The Real Dracula: Historical Origins of Bram Stokers Vampire
Contents:
It is the birthplace of Vlad Tepes Vlad the Impaler , ruler of the province of Walachia from to find out more about Sighisoara. This ocher-colored house is the place where Vlad Tepes, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's famous Dracula, was born in and lived with his father, Vlad Dracul read more about the story of the Dracul name , until when they moved to Targoviste. A wrought-iron dragon hangs above the entrance. The ground floor of the house serves as a restaurant, while the first floor is home to the Museum of Weapons. Located at the foot of the Bargau Mountains, not far from the Borgo Pass Pasul Tihuta in Romanian which connects the provinces of Transylvania and Moldavia, the town of Bistrita is one of the oldest in the region.
Archeological findings indicate that the area has been inhabited since the Neolithic age, long before Bram Stocker chose it as the setting of his fictional Dracula's castle. Saxon colonists, who settled here in , helped develop the town into a flourishing medieval trading post. First mentioned in as Villa Bistiche, the name was later changed to Civitas Bysterce.
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Today, the old town's quaint 15th and 16th century merchants' houses, the remains of the 13th century fortress walls and a generally unhurried pace have preserved some of Bistrita's medieval atmosphere find out more about Bistrita. Access by car only Borgo Pass Bargau in Romanian , made famous in the opening chapter of Bram Stoker's Dracula, is an oft-trod passageway through the Carpathian Mountains in northern Transylvania.
Located near the small township of Tihuta, the pass peaks at 3, feet. The Bargau Valley encompasses some of the most beautiful unspoiled mountain scenery in the Carpathians with picturesque traditional villages located in valleys and on hillsides, ideal bases for hiking, riding or discovering their vivid tapestry of old customs, handicrafts and folklore. Here, you will step into a realm that the fictional Mina Harker described in her diary as "a lovely county; full of beauties of all imaginable kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities.
Vlad Tepes was born in in the fortress city of Sighisoara. His father, Vlad Dacul, was the military governor of Transylvania and had become a member of the Order of the Dragon a year before. The Order, similar to the Order of the Teutonic Knights, was a semi-military and religious organization established in in Rome in order to promote Catholic interests and crusades.
For his deeds, the Order of the Dragon was bestowed upon him, hence the title Dracul the Latin word for dragon is draco.
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While in medieval lure dragons served as symbols of independence, leadership, strength and wisdom, the biblical association of the devil with the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve gave the snake-like dragon connotations of evil. Thus, the Romanian word Dracul stands in English for both dragon and devil.
The Countess of Blood
Moreover, the ceremonial uniform of the Order — black cloak over red accouterment — was Bram Stocker' source of inspiration for Count Dracula's look. But how did Bram Stoker's story turn into a myth?
His first major act of revenge was aimed at the boyars of Targoviste for not being loyal to his father. A wrought-iron dragon hangs above the entrance. Van Helsing prescribes numerous blood transfusions to which he, Seward, Quincey, and Arthur all contribute over time. It was issued on September 20, and signed by Prince Vlad Tepes. Sucking Through the Century, —
A partial explanation is provided by the circumstances under which the book was written and received. A genuine epidemic of "vampirism" had hit Eastern Europe at the end of the 17th century and continued throughout the 18th century.
The number of reported cases soared dramatically, especially in the Balkans. Travelers returning from the East would tell stories about the undead, which helped keep the interest in vampires alive. Western philosophers and artists tackled the issue ever more often.
Bram Stoker's novel came as the pinnacle of a long series of works based on tales coming from the East. Back then, most readers were certain that the novel had been inspired by real facts and that its story was perhaps just a bit romanticized. Dracula is more than years old and still alive! Of course, almost everybody has heard about this Nosferatu: We all have an idea of who or what the Count is. However, on the other hand, Vlad Tepes Dracula , the historical figure who inspired Bram Stoker's novel, is definitely less well-known.
Vlad Tepes was born in December in the fortress of Sighisoara, Romania. Vlad's father, governor of Transylvania, had been inducted into the Order of the Dragon about one year before. The order — which could be compared to the Knights of the Hospital of St. John or even to the Teutonic Order of Knights — was a semi-military and religious society, originally created in by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli.
The main goal of such a secret fraternal order of knights was to protect the interests of Christianity and to crusade against the Turks. The boyars of Romania associated the dragon with the Devil and decided to call Vlad's father "Dracul," which in the Romanian language means "Devil;" "Dracula" is a diminutive, meaning "the son of the Devil.
Vlad followed his father and lived six years at the princely court. Vlad was held there until This Turkish captivity surely played an important role in Dracula's upbringing; it must be at this period that he adopted a very pessimistic view of life and learned the Turkish method of impalement on stakes. The Turks set Vlad free after informing him of his father's assassination in He also learned about his older brother's death and how he had been tortured and buried alive by the boyars of Targoviste.
When he was 17 years old, Vlad Tepes Dracula , supported by a force of Turkish cavalry and a contingent of troops lent to him by Pasha Mustafa Hassan, made his first major move toward seizing the Walachian throne.
Vlad became the ruler of Walachia in July of During his six-year reign, he committed many cruelties, hence establishing his controversial reputation. In order to create at least a degree of believability, Stoker judiciously adapted the basics of vampirism as set forth in the accounts of eastern European vampire panics by the French biblical scholar Dom Augustin Calmet in Dissertations sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires.
Here he found the time-honored methods of vampire disposal, actually used on suspicious corpses: Variant methods included the removal of the heart rather than its staking. These were all physical measures taken against a physical threat. Baring-Gould described the Serbian vlokslak , a vampire-werewolf hybrid, and related the Greek belief that werewolves became vampires after death.
Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. In folklore, the vampire, like other evil spirits, retreats into hiding by day but is never destroyed by the sun. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. Seward are my friends and have been so for many years, and I have never doubted that they were telling the truth….
Bram Stoker did not intend for Dracula to serve as fiction, but as a warning of a very real evil, a childhood nightmare all too real.
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Changes would need to be made. Factual elements would need to come out, and it would be published as fiction or not at all. Tens of thousands of words had vanished.
Vampires did not originate with the Twilight series. They did not begin with Bram Stoker's Dracula either, but it is—and will probably remain—the most iconic. The legend of Count Dracula and history of voivode Vlad the Impaler, the real-life hero who I am the last of my kind" – Dracula, from Bram Stoker's Dracula Vampires are believed to hang around crossroads on St. George's Day, April 23, and the Dracula is literally translated in Gaelic as Drac Ullah meaning bad blood.
In the s, the original Dracula manuscript was discovered in a barn in rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Nobody knows how it made its way across the Atlantic.
Dracula Legend
That manuscript, now owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen , begins on page This raises a question: What was considered too real, too frightening, for publication? Bram Stoker left breadcrumbs; you need only know where to look. Some of those clues were discovered in a recently translated first edition of Dracula from Iceland titled Makt Myrkranna , or Power of Darkness.
Within that first edition, Bram left not only his original preface intact, but parts of his original story — outside the reach of his U. Then there were his notes, his journals, other first editions worldwide. Unable to tell his story as a whole, he spread it out where, much like his famous vampire, it never died, only slept, waited.