Dracula – as he is perceived today – is a fictitious character whose name derives from the appellation
given to Vlad Tepes, the ruler of Wallachia from 1456-1462 and 1476, and who, for largely political
reasons, was depicted by some historians of that time as a blood-thirsty ruthless despot.
Stoker‟s character, Count Dracula, first appeared in the novel “Dracula”, published in England in
1897, by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. But the name “Dracula”, far from being a frightening term,
derives from the Crusader Order of the Dragon with which Order both Vlad Tepes and his father had
been associated. The rest of the Dracula myth derives from the legends and popular beliefs in ghosts
and vampires prevalent throughout Transylvania.
Stoker‟s Count Dracula is a
“Dracula”, he was careful not
“strigoi” – who were leading a
centuries-old vampire, sorcerer, to suggest an actual link to the normal life during the day but
and Transylvanian nobleman, historical character of Vlad at night, during their sleep, their
who claims to be a Székely Tepes. While Stoker‟s character souls left their bodies and
descended from Attila the Hun. Van Helsing muses as to haunted the village tormenting
He inhabits a decaying castle in whether Count Dracula might people in their sleep. These evil
the Carpathian Mountains. In be the Voivode Dracula, he spirits haunt their prey from
his conversations with the obviously is not since Count midnight until the first
character Jonathan Harker, Dracula of Transylvania is cockcrow, when their power to
Dracula reveals himself as plainly not Prince Vlad Tepes harm people faded. “The
intensely proud of his boyar of Wallachia and Stoker was undead [i.e., ghosts, vampires]
culture with a yearning for disinclined at all to make his suffer from the curse of
memories of his past. Count character a real person of immortality,” writes Stoker,
Dracula appears to have studied historic significance. “they pass from one period to
the black arts at the Academy In the villages near Bran, there another, multiplying their
of Scholomance in the is a belief in the existence of victims, augmenting the evil in
Carpathian Mountains, near the evil spirits called ghosts or the world…” The Dracula
town of Sibiu (then known as “steregoi” (a variant of character derives from these
Hermannstadt). “strigoi”). Until half a century local myths.
While Stoker named his ago, it was believed that there Transylvanian Count existed certain living people –
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