You know his name very well. He is a man who lives on today after becoming immortal due to being the inspiration for one of horror's most notorious fiends. His name is Vlad Dracul but you know him as Vlad the Impaler. He was a fifteenth-century Wallachian prince born in the city of Sighisoara, what is now modern-day Romania. The word Dracul means devil and since his father was also Vlad Dracul he became known as Dracula meaning "son of the devil". Before literature turned him into what we now know as Dracula, Vlad was a prince but also a general who lead his Romanian army into battle to conquer and take back what was rightfully there's against the Turks. It is because of his status as a general and getting back his land that his own people consider him to be a hero and brave fighter who protected his country.
However, as history has come to make us all too aware, Vlad was not called The Impaler for nothing. Vlad didn't just want to defeat his enemies he wanted to consummate them into the ground, to humiliate and intimidate them in the most barbaric ways possible. His methods of torture are nothing short of bloodthirsty genius and satanic madman. His most well-known method of torture was to impale his victims on long sharpened wooden stakes, and many were impaled from their bottoms all the way up through their bodies so they endured death in the slowest and most agonizing way possible as people looked on in horror. It is said that he impaled over thousands including men, women, and children for intimidation and for the sport of war to make his point and those who resisted his Draconian ways.
Many of the people impaled were hung upside down as the stake went through their bodies and sometimes it would take them days or even weeks to die while impaled. When the Ottomans proclaimed war against Romania, Vlad fought them to restore order and so he could rightfully reclaim his land for his people. During this war, Vlad's first wife committed suicide by throwing herself from the tower of the castle where she well into the river. She proclaimed she would rather rot and have fish eat her then to be taken prisoner by the Turks. Despite having won many battles fate caught up with him and he was captured. He was killed in battle in 1476 near Bucharest where soldiers cut off his head and displayed it on a wooden stake.
Was Vlad the Impaler really a Satanist? A fiend who drank blood? A man who detested women by impaling them in the most sensitive areas? Maybe, maybe not but it is widely suggested that historians exaggerated many of his tales so it's hard to say what is true and what isn't. Either way, the whole idea that a man once existed that actually impaled others is a terrifying notion that intimidates people even still today. There is much I did not go into detail about Vlad's life but in a nutshell, he was a Prince and general who just fought for what he believed in and had an unorthodox way of torture and was over the top when it came to war. Some legends suggest that he drank the blood of his victims, that he covered himself in the blood of them before killing more. It's also said that he wore a crimson red suit of armor to not only intimidate but that when the blood splattered on him it simply mixed in with his suit so you couldn't tell.
This is where our beloved Count Dracula comes from. The story to which Bram Stoker got his inspiration. While Dracula is fictional, he is based on the real Vlad the Impaler. If you truly watch Dracula(1992) you'll realize that much of the story is taken from the real-life accounts of Vlad the Impaler. Whether or not he was a satanic madman is debatable but one thing is clear. Vlad the Impaler lives on through the ideas of many Romanians who look at him as a hero and revolutionary even still today. He lives on as an immortal vampire in literature as Count Dracula who lives in a creepy castle and longs to find his beloved.
In the 20's, a team went to exhume Vlad's body but when they opened the tomb all they saw laying in it were animal bones…
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