Dracula, that archetypal vampire made infamous in Stoker's 19th
century Gothic romance cum horror story, is not entirely a myth.
His prototype, Prince Vlad III of Wallachia (now Romania), alias
Dracula (not of the devil but of the dragon, after the Order
bestowed on his father by Luxemburg's King Sigismond in 1431),
sobriquet "The Impaler," was a Byzantine/Balkan 15th-century
condottiere who by adroit diplomatic realpolitik kept his
principality independent of both Turk and Magyar. Internally he
stayed in power by decimating the feudal boyar aristocracy, by
centralizing the state administration and building up a peasant
army. Dracula is known, however, not for his nation-building but
for the means he used - "he blinded, strangled, hanged, burned,
boiled, skinned, roasted, hacked. . . nailed, burned alive and had
his victims stabbed." Considered a folk hero in Romania, his
reputation as a legendary monster is based on tales originally
spread by German refugees from Transylvania. The authors,
astoundingly multilingual, have sifted through a plethora of
surviving documents and artifacts to produce this portrait of the
man - "stem, unyielding" and sexually disturbed - his times and his
society, including tidbits from their earlier In Search of Dracula.
They do not claim that this is a "definitive biography" (because
"too many pieces of the puzzle are still missing") but it's a
sturdy enough reconstruction. (Kirkus Reviews)
A biography of the 15th century Prince of Romania, Vlad Dracula, on
whom Stoker based his fictional character. It covers his career as
ruler of Wallachia, terrorizer of Transylvania and crusader against
the Turks, and examines how closely he compares to his fictional
counterpart. This biography shows "Vlad the Impaler" to be a man as
extraordinary in his political and crusading abilities as he was in
his evil. He was considered a hero by the Pope and by Romanians
whom he liberated from the Turks, and generations of Russian Turks
studied accounts of his political genius and used his regime as a
model for their own. Yet Vlad is remembered first for his crimes,
excessive in both nature and number. He kept a vastly superior
Turkish force from attacking his capital by constructing an
infamous "forest of the impaled". Only in the context of his times
- times of plague, of the beginning of the Renaissance, of
literally cut-throat politics and conflict between East and West -
can one understand fully the many faces of Dracula. In this book
the authors offer a view of Dracula and his influential era.
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