaining as popular as it is, Transylvania is firmly planted in the collective consciousness as the land of vampires, and nobody is happier about that fact than the Romanian tourism board. However, when it comes to Vlad III as the model for Dracula this fact becomes somewhat problematic.
As previously stated, Vlad III was prince of Wallachia, a principality that shares its northern border with Transylvania, but decidedly is its own beast. There are however several connections between Vlad III and Transylvania.
For a start Vlad III was married to an unnamed Transylvanian Princess who bore him a son. But perhaps more crucial is Vlad's connection to John Hunyadi, prince of Transylvania. Hunyadi had killed Vlad's father and brother in 1447, but later supported Vlad's claim to the Wallachian throne.
After swearing an oath to Hungarian king Ladislaus the Posthumous, Vlad is charged with defending the Transylvanian frontier against the ottomans and their Wallachian allies in 1451. In 1456 he seizes the thrones of Wallachia for his second reign.
In 1459 he leads an attack into southern Transylvania that is remembered by history as one of his most infamous acts and a mayor reason for the many pamphlets about him as his cruelties published in Germany.
Lastly, Vlad III was a prisoner to Hunyadi's son and later king of Hungary, Mattias Corvinus, and was held prisoner for over a decade in their homestead of Corvin Castle, again in Transylvania.
So, while Vlad III wasn't a Transylvanian noble like Dracula, Transylvania likely still came into the story at the same time as the name Dracula did.

Quarrel with the ottomans
In the novel Dracula mentions towards Jonathan Harker that an ancestor of his - but more likely himself - crossed the Danube and slayed the Turks on their own land.
"When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent; 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. Who 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 ist 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 Turkeyland; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and 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?( Stoker 2011, p. 30.)
Although Vlad III is remembered as a defender against the ottomans rather than an invader this passage is clearly based on an episode of his life:
In 1461 Sultan Mehmed II ordered to capture Vlad, because the latter neglected his tribute payments towards the ottoman empire. His diplomats are captured themselves and promptly executed. But merely killing Mehmed's diplomats wasn't enough retaliation for Vlad. His forces crossed the Danube, ravishing Turkish territory, impaling thousands of prisoners and burning civilians in their homes.
This, however, seems to have been a one-time-occurrence, even though Dracula claims to have done it "again, and again, and again.
He also alludes to patriots waiting in the mountains. Dracula mentions that the land has been fought over for centuries by the Wallachians, the Saxons and the Turks, as well as invading hordes of Austrians and Hungarians. He claims patriots - men and women alike, even the elderly and children - awaited them over the passes and created artificial avalanches.
Facing both Ottoman and Moldavian forces, Vlad is outnumbered in 1462 when the Ottoman Empire go to war with Wallachia. He has to flee to the mountains, employing guerrilla tactics before appealing to Mattias Corvinus for aid. He is instead arrested and accused of collaborating with Mehmed II and against Hungary.
It is also interesting that Stoker's Dracula mentions an "unworthy bother".
At the age of 11 Vlad III and his younger brother Radu were held hostages at the court of then sultan, Murad II, to secure their father's loyalty. After Vlad's return to Wallachia, Radu remains at the Sultan's court, being raised alongside Murad's son, Mehmed.
When Vlad takes to the mountains in 1462, Radu is among Mehmed's troops and installed on the Wallachian throne as a more ottoman friendly successor to his older brother.

A terrible reputation
The social standings of Dracula and Vlad III are very different. The peasants clearly are terrified of Dracula:
"'Must you go? Oh! Young Herr, must you go?' She was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of what German she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language which I did not know at all. I was just able to follow her by asking many questions. When I told her that I must go at once, and that I was engaged on important business, she asked again:
[...]
She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me.
[...]
She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck and said, 'For your mother's sake' and went out of the room.( Stoker 2011, p. 4-5.)
It is easy to see why Stoker would assume the Romanians would be afraid of Vlad III, seeing that his second and main regency period is considered brutal, even by 15th century standards, earning him the moniker epe (the impaler).
Primary sources about Vlad's seconds reign are scares and what has been preserved in writing as well as oral tradition is likely exaggerated. Due to the recent invention of the printing press pamphlets Illustrating the excessive violence of the Wallachian tyrant spread across Europe. This, however, is somewhere in between early horror literature and an outright smear campaign in retaliation of Vlad's attack on Saxon settlements in southern Transylvania in 1459.
In reality, Romanians remember Vlad III not only as one of Romania's most important rulers, but a national hero and defender of Romanian independence against the invading ottoman forces. Though brutal, he is cast in a "tough but fair" light. Much of Vlad's reputation is based on his passionate insistence on honesty.
In his poem «Scrisoarea III» from 1881, poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) for instance, asks:
"Unde eti tu, epe Doamne? ("Where are you, Impaler, Lord? (Wikipedia)
The poet demands action against the upper class's disinterest into Romanian national politics. He asks Vlad as his imaginary counterpart to impale half the Romanian upper class like he did with the treacherous boyars and burn the other half in a feasting hall, which is what Vlad allegedly did to the beggars of Wallachia. The line is still used today in reference to chaotic political circumstances, corruption, laziness etc.

The face of the dragon
If we compare Stoker's descriptions of Dracula to the arguably most famous portrait of Vlad III it is apparent, that the both of them have little in common, besides wearing a moustache.
"[...]a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. [...]
His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.( Stoker 2011, p. 16; p. 18-19)
In fact, Stoker's description matches much more closely with that of Henry Irving, a Shakespearean actor Stoker managed while working at the Lyceum Theatre.
Stoker even asked Irving to star as Dracula in the novel's theatre adaption. Irving, however, declined, claiming the play way too trivial to be shown on stage in the first place.
English professor David Davis remarks in his "Great Books mini lecture about Dracula:
Irving said: 'Of course, I'm the star'; and then he read the play and stopped speaking to Stoker. ( Davis 2019, 35:56-36:00)
Interestingly this fact relates to the first part of my analysis about Dracula's literary predecessors.
John William, Polidori seems to have based his Vampire - Lord Ruthven - on his employer - Lord Byron - with whom he had a difficult relationship with. Polidori simultaneously hated and wanted to be Byron and to this day «Byronic» remains one of the classic attributes for vampires.
Similarly, Stoker idolized Irving, but his relationship with the actor was complicated at best and toxic at worst:
«Irving was a bloodsucker. Not literally, but he was a tyrant [...] he drained Stoker's life. Stoker had no personal life of his own. He followed Irving around and he seemed to have a kind of hypnotic, mesmeric power over Stoker.»( Davis 2019, 36:16-36:35.)
It seems both Polidori and Stoker crafted the likenesses of men they simultaneously hated and idolized into monsters that are both repulsive and appealing in their fiction.

Conclusion
Dracula's roots in Vlad III are somewhat faint yet visible, as Stoker presumably took some artistic liberties, streamlining and reducing complexity from Vlad III's biography. We need to remember, however, that Stoker's aim was to write a fantastical story about a bloodsucking undead rather than a historical novel about a Romanian ruler. Therefore, while Dracula does not neatly correlate with Vlad III, it also feels a bit unfair to say that Stoker just "got it wrong". We as modern readers and vampire fans just might feel like that because we learned a great deal about a historical figure, we really wouldn't care about at all if it weren't for Stoker.
In the end the biggest influence Vlad III arguably had on Dracula is lending him his name, as it is difficult to imagine "Count Wampyr rising to become the world's most famous vampire.

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