The history of Dracula-Everything you wanted to know about the father of vampires. Dragon, impaler, in one word: Dracula
The Dragon, The Impaler, The Vampire
Since Bram Stoker published his famous novel, the 'Dracula', thousands of vampire-stories, books, and movies have come to life. Vampires became incredibly popular. Nowadays they are the ordinary part of our life, they are in the TV, on the Internet, every people know about them. If you ask someone about Transylvania, the first thing that comes to their mind will be Dracula. But why? When this Dracula-mystery began? Is there any truth in those myths? Let's find out!
In 1431 a little child was born in Segesvár, Transylvania (which was the part of Hungary in those days). His father was Vlad 'Dracul' II. (Vlad, 'the Dragon'), the successor of Wallachia (South-Romanian territory), before he was banished, and the Hungarian king, László V. let him to live in Transylvania. He and his son, the little Vlad, joined the legendary 'Order of the Dragon', a monarchical chivalric order of nobles. Vlad (the elder) got his name from this order (Dracul='the Dragon' in Romanian), and his son too (Dracula='the Little Dragon') In 1436 finally Vlad II. returned to Wallachia, and took the throne.
After his father's death in 1456, Vlad 'Dracula' became the vaivode of Wallachia. With this event, the 'nightmare' has started...
Impale them all
Vlad became one of the most cruel imperators of the history. In a few ages he totally approved that „Nomen est omen”, got his second 'nickname': Vlad Țepes (Țepes='Impaler' in Romanian). Many chronicles say that his favorite way to kill people was the impaling. If we can trust in some old writings, he had a whole forest from pales around his capital, Târgoviste. For the smallest sin he ordered the death, and the fear grabbed the country.
After his death, the people started to spread the story, that he was a vampire, and he is not dead, just hid in his old castle (Bran-castle, on the Transylvanian-Wallachian boarder) between the mountains. The myth wondered, and wondered, and got to the whole world.
Vampire or not, who can say, but I'm sure he was not an ordinary man.
