Vlad The Impaler - The Real Count Dracula
Dracula was a real person. He wasn’t a vampire, but he was a brutal and bloodthirsty medieval ruler.
Vlad III Dracula or Vlad the Impaler (1431-1476) was the voivode of Wallachia. Dracula was a nickname, meaning both “devil” and “dragon” in Romanian. A voivode was a local ruler, kinda like a count, and Wallachia is part of Transylvania, so Count Dracula of Transylvania is an accurate name, especially for a terrifying human.
Wallachia was a small territory wedged in between the two superpowers of Eastern Europe at the time: the Catholic Kingdom of Hungary and the Muslim Ottoman Empire. This meant that Vlad Dracula would constantly shift political alliances from side one to the other, depending on whatever wars or imprisonment or exile or family members held hostage or atrocities were most front-of-mind that day.
Vlad III was raised as a hostage in the court of the Ottoman Sultan to ensure his father didn’t align too closely with the Hungarians. Dad played politics too much and lost his throne, so his son had to fight for his inheritance. And fight he did. In 1456 he beheaded his rival in a battle, and so his bloody reign began.
The constant warfare between the major powers plus the typical fighting between the local nobles had made Wallachia a mess. Vlad Dracula aimed to clean up the place, so he started at the top. He gathered all his boyars (nobles) together for a meeting. Most he decided were insufficiently loyal, so he replaced them with newly appointed, extra loyal boyars.
Count Dracula couldn’t just let the old boyars go, so he forced the able-bodied men into slave labor and killed the women and the elderly. The enslaved men were forced into hard labor building Vlad III’s newest palace. They all died eventually of exhaustion. The others weren’t just beheaded or some other dignified execution method typical for nobles; they were impaled.
So, impaling. This was a particularly horrible method of execution where someone was put on a spear to slowly die. Just like crucifixion in the Roman Empire, impaling was intended to punish and humiliate the victim, and send the survivors a message about who was in charge that would last for weeks afterwards. Yes, most medievals were as horrified by that as you are now.
Vlad III Dracula was a “law and order” kind of ruler, cracking down on crime with huge punishments. He invited all the beggars in his lands to a feast, then burned down the building with the poor people inside. If you’re reading this around Halloween, keep this anecdote in mind to whip out in a few weeks at Thanksgiving if your uncle starts in on how “they” are wasting his taxes. That’s a heckuva conversation starter. Or conversation ender. Depends on your family. Regardless, don’t go full Dracula and burn Grandma’s house down.
In 1462, the Ottoman sultan marched against Vlad III. The Ottomans had three times the number of troops that defended Wallachia. Vlad took a scorched earth approach to the next level and impaled 20,000 people in his retreat: soldiers, peasants, it didn’t matter. Sultan Mehmed II, the same one that conquered Constantinople a decade earlier, was so creeped out by this “forest” of bodies that he turned around and went back home.
That same year, everyone had had enough, and Vlad was sent into exile. Vlad Dracula was imprisoned in Hungary for 12 years. Eventually they let him out to fight against the Turks, and he was killed in battle by Ottoman troops. Fittingly, his severed head was sent to Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople to be impaled on a spike above the city’s gates.
Just like an undead vampire, Vlad’s story lived on. A few hundred years later, Vlad III would be the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. When Romania was fighting for its independence, he became a nationalist hero for all of his fighting against the Turks. Even today, he is the unofficial patron saint ( or maybe demon?) of gift shops in every tourist trap in Transylvania.
Some jobs are harder than others. Leading a country wedged in between warring superpowers is going to be tough. But it’s up to you how you handle it. Yes, Vlad Dracula was going to have to fight, but he chose to be cruel and vicious and gory. His brutality is why he was remembered, eventually becoming the namesake of the monstrous vampire in the novel written hundreds of years later.
You too will be remembered. Will it be for your gallant deeds on the battlefield? Maybe for your gallantry at court? Maybe derring-do on a quest? Those would be great songs to sing in the mead hall. But your animosity to your enemies and/or sometimes friends? Your cruelty to your own people? Is that what you want people to say about you when you’re gone?
You’ll be remembered for your actions. Act accordingly. Maybe your industry is tough. Maybe the economy is in a deep recession. It’s up to you what you’ll do. It’s up to posterity to remember you as they will. Keep that in mind. You’ve only got a short number of days to live, but your reputation is immortal.
