Dracula Land

Dracula or Vlad the Impaler was the son of Vlad Dracul (1436-1442, 1443-1447) and grand-son of Mircea the Elder (1386-1418). Vlad Dracul was dubbed a knight of the Order of the Dragon King of Hungary. All members of the order had a dragon on their coat of arms, and this earned him the nickname of Dracul (the Devil). Vlad the Impaler used to sign his or Draculya Dracula - the son of the devil - a name that has been distorted into Dracula.

Dracula's renown reached the West through the Saxons from the Transylvanian cities of Brasov (Kronstadt) and Sibiu (Hermannstadt), who often gave shelter to those who claimed the throne of Wallachia. To escape the danger of losing his throne, Vlad would punish the Saxons. Sibiu and surrounding area have been looted and burned by Vlad and many Saxons were impaled. The same thing happened to the Saxon merchants who came on business of Targoviste.

In fact, Vlad Tepes was called (the Impaler) only after his death (1476). He ruled in Wallachia between 1456-1462 and 1476. In 1462, after being defeated by the Turks, Vlad took refuge in Hungary. In 1476, with the help of Hungarian king Matia Corvin and the Moldavian prince Stephen the Great, Vlad took over the throne of Wallachia again for a month. A battle followed, during which Vlad was killed. His body was interred in the church of Snagov Monastery, on an island near Bucharest. His body lies in front of the altar. In 1935, a richly dressed but beheaded corpse was exhumed at Snagov, a fate known to have exceeded Dracula, whose head was wrapped, perfumed and sent as a gift to the Turkish Sultan.

They say that impalling was a favorite sentences of Dracula, but was not the only one who used it at the time. Other German and Spanish princes would do the same. He used the method of boyars, thieves and criminals, Turks, Saxons and those who conspired against him, more than once it happened that a whole forest of sharp stakes with enemies who heads rise around Targoviste, the capital of Wallachia at the time.

Horrified by these atrocities, the Saxons of printed books and pamphlets in which they told about Vlad's cruelty. These booklets also reached Germany and Western Europe, where Dracula became known as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

In 1897, the Irish writer Bram Stoker published Dracula, which made Vlad the Impaler famous world. Stoker read the stories about Dracula printed in the 15th and 16th centuries and was struck by his acts of cruelty. He decided to make him his character, he also read several books about Transylvania (a name of Latin origin means "land beyond the forest"), and thought that this "exotic" land would make a proper setting for Dracula's deeds.
In fact, Stoker used Vlad only as a source of inspiration for his novel, Dracula is not prince Vlad the Impaler, but a Transylvanian count living in a mysterious castle where he attracted his victims. His story takes place in the area Bistritza, and the castle is located near the cervix Bargau (in the Carpathians). As Stoker had never visited Transylvania, most places and events have been pure fiction.

Legend and true history of Dracula intermingle and are kept alive by tourist destinations like the Monastery of Snagov, near Bucharest, or Bran Castle near Brasov