He Did What?
As with all legendary leaders and politicos of any era, there comes a rash of outrageous tales meant to enhance or undermine an individual's reputation. Vlad Dracula is no exception to that rule. The 1486 Russian chronicles of Vlad Dracula's various exploits and atrocities have been a staple of Dracula “facts.” At their best, these legends are generally considered to be gross exaggerations of actual occurrences, and at their worst, they're outright fabrications. Nevertheless, they're very much a part of the story of Vlad Dracula, if only because they describe the intense fear and grudging respect afforded the famous Wallachian ruler by his enemies. Intriguing in their very telling, all of these so-called Vlad Dracula “facts” have been revised and elaborately embellished throughout the centuries:
Turkish ambassadors sent to negotiate with Dracula failed to remove their fezzes in his presence, claiming that this was not their custom. In response, Dracula had their caps nailed to their heads.
Dracula is said to have summoned the poor, aged, and sick of his homeland to a feast inside a large hall. After asking his guests if they wished to be freed from all earthly cares, Dracula had the building burned down around them.
Two Hungarian monks visited Dracula to beg for alms. Separately, Dracula showed them a number of criminals impaled upon stakes. When he asked if he'd behaved correctly with his executions, one said “no.” The other said that a ruler was ordained by God to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. Dracula had the first monk impaled, and gave fifty gold ducats to the second.
A merchant had 160 gold ducats stolen from his cart and appealed to Dracula for justice. Dracula assured the merchant that he would find the stolen money within one night. The next day Dracula caught the thief and returned the merchant's money to him, with the addition of a single ducat. The merchant counted the money and returned the excess, after which Dracula told him that had he not displayed such honesty, Dracula would have impaled him along with the thief.
A peasant attending one of Dracula's feasts had the audacity to hold his nose at the stench of corpses in the courtyards. Dracula had him impaled to elevate him above the odor.
After King Matthias of Hungary captured Dracula and imprisoned him, Dracula whiled away his time by catching mice and impaling them on sticks, and plucking the feathers from live birds.
Objective Origins
Of all the scholars to take on the quest for the origins of Bram Stoker's Dracula, none have approached the subject with as much academic and intellectual zeal as Professor Elizabeth Miller of the University of Newfoundland in Canada. In Miller's quest for Stoker's inspiration, she has relied on Stoker's book notes as the only reliable factual evidence of his approach to the invention of the world's most famous vampire. The gist of Miller's conclusions is that Stoker undoubtedly appropriated the name “Dracula” from William Wilkerson's book An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Stoker's notes refer to the book, which Stoker had borrowed from the Whitby Library in northern England, and from which he copied a footnote describing (incorrectly) the term “Dracula” as being Wallachian for “devil.” Other than that, there's no evidence that Stoker knew the names “Vlad Tepes” or “Vlad the Impaler,” nor is it anywhere apparent that Stoker was aware of the many legends that had been attributed to Vlad Dracula so many centuries earlier.
As Miller points out in her works, the argument is often made that Stoker's description in Dracula of the madman, Renfield, and his obsession with taking the lives of flies, spiders, and birds was adapted from a Vlad Dracula legend. The unlikely tale relates that Vlad passed time by torturing and impaling mice and birds on sticks while he was incarcerated by Matthias Corvinus in Hungary in 1462. That association is tenuous conjecture at best, particularly given that Renfield didn't impale his tiny victims — he ate them raw.
Hungarian Homage
Another argument offered by several Dracula researchers is Van Helsing's coy reference in Chapter Eighteen of the novel to a colleague named “Arminius.” The mention comes after the group resolves to destroy Dracula and pays heed to Van Helsing's telling of the fiend's history:
“Thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was, we can confine him to his coffin and destroy him, if we obey what we know. But he is clever. I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to make his record, and from all the means that are, he tell me of what he has been. 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. If it be so, then was he no common man, for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the ‘land beyond the forest.’”
What some experts surmise is that Van Helsing's so-called Dracula expert is a tribute to suggestions made by Arminius Vambery, a noted Hungarian and Ottoman historian and linguist who Bram Stoker knew socially (see Chapter 4). The probability certainly exists that Stoker's “Arminius” may well have been an homage to the real-life Vambery, who had the perfect name and background for a fictional characterization, but the sticking point in the theory is that none of Stoker's notes refer to Vambery, nor to Vlad Tepes or “the Impaler,” as Vambery would likely have known him.
In much of the research literature surrounding Vlad Dracula, the term voivode is often used to describe his position as the ruler of Wallachia. The word was originally meant to describe the leaders of military forces in Slavic countries and gradually came into common usage to denote the rulers or princes of principalities in much of eastern Europe.
Unintentional Infamy
The brutal life and audacious exploits of Wallachia's Vlad Dracula are unquestionably worthy of the scores of manuscripts devoted to him over the years and have provided a springboard to countless hair-raising narrations in film and fiction in the world of vampirish horrors. Despite Vlad Dracula's relatively recent contributions to vampire legend in regard to intense study, it's likely that his sole influence on Bram Stoker's vampire was a fortuitous and unforgettably perfect name for the world's most frightening creature of the night — Dracula.
