Which two European nobles have most inspired popular vampire folklore?
We’ve all heard of vampire legends like Dracula, Nosferatu, or Lilith. And some of us have heard that these legends were based on real people from regions like Transylvania. But can you name two of the real European nobles that vampire stories are possibly drawn from?
By this point, there are many vampire mythologies to contend with. In this post-Twilight landscape, the traditional vampire lore has been altered somewhat to reflect the world in which we live. Vampires are no longer threatening and scary. You can watch Hotel Transylvania for proof of that concept. And you might think that Twilight reduces a vampire’s horror factor, but the narrative of a damsel falling for a vampire isn’t new. And the sparkly skin is an adjustment to the original idea that a vampire cannot go out in the sun without turning to dust.
Current narratives came from somewhere though, and they ultimately stem from the Mac daddy of vampire stories: Dracula. Bram Stoker’s novel is currently the most famous vampire story and world-renowned. That is the image of a vampire we might all think of: pointy teeth, pale skin, red eyes, and a tall intimidating presence. The cape and the almost regal countenance of Dracula, as well as the hypnotic methods to his madness, are legendary. But how much of this imagery actually comes from Bram Stoker? And where exactly did Stoker get this kind of folklore anyway?
Abraham Stoker was an Irish author who wrote the Gothic horror novel Dracula in 1897. This is an epistolary novel, which means the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. And the era of Gothic fiction is well-known for how it showcases environments of fear, chilling supernatural events, and a general sense of being haunted. Maybe not by paranormal ghosts, but the idea of ‘the ghosts of your past’. Novels like Frankenstein and Jane Eyre are also Gothic literature. The settings of Gothic novels are typically castles, convents, crypts, and there can often be a plot point of vengeful persecution or imprisonment. The horrid and murderous events in the plot of a Gothic novel can sometimes be a metaphorical expression of social or psychological conflicts.
Right off the bat, there is disagreement about where Stoker’s inspiration for the novel came from. Yes, he wrote notes and drew from Transylvanian folklore and history. But the names of our two nobles are actually nowhere in his extensive notes. The name of Dracula is one Stoker found in a library in Whitby, England. He may have thought it meant devil in Romanian. Because in modern Romanian, dracula means devil. But it could also mean ‘son of the dragon’. FYI: Transylvania is a region of Romania. So let’s start there…
Romania sits in the Balkan peninsula, to the south of Ukraine and Moldova, and to the east of Hungary and Serbia. The Carpathian Alps bisect the country in a wave-like arch. The plateaus and valleys on all sides of the mountain range make up the three historic main regions of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania. Other areas rose to prominence over the region’s history, but we’ll stick with these big three for today’s story. Transylvania as a word can be broken down to mean “beyond the forest” or “on the other side of the forest”. Already, it gives off a mysterious vibe.
Celts were the first people to populate the area, then the Roman Empire conquered it, followed by the Goths and Huns. You know, like Attila. Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1002. Saxon colonists started to filter into the region after that, and on the cusp of the Black Plague years, the mid 1300s, the area was bracing for an invasion by the Mongols. It was actually the Mongol invasion that cemented the region to the south of Transylvania: Wallachia. And it is actually this region that the first of our nobles stems from.
In 1428, a second son is born to a man who would become a voivode of Wallachia. What’s a voivode? Great question! Essentially, it’s a prince of the blood or a duke, who is the lord for the region. This voivode was the illegitimate son of Mircea the Elder. This is common in medieval Europe: a multitude of legitimate and illegitimate sons vying for power and legacy. In 1431, just three years after his second son is born, this prince of the blood was recognized as a member of the Order of the Dragon. And five years later, in 1436, he was able to assert his claim to the lands of Wallachia. This man is Vlad II, also known as Vlad Dracul.
But that’s not who this episode is going to be about! It is his second son, Vlad III, who would become one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and is a national hero of Romania to this day. Many of us know him as Vlad the Impaler. This is where the name of Dracula, or ‘son of the dragon’, comes from. Let’s hear more about this whole ‘dragon’ thing a bit more, shall we?
The Order of the Dragon was a militant fraternity founded by Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary in 1408. Sigismund would go on to become a Holy Roman Emperor, but this specific brotherly militia was founded with the purpose of halting the Ottomans from advancing into Europe. This tells us much about the world Vlad the Impaler was born into. The Crusades had come and gone, but fighting the enemies of Christianity had not. The Ottoman Empire was decidedly not Christian in its governance. However, plenty of non-Muslims were present throughout its history. There was actually a wide degree of religious tolerance, even if non-Muslims were not fully equal under the law, they were fully protected and recognized by the Empire.
But to Christian Europe, it was a threat to have a Muslim empire on its doorstep and a conquering one at that. Membership into the Order of the Dragon was mostly given to political supporters and allies of Sigismund. As the years went on though, more and more noble families co-opted the prestigious dragon or red cross emblem of the order into their family’s coat of arms. Families like the Bocksai, Bethlen, Bathory, and Benyovszky. In 1442, the Ottomans did invade Transylvania and the sultan ordered Vlad II to come to Gallipoli to demonstrate his loyalty. Vlad III and Radu, his younger brother, accompanied their father to Gallipoli, where they were all imprisoned. And while their father would eventually be released, Vlad and Radu were not. They were essentially hostages, secured to ensure Vlad II’s fealty.
Vlad II’s support of the King of Poland and Hungary against the Ottomans, was surely going to end his son’s lives, or so he thought. But neither of them were killed or even beaten. A few years later, after Vlad II paid homage to the sultan, the boys traveled back to Wallachia. Vlad III would go on to hear the tales of his father’s exploits in the region, all for the sake of laying claim to Wallachia as its rightful ruler. But only a few years later, a former ally of Vlad II sent his troops into Wallachia, forcing Vlad II to flee. In the course of fleeing what he considered his land, he was captured and murdered.
At the time of his father’s murder, Vlad Dracula would have been roughly 19 or 20 years old. Plenty old enough to have learned how to fight and fight well. Vlad Dracula’s purpose in life at that moment was to not only avenge his father, but strengthen his own claim to rule over Wallachia, since he was a legitimate claimant. Vlad sought support from an unlikely source: the Ottomans. But this was more of a ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ kind of alliance. Both sides knew it wouldn’t last long. With Vlad Dracula at the head of Ottoman troops, breaking into Wallachia and subsequently helping those troops to victory at the Battle of Kosovo in October 1448 was probably a great feeling.
After the battle though, he had to flee into exile. There was nowhere in Wallachia that was safe for him. I could go into great detail about the next series of events in Moldovia and Transylvania, but it’s your typical medieval fighting. Vlad Dracula’s maternal uncle mounts a throne, but is murdered two years later. Vlad helps his cousin flee and seeks assistance from the one man Vlad hated. A brief truce existed, but broke down likely due to power-hungry infighting reasons. Vlad fled yet again and then his life story becomes murky.
I know what you’re going to ask at this point. When does Vlad Dracula become Vlad the Impaler? I know, I know. We’ll get there, I promise. But so far, Vlad’s life is bloody, tenuous, and hard. By the summer of 1456, Vlad had enough Hungarian support behind him to invade Wallachia and consolidate his rule. He wrote a letter to the people of Brasov, whom he had previously been protector of, in which he states: “when a prince is strong and powerful he can make peace as he wants to; but when he is weak, a stronger prince will come and do what he wants to him”. The authoritarian Vlad comes to the forefront.
In his initial reign of Wallachia, Vlad orders mass executions. Hundreds or thousands of people, most of them involved in the conspiracy to murder his father and elder brother, as well as those Vlad suspected of plotting against him, were killed. Vlad granted the money and property of his enemies inside of Wallachia to his friends and allies. Vlad’s council was a rotating list of members who served only briefly. Clearly, Vlad wanted to keep people on their toes and in fear of him. In the years that followed his rise to voivodeship, tribes of Saxons in towns in neighboring regions like Transylvania became a target for Vlad. This is where the legend of Vlad as the Impaler stems from. The earliest German stories about Vlad recounted that he had carried men, women, and children from a Saxon village to Wallachia and had them impaled. And these events were Vlad’s method of establishing his loyalties. Because at this time, the Saxons were loyal to the king of Hungary, who had just had an ally of Vlad’s killed.
Even after a peace of sorts was worked out, more bloodshed occurred. If Vlad didn’t like that a particular noble was settling in or near his lands, seeing it as a threat, he would have them killed. If Saxon merchants didn’t repay a Wallachian merchant in full, effectively stealing goods from Vlad, then Saxon towns would be ransacked. When Vlad invaded southern Transylvania and destroyed the outskirts of the city of Brasov, he ordered the impalement of any men and women who had been captured. He’s clearly making a name for himself in the region.
The Ottomans are also noticing that Vlad has stopped paying homage to the sultan. When the sultan sent envoys to Vlad, ordering him to Constantinople, Vlad found out the sultan had also sent a secret agent to capture him. Vlad decided to execute all of them and then go on a march. He broke into Ottoman fortresses, captured them, devastated villages along the Danube, and launched a full-scale invasion. He wrote a letter back to his King of Hungary, stating that “more than 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians” had been killed in his campaign, that he had “broke peace with the sultan for the honor of the king and for the preservation of Christianity and the strengthening of the Catholic faith”.
Yeah. So there’s that little tidbit: Vlad the Impaler was Catholic. And he’s not only aiming to control his little fiefdom, but also trying to expel Muslims from encroaching on his land. Muslims who had an army of an enormous size. The sultan, Mehmed II, raised 150,000 men to arms, which is only a little bit smaller than the amount of men it took to occupy Constantinople and force the fall of the Byzantines. While the King of Hungary did try to send support to Vlad, the men never arrived and the Ottomans were too many for Vlad. There was a scorched-earth retreat back to Wallachia, which left behind a horrid visual for the Ottomans who were right on his tail. When Mehmed and his men entered Targoviste, they discovered what they called “a forest of the impaled”. It horrified them.
The records from the Ottomans state that as many as 20,000 men, women, and children were dead due to Vlad’s unique method of leaving no trace. Ultimately, Vlad’s retreat worked. The sultan couldn’t keep his army well-fed or well-hydrated in the height of summer heat. The Ottomans left Wallachia, but had an ace up their sleeve. This entire time, they had Vlad’s younger brother Radu on their side. Yes, the same brother who Vlad had been imprisoned with all those years ago. Radu was drawing allies to his side left and right. The King of Hungary was even reconsidering Vlad’s ability to rule well. He didn’t want a war with the Ottomans and tried to negotiate with Vlad for weeks on end. But Vlad wouldn’t budge. The King had him imprisoned and likely forged documents showing that Vlad would eventually side with the Ottomans and overthrow him as King of Hungary.
The fighting in the region between Hungary and the Ottomans didn’t end during Vlad’s lifetime. In 1476, as Vlad is in his late forties, Mehmed invaded Moldavia. Vlad and another commander by the name of Stephen Bathory entered Moldavia and forced the sultan to lift his siege of an important fortress. While Bathory then moved on to conquer the city of Targoviste, the same city where Vlad had left 20,000 impaled victims in his wake, Vlad was confirming his alliances and occupying Bucharest. These acts were trying to force the Ottomans out. But late in 1476, the Ottomans surged back and Vlad died fighting them.
It’s said that the Ottomans cut Vlad’s corpse into pieces, sending his head to the sultan Mehmed II. During his lifetime, lengthy poems were written by German Meistersingers, detailing Vlad’s cruelty. At the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, in 1463, one such poem was performed and was titled ‘Story of a Despot Called Dracula’. Some eyewitness testimony of Vlad’s raids into Transylvania was turned into exaggerated stories, describing Vlad as ‘a demented psychopath, a sadist, a gruesome murderer’ and also ‘worse than Caligula and Nero’. Due to the invention of movable type printing, these wild stories about Vlad were European bestsellers with the ordinary folk and nobles alike.
But in Romania today, Vlad Dracula is a national hero. Their stories imply that cruel acts were taken in order to secure the public. Also, many of Vlad’s letters to the people in Wallachia were written in a supportive and protective manner. He would thank villagers for helping him escape from castles during Ottoman invasions. In Romanian folklore, he strengthened the central government the way he knew how. Since Vlad was never a pure vassal of any one entity during his life, he’s also seen as a fighter for independence in Romania.
It really wasn’t until Bram Stoker wrote his Gothic novel in 1897 that any connection was made between Vlad Dracula and vampirism. But the image of a tall, dark, terrifying man whose bloodthirst knows no bounds does certainly help Stoker’s desire to evoke fear for ‘the Count’ in his novel. The local histories of the region, in which Vlad Dracula existed, also support Stoker’s inspiration for the book.
But that certainly isn’t the only eastern European inspiration for vampirism. Let’s move to our second noble of the episode, involving a name I’ve already mentioned: Bathory. The House of Bathory was an old and powerful Hungarian family, reaching back to the early Middle Ages. One son of this family was Stephen of Ecsed, who we already know assisted Vlad in fighting off the Ottomans in Wallachia. But Stephen also waged war in Bosnia with Vlad, and would ultimately become the voivode of Transylvania.
From this same Ecsed branch of the Bathory family, a daughter would be born in 1560. Well after Vlad had been killed by Turks, this noble daughter was cultivated to marry well. She learned languages like Latin and Greek, and was likely well-versed in horse riding and musical pursuits. All the hallmarks of a privileged young noblewoman from an historic and wealthy family. She was raised a Calvinist Protestant, which is a marked change since Vlad’s time. Her one flaw? Epilepsy. This condition was seen as a ‘falling sickness’. And at this time, epilepsy was treated with rubbing the blood of a non-sufferer onto the lips of the epileptic. We won’t go into the reasons why that’s not a legitimate method of healthcare, but to 16th century folk, it wasn’t a shocking treatment.
This noblewoman’s name? Elizabeth. And in 1573, when Elizabeth was only 13, she was engaged to Count Ferenc Nadasdy. This was a political arrangement within the aristocracy of Hungary. Two years later, the couple married, which resulted in combined land ownership in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Hungary. Quite the coup! One of the wedding gifts from her husband was the Castle of Csejte, which is situated in what’s called the Little Carpathians. But the couple resided mainly in Sarvar, where Nadasdy’s castle was.
Just three years into their marriage, her husband was called to war against the Ottomans. So, at least that part of life in the Balkans hadn’t changed. Elizabeth managed the family’s multiple estates and business affairs during the war. This was very common at the time and included responsibility over people, providing medical care for them and defending their lands. The threat of attack was ever-present for Elizabeth, as much of their combined lands were along pathways an army would take to reach their next target. Many villages would’ve been marked for plundering by the Ottomans, if they made it far enough.
It isn’t until her husband returns from war that they begin having children. A daughter named Anna in 1585, a daughter named Orsika in 1590, a daughter named Katalin in 1594, a son named Andras in 1596, and another son named Paul in 1598. Only a few years later, Ferenc started to experience debilitating pain in his legs, which he never recovered from. He died in 1604 at the age of 48. He had been married to Elizabeth for 29 years and had five living children. He entrusted them to his friend, Gyorgy Thurzo.
So far, Elizabeth seems to be living exactly the life you think a noblewoman of the 16th century would live. She marries young, gives birth to multiple children, and supports her husband while he goes to war. However, in the time just before her husband’s death, rumors and accusations started to circulate throughout the kingdom of Hungary. Accusations that would lead to Elizabeth’s arrest.
Bathory is said to have begun killing the daughters of the lesser gentry, who were sent to her by their parents to learn courtly etiquette. A Lutheran minister made complaints against her both publicly and at the court in Vienna. None other than Gyorgy Thurzo, the entrusted family friend, was sent to investigate these accusations in 1610. Now remember friends, here is a wealthy widow, who may or may not have experienced epileptic episodes into her adulthood. And the man investigating was a high official in Hungary at the time, prompted to look into the accusations by Matthias II, who also owed a large debt to Elizabeth at the time of her arrest.
You tell me how accurate these claims against her may be. Because once Elizabeth was arrested, on the word of over 300 accusers, her vast estate started to be distributed to others. Elizabeth’s son Paul, and two of her son-in-laws debated with Thurzo and sought to avoid the loss of Elizabeth’s property in its entirety. Even the act of arresting Elizabeth was scandalous, so the family tried to position themselves in a good light. An agreement was made that Elizabeth would be placed under house arrest, instead of being sent anywhere where she could try to escape.
Thurzo’s efforts to try to paint Elizabeth as a guilty perpetrator of torture and murder hinged on his own words. He wrote a letter to his wife that stated he “caught Elizabeth in the act” when he arrived unannounced at Castle Csejte. Thurzo says he found one dead girl and another living as “prey” in the castle. To the contrary though, Elizabeth was eating dinner when Thurzo arrived at the castle. And a majority of the king’s witnesses testified that they had heard the accusations from others, but had not seen the acts committed. Servants confessed under torture, which we all know now is not even remotely credible. The accusations were all based on rumors and no document was found that proved anyone in the area complained about Elizabeth. And this was at a time when if someone stole a chicken, a letter of complaint was written.
And what happened to all the king’s witnesses? They were summarily executed. Due to them being accomplices in Elizabeth’s torture, but I would imagine due to Thurzo not wishing for them to recant later on. In 1611, two separate trials occurred and within a few weeks, Elizabeth was detained. She would never again step foot outside Castle Csejte. After her arrest, she wrote a will leaving all current and future inheritance to her children, as well as distributing her lands and estates among them. Only three years later, in the fall of 1614, Elizabeth complained to a bodyguard that her hands were cold. That night, she went to sleep and was found dead the next morning, aged 54.
Once again, the Countess inspired many stories much later in the 18th and 19th centuries. The most common motif was that she bathed in her virgin victims’ blood to retain beauty or youth. This was a legend that was disproved when witness accounts were published in 1817 and included no reference to blood baths. Needles and the pricking of skin, yes. But bathing? No. Also remember that Elizabeth’s duty as the lady of vast estates and lands was to care for the sick and wounded. This was the 1600s and aspirin didn’t exist. Also, the pricking of skin would’ve been partly considered to be a medical procedure. It’s entirely likely that Bathory castles were used as places of medical care, or at the very least, places of palliative care when no remedy could be found.
I’m more inclined to believe she was a wealthy target and rumor mills make for easy fuel for political and power hungry individuals. But who’s to say she didn’t enjoy lording her own position over those in lower ranks? Who’s to say that the Countess Bathory wasn’t a sadistic serial killer and simply left us no evidence of her crimes? I suppose we’ll never truly know. She has been listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the most prolific female murderer.
And that’s the deep dive into the personal histories behind Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory. The answer to the trivia question: Which two European nobles have most inspired popular vampire folklore? I think we’ve debunked that myth though, haven’t we?
It’s true that Count Dracula is a figure well-founded in our popular culture. He’s appeared in over 200 films, more than any other character in cinematic history. We’ve even got a character on Sesame Street based on him. But the idea of vampirism isn’t new at all. The vampire as a notion or idea has existed for millenia. Cultures in Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Levant, and Northern India all have tales of demons and spirits, which are considered precursors to modern vampires.
Many cultures describe a vampire as being dark in color or bloated in appearance. They would often be wearing the shrouds they were buried in, as they roamed in search of sustenance. In both Chinese and Slavic traditions, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, like a dog or cat, was feared to become one of the undead. In Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been witches who had rebelled against the Church while they were alive.
There were many practices put in place to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. From burying a corpse upside-down to placing sickles near the grave, or perhaps placing poppy seeds or millet on the ground at the gravesite. The idea with that last one was that the corpse would be too busy counting the individual grains or seeds to wreak havoc. The association of vampires with arithmomania is a strong one. Cultures in India and China state that if a vampire came across a bag of rice, it would be forced to count every grain. That’s what arithmomania is: a compulsion to count objects or actions taken.
And you don’t have to use garlic to ward off a vampire, by the way - you can use a branch of wild rose or hawthorn instead. Or even a sprinkle of mustard seeds on the roof of your house. And the notion of staking a vampire with wood? Well, Christ’s cross was made from aspen, so that type of wood will do! As would oak or ash. And you don’t have to aim for the heart. The mouth or stomach would do just fine. All of these various methods are part of verbal traditions throughout Europe and Asia.
Of course, the devil was commonly associated with vampires. Only demons or spirits would drink blood or eat flesh. The Persians were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons. Ancient Babylonia and Assyria had tales of mythical Lilitu or Lilith in Hebrew. She was considered an estrie, or a female shapeshifter created in the twilight hours before God rested on the seventh day.
The belief in vampires dates back so far and its imagery continues to have a far reach. Both Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory will forever be linked to this folklore and mythos, whether they deserve to be or not. I hope you enjoyed this tale of two nobles, both alike in dignity and hardship.