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Dracula was not inspired by Vlad the Impaler

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Kaladin

Member
Stoker's son, Irving Stoker, said that his father claimed Dracula had its genesis "in a nightmarish dream after eating too much dressed crab." After all, the best gothic novels were supposed to come from nightmares—just look at Frankenstein. Wherever Stoker got the initial idea to write a vampire story, Dracula was the product of a great deal of research and imagination.

For a long time, that research process was shrouded in mystery. Florence Stoker sold her husband's working notes for Dracula after his death in 1912, and they were lost to scholarly view until 1972, when Dracula scholars Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu discovered them in the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. This means that, for decades, much of Stoker's writing process was left to speculation. And it was in that speculation that Vlad III morphed from Count Dracula's possible namesake to the character's full-fledged inspiration.

In the absence of Stoker's notes, scholars sometimes invented their own scenarios for how Stoker chose Dracula as the name of his vampiric villain. One popular theory surrounded Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian professor with whom Stoker was acquainted. In April 1890, Stoker and his friend and co-worker, the actor Henry Irving, dined with Vambery after a performance of "The Dead Heart." (Stoker was the business manager at the Lyceum Theater, which Irving owned.) Many have imagined that this dinner involved Vambery regaling Stoker and Irving with tales of Vlad Tepes and his atrocities, and that these tales set Stoker's imagination aflame.

Why Did Bram Stoker Really Choose The Name Dracula?

The truth is, there's no evidence that Bram Stoker was even aware of the name Vlad III—much less that he was called "Vlad the Impaler." Miller warns that we can't assume that Stoker's notes are the end-all, be-all of the creation of Dracula, but they do provide the only factual information we currently have about Stoker's research. And the notes tell us exactly where Stoker got the name "Dracula."

While in Whitby in the summer of 1890 (after, it should be noted, his much-discussed dinner with Vambery), Stoker came across a copy of William Wilkinson's book An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. We know that, because he copied sections of the book into his notes. Wilkinson's book contains references to multiple voivodes named Dracula, and some of the sparse details on one such Voivode Dracula make it into Stoker's text: that he crossed the Danube to attack Turkish troops and had some success. That's it. There is no reference to a "Vlad," no mention of a nickname Tepes or "the Impaler," no detailing of his legendary atrocities.

So why did Stoker choose that name, Dracula? Well, we can infer that from his own notes. He copied information from a footnote from Wilkinson's book that read in his own notes, "DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL," with those capital letters. The footnote explained that Wallachians gave the name "Dracula" to people who were especially courageous, cruel, or cunning. Stoker chose the name, it appears, because of its devilish associations, not because of the history and legends attached to its owner.

This is the only reference to the historical Voivode Dracula that appears in Stoker's notes. Is it possible he knew more? Sure, it's possible. But this all we know for certain.

Quite interesting. I didn't even know this stuff, and I'm sure there are a lot of fans of Dracula who associate him blindly with Vlad The Impaler.

http://io9.com/no-bram-stoker-did-not-model-dracula-on-vlad-the-impal-1648969679

Regardless of the origins of the name, Dracula remains one of my favorite novels of all time because of the research that went into creating the entire piece. Plus I love how it was written in bits like journals and newspaper articles.

The whole trip for Jonathan Harker to get to the castle remains one of the creepiest things I've ever read.
 
D

Deleted member 20920

Unconfirmed Member
They've just invalidated Dracula Untold lol.
 

Trouble

Banned
I thought this thread was going to be about the movie and I was all ready to be like "no shit".

Interesting read, though.
 
Stoker's son, Irving Stoker, said that his father claimed Dracula had its genesis "in a nightmarish dream after eating too much dressed crab."

Isn't this similar to how Orson Welles came up with the idea for Citizen Kane?
 
Find that hard to believe. I'm actually taking a class on this stuff right now and it's pretty obvious that there are a lot of connections from the novel to the real Dracula. io9's evidence seems pretty flimsy, too.
 

Gonzalez

Banned
Quite interesting. I didn't even know this stuff, and I'm sure there are a lot of fans of Dracula who associate him blindly with Vlad The Impaler.

http://io9.com/no-bram-stoker-did-not-model-dracula-on-vlad-the-impal-1648969679

Regardless of the origins of the name, Dracula remains one of my favorite novels of all time because of the research that went into creating the entire piece. Plus I love how it was written in bits like journals and newspaper articles.

The whole trip for Jonathan Harker to get to the castle remains one of the creepiest things I've ever read.

There's always a pooper at every party.
 

IronRinn

Member
Read it a couple of days ago and it's a really interesting article. I was, however, struck by the definitive conclusion of the headline relative to the numerous qualifying statement in the body of the article. I guess it sounds better than "Stoker Probably Did Not Model Dracula On Vlad The Impaler"
 

MedIC86

Member
To me this is just another theory, stuff that is so old can be obscured/rewritten so many times that it will be hard to find out the truth anyway.
 

terrisus

Member
Castlevania redeemed.

image.php



You.Like.Nothing. Except the things you shouldn't

Hey, I like pizza and chicken, that has to count for something :þ

I'd invite you to a beer, but I'm sure you hate it too.

>.>
 
This puts like 99% of Vampire fiction into a new light.

And it made so much sense too. What a coincidence.

edit: lmao, maybe not.
 
Yeah, after having read the article, their entire evidence is "there's no references to Dracula in his notes other than this one note having to do with a different Dracula," which is incredibly flimsy. We have decades of research and lots of connections between Dracula the novel and Vlad Tepes the ruler and one blog writer with one flimsy piece of evidence definitely claims that there is no inspiration? Please.
 

John Dunbar

correct about everything
does it even matter at this point did the real vlad the impaler influence stoker or not, other than as an interesting bit of trivia? dracula is still pretty much irrevocably linked with him.
 
Gawker article is poorly cited (read: not cited at all) and scholarly work on Stoker that has gone on for about a hundred years seems to have more bearing with reality. It's undeniable that the world of Count Dracula is inspired by Eastern European folklore, of which Vlad II played an important role.

The note about the naming of Dracula is just bizarre ... Sure, "Dracul" is the Romanian word for Devil, but this was also the taken family name of the descendants of Vlad II, and Stoker would have come upon the word while reading about Vlad II in William Wilkinson's book...

Wikipedia says it better than I can:

Stoker became intrigued by the name "Dracula", after reading William Wilkinson's book Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with Political Observations Relative to Them (London 1820),[9] which he found in the Whitby Library, and consulted a number of times during visits to Whitby in the 1890s.[10] The name Dracula was the patronym (Drăculea) of the descendants of Vlad II of Wallachia, who took the name "Dracul" after being invested in the Order of the Dragon in 1431. In the Romanian language, the word dracul (Romanian drac "dragon" + -ul "the") can mean either "the dragon" or, especially in the present day, "the devil".[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Background

Yeah, after having read the article, their entire evidence is "there's no references to Dracula in his notes other than this one note having to do with a different Dracula," which is incredibly flimsy. We have decades of research and lots of connections between Dracula the novel and Vlad Tepes the ruler and one blog writer with one flimsy piece of evidence definitely claims that there is no inspiration? Please.

Agreed... The article doesn't even back up the claims of the title of it (or this thread)
 
Has Dracula ever beaten anyone? Here's a list of people who fucked him up:

Jonathan Harker
Van Helsing
Belmont (all of them)
Alucard
Batman
Superman
Cyclops

Hell, he bit Superman and exploded because Supes is a solar battery. His most impressive feat, I guess, was not busting his jaw on Superman's neck, but he still died.
 

IronRinn

Member
I mean, maybe he didn't inspire his creation, but it seems likely Stoker had to have at least been aware of Vlad Tepes at some point (this is from Chapter 3):

"We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin game them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?" He held up his arms. "Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race, that we were proud, that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier, that the Honfoglalas was completed there? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward,the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkeyland. Aye, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for as the Turks say, `water sleeps, and the enemy is sleepless.' Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the `bloody sword,' or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent? Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkeyland,who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again,though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself.Bah! What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys, and the Dracula as their heart's blood, their brains, and their swords, can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told."
 

Makonero

Member
Has Dracula ever beaten anyone? Here's a list of people who fucked him up:

Jonathan Harker
Van Helsing
Belmont (all of them)
Alucard
Batman
Superman
Cyclops

Hell, he bit Superman and exploded because Supes is a solar battery. His most impressive feat, I guess, was not busting his jaw on Superman's neck, but he still died.

Actually, John Harker didn't do much, it was a team effort. Quincy Morris had the killing blow (yay America!).
 

Nokagi

Unconfirmed Member
I refuse to believe this. No matter if it's true or not. I'm just going to leave this thread as if I never read it.
 
D

Deleted member 20920

Unconfirmed Member
I don't know that much about all the Dracula adaptations, but aren't a lot of them on the same boat?

Well this one features Vlad's journey to become Dracula. Doubt it really matters though. No matter which theory holds better, the Vlad the Impaler story still makes good material, just not in that movie.
Prepare for the retitled DVD release - "Dracula: Well. Shit."
Good title for a bad film. Was supposed to watch The Equaliser but told the counter staff the wrong movie lol...
 

brinstar

Member
Has Dracula ever beaten anyone? Here's a list of people who fucked him up:

Jonathan Harker
Van Helsing
Belmont (all of them)
Alucard
Batman
Superman
Cyclops

Hell, he bit Superman and exploded because Supes is a solar battery. His most impressive feat, I guess, was not busting his jaw on Superman's neck, but he still died.

he kicks all kinds of ass in Hellsing
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
So why did Stoker choose that name, Dracula? Well, we can infer that from his own notes. He copied information from a footnote from Wilkinson's book that read in his own notes, "DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL," with those capital letters. The footnote explained that Wallachians gave the name "Dracula" to people who were especially courageous, cruel, or cunning. Stoker chose the name, it appears, because of its devilish associations, not because of the history and legends attached to its owner.

Apparently the book that he sourced this from either has shit information or he is bad at taking notes.

Vlad III was called Dracula because his dad was Vlad II Dracul. Dracul means DRAGON and adding an "a" to the end makes Vlad III "SON OF THE DRAGON". This comes from the fact that Vlad II joined The Order of the Dragon. Vlad II received the surname Dracul in 1431, after being inducted into the Order of the Dragon, founded in 1408 by the King Sigismund of Hungary.
 
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