Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) Vs Vlad the Impaler (15th century).

Printed in Nuremb­erg in 1499. Bibliophilia

See an earlier post where Vlad III was freed after his family’s death, and began to use the name Vlad Dracula i.e the drag­on’s son. Back in Wallach­ia (now Romania), he became a violent ruler, earning his name Vlad the Impaler: as ruler of C15th Wallachia, he committed very grisly acts.

Vlad III’s cruelty was real, but his reputation as a villain spread over ALL of C15th Europe thanks to the timely arrival of the printing press. Attack­ing pamphlets written by his enemies became best sellers. And  Vlad’s brutality spread far and wide, as depicted in contemporary engravings.

So why did much of Christian Europe support his strong, if brutal, def­ence of Wallachia from various Muslim Ottoman incursions? And how is Vlad III still Romania’s national hero, for defend­ing his peo­ple from foreign invasion in the mid-1400s? Clearly the atrocities committed by Vlad the Impaler remain as terrifying today as they were 550 years ago.

Despite all that, Vlad III might have remained just a brief bit of history from the Mid­dle Ages, except for an important C19th book. A book by William Wilkinson the British con­sul to Wall­achia, An Account Of The Princ­ip­al­it­ies Of Wal­l­achia And Moldavia 1820, dug into the region’s history and noted the infamous warlord Vlad the Impaler. It helped to popul­arise the real Dracula story across Europe.

From Dacre Stoker we know that 45-year-old Irishman Bram Stoker (1847–1912) had never visited Vlad III's home­land. At the Lyceum Theatre London in 1890, Bram Stoker’s friend told him of the Wilkinson book. And told him to vis­it the Whitby Library.  Soon Stoker ent­ered Whitby’s Subscription Library and requested Wil­l­iam Wilkin­s­on’s book. The library hadn’t even made it known they pos­­sessed this rare book and access was only granted reluctantly. So Stoker quickly opened the pages to a specific section, made many notes in his journal, and returned the tome to the librarian. 

Next he stopped at the Whitby Museum, where he mapped a route from London to the wilds of Roman­ia, with specific latitudes and longitudes. From the Museum, Bram travelled to Whit­­by Harbour where he spoke to the Royal Coast Guard. They informed him of the Dmitri sailing vessel that ran aground a few years earlier in­side the prot­ect­ive harbour, with only a handful of crew alive. The ship, which originated in Varna port in Eastern Europe, was car­rying a my­s­terious cargo. [Stoker’s book ev­entually told the story of a vamp­ire who moved from his native Tran­syl­vania to UK in the search for victims of his undead curse].

The final piece of an old puzzle was slowly emerging. On 1 page of his notes Count Wampyr, the name he’d orig­inally inten­d­ed to use for his vill­ain, had been cross­ed out. It was replaced with Count Dracula, and to Bram it finally made  sense. He’d found a blurry place between fact and fiction. 

When Stoker wrote his iconic novel, Dracula (1897) the original pref­ace incl­uded this passage: I am quite convinced that there is no doubt what­soever that the events here described really took place, however unbe­l­iev­able and incomprehensible they might appear at first sight. He went on to claim that the characters in his novel were real people. Clearly Stoker had NOT intended for Dracula to be fict­ion, rather as a warn­ing of a very real evil. Worried of the impact of presenting such a story as true, Archibald Constable editors returned the manus­cript saying: No!

London was still recovering from the horrible Whitechap­el Murders (1888-91), and with the killer still unknown, they couldn’t pub­lish Stoker’s story without creating mass panic. Chang­es would be needed, and it would ONLY be published as fiction. When the novel was final­ly released in May 1897, the first 100 pages had been cut, alterat­ions had been made to the text, the epilogue had been shortened and Dracula’s ultimate fate was changed. Stoker’s message, once concise and clear, was now blurred.

The mythical ch­aracter Drac­ula Prince of Darkness emerged from Stoker’s imaginat­ion in 1897. His novel was the classic story of a vampire named Count Dracula who feeds on hum­an blood, hunting his vict­ims and burying them whilst still alive. The most blood-curdling novel of the century was said to be St­oker’s own creat­ion. But many be­l­ieve the blood­th­irsty villain was based on Vlad the Imp­al­er, hid­eous ruler of mid-1400s Wallachia-Romania. In fact the true history of Vlad the Impaler was far scarier than Stoker could guess.

The link between history and fiction lay with the gory tales of the blood-thirsty man’s exploits. Reg­­ardless of how much he was inspired by Wilkinson, Stoker’s Dracula became one of the most adapted horror stor­ies ever. Perhaps the author also drew on elements of the monstrous cholera epidemic of Sligo Ireland or other catastrophes.

What was too real or too frightening for publication? NB the first Icelandic publication of Dra­c­ula titled Power of Dark­ness (1900). In that first edition, Bram left not only his original Preface int­act, but parts of his original story remained. Then there were Stoker’s notes.

The first silent picture to film the vampire was the 1921 Dracula’s Death. 10 years later, the American prod­uction starring the hypnotising Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi became a very pop­ular adaptation in 1931. Films, tv shows and books have follow­ed since, including Netflix’s 2020 series Dracula. Sites linked to the legend are popular tourist des­tin­ations eg Vlad III’s Romanian Poenari Castle was an imp­ort­ant fort­ress for the governor. Roman­ia’s Bran Castle is widely assoc­iated in tourists’ minds with Stoker’s book and Vlad III, but the connection is less clear.