Of all of the very human influences on the modern concept of vampirism, no single historical character has played a more significant and hotly debated role than Romanian prince Vlad Dracula, one of the most menacing, misconstrued, and misunderstood eastern European rulers to haunt the history of the walking dead. Bram Stoker's brilliantly innovative approach to the horrors of vampirism in Dracula reshaped Western concepts of the legendary creature of the night and brought the undead into the libraries and drawing rooms of Victorian England. At its core lay the resurrected heart of a legendary living monster.