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The Myth of Dracula

© Linda Casselman

Last time, we discussed the vampire monster in our culture and how it has been around for a very, very long time, since at least around 3000 BCE. We also briefly mentioned, probably the most popular vampire of all time, Dracula. Other than the whole vampire myth itself, there is another myth around Dracula that I would like to clear up here today.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Bram Stoker's Dracula is that his character was based on the real-life ruler Prince Vlad the Impaler. Well, this is kind of true, but not really.

Vlad, born in 1431 in Romania, was Prince of Wallachia. After the capture and imprisonment of Vlad and his brother, the assassination of his father, and the torture death of his older brother by the Turks and boyars, Vlad set out against his enemies and began his reign of extreme cruelty. Among his methods of torture and punishment, Vlad had his victims skinned, boiled, roasted, blinded, strangled, decapitated, hanged, nailed, burned alive, stabbed, and had body parts cut off. His favourite method, however, was impalement, hence the name "Vlad the Impaler". Impalement involved skewering a victim on a long wooden stake and then erecting that stake so that the weight of the victim's body would drive it further through his body causing a long, excruciating torture before death. Vlad would even have a table set up so that he could take his meal among the agonised cries of the impaled victims around him. In 1476 Vlad was eventually assassinated. To his countrymen Vlad was a national hero for defeating the Turks and saving their country. But history looks back on him as a psychopathic tyrant. So why do so many confuse Dracula with Prince Vlad? It's all in the name...

"An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia" (1820), Stoker happened upon this book by William Wilkinson in the public library of Whitby while vacationing there in the summer of 1890. In it he found a short passage mentioning a "voivode Dracula" who, in the 15th century, fought against the Turks. It also contained a footnote by Wilkinson that "Dracula" meant "Devil" in Wallachian. Nowhere, however, did it mention anything about the historical prince's character and the atrocities he committed. Stoker copied the information that he had found into his notes and then decided to change the name of his vampire character, originally intended to be "Count Wampyre", to "Count Dracula". Indeed Prince Vlad was also known as Dracula. His father, appointed military governor of Transylvania by Emperor Sigismund, was inducted into the powerful Order of the Dragon - an order whose purpose was to protect Catholicism and fight against the Turks. "Dracul" really meant "dragon", so "Dracula" means "son of Dracul" or "little dragon". Prince Vlad, then, often used the name Dracula as a nickname. The name Dracula therefore is about the only thing that Bram Stoker really knew about Prince Vlad.

The copyright of the article The Myth of Dracula in Mythology is owned by Wayne Kreger. Permission to republish The Myth of Dracula in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.