I want you to start this deep dive with an image
in your head, and I'm going to ask you to immediately
delete the image you probably just conjured up.
Forget the black cape, forget the widow's peak,
forget the bats fluttering against a full moon.
And please, definitely forget the bad Transylvanian
accent. Exactly. Instead, I want you to picture
a dinner party. It's Easter Sunday, mid -1400s.
Okay. The location is a princely court in a place
called Wallachia. And the guests, they are the
absolute elite, the wealthy, the powerful, the
landed gentry. The who's who of the medieval
Balkans, basically. Right. They're eating, they're
drinking, probably feeling pretty good about
their station in life, wearing their finest silks
and furs. And then the host locks the doors.
And by the time those doors open again, the entire
social order is effectively extinct. Because
the host is Vlad III. the man history remembers
as Dracula. Or to use the name that really terrified
an entire continent for decades, Vladipay. Vlad
the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler. So today, we are
stripping away all the Bram Stoker fiction. We
aren't talking about vampires or, you know, sunlight
allergies or looking in mirrors. We are doing
a deep dive into the reality of a man who was,
in so many ways, infinitely more terrifying.
And honestly, more complex than any supernatural
creature Hollywood could ever dream up. That
is absolutely the goal, to look at the human
being behind the monster mask. And to do that,
we have a massive stack of sources to get through.
This isn't just folklore. We've got Ottoman chronicles
written by the people who actually fought him.
Right. We have German pamphlets that, I mean,
they were basically the 15th century equivalent
of tabloids. Totally. And we even have some cutting
edge chemical analysis from just last year, 2023.
that completely changes how we physically picture
the man himself. And the mission for this discussion
really is to walk a very fine line. We need to
figure out the central tension of his life. Was
this guy a sadistic psychopath who tortured people
for sport because he, you know, he enjoyed the
screams? Or was he desperate pragmatist, a ruler
of a tiny state sandwiched between superpowers
who used terror as a calculated political tool?
Is the ultimate historical case study in Do the
Ends Justify the Means? If the means involve
20 ,000 wooden stakes. Yeah. But before we get
to the blood and the horror, we have to clear
up the branding. Yeah. Because Dracula is such
a loaded word for us now. It just screams monster.
It does. But that wasn't the original vibe, was
it? Not at all. In fact, if you were walking
around the courts of Europe or Wallachia in,
say, the 1430s, Dracula didn't mean vampire.
It was a status symbol. A status symbol. It was
a flex. Yeah. And it all starts with his father,
Vlad II. Vlad the Father. Right. Vlad the Father
was a nobleman who, in 1331, was inducted into
something called the Order of the Dragon. And
this is crucial context that always gets left
out of the movie. Okay. The Order of the Dragon.
What was it? It wasn't just a social club, right?
Yeah. No, no, not a drinking buddy system. This
was a militant, chivalric fraternity founded
by Sigismund of Luxembourg, who was the Holy
Roman Emperor and the King of Hungary. So this
is very high level geopolitics we're talking
about. The highest level. The order's mandate
was explicit. Defend Christianity. And specifically...
To stop the Ottoman Empire from advancing into
Europe. Right, because the Ottomans were the
rising superpower of the age. Absolutely. So
the Order of the Dragon was, you could say, the
frontline defense. It's like a medieval NATO
special ops unit, but with, you know, more capes
and swords. That's a pretty good way to put it.
And the symbol of this order was a dragon. So
because his father was a member, he took the
name Dracul, which in the language of the time
meant the dragon. Okay, so Dracul is the dragon.
Correct. Now, in the Slavonic linguistic tradition
they used in Wallachia, if you add an A or an
E at the end of a name, it means son of. Ah,
so the grammar does all the heavy lifting. Exactly.
So Vlad III, our guy, becomes Dracula. Literally,
the son of the dragon. Which is honestly a top
-tier superhero name. Son of the dragon. It sounds
so noble, fierce, knightly. It does. But you
know, linguistics is a funny thing, and language
evolves. Over time, in the Romanian language,
the word dracolog shifted its meaning. How so?
It stopped meaning just dragon, and it started
meaning the devil. Wow. So while he was born
as the son of the dragon, history slowly morphed
his name into son of the devil. That feels like
some incredibly heavy foreshadowing. It's almost
literary how perfect that shift is. It really
is. But we also have to address the other name.
The one that makes you physically wince. The
Impaler. Did people actually call him that to
his face? Like, excuse me, Mr. The Impaler, your
two o 'clock is here. Absolutely not. Unless
they had a serious death wish. And even then,
I wouldn't recommend it. During his lifetime,
he was just Vlad or Vlad Dracula. So the nickname
came later. Much later. The moniker Vlad... Vlad
the Impaler, that comes from the Ottomans first.
The writer Tursyn Beg referred to him as Kazikla
Voivoda, the Impaler Lord, around the year 1500.
So the Turks gave him the nickname. Yes, because
they were the ones on the receiving end of it
most often. And then later, Romanian history
writing adopted it, mostly to distinguish him
from all the other Vlads in the history books.
It's a way to keep the family tree straight.
It's a bit like being named after your favorite
hobby. Just a very, very dark, very specific
hobby. A very specific hobby, yes. But to understand
why he chose that hobby, why he became a man
defined by such brutality, we have to look at
the map. I feel like with these medieval deep
dives, geography is always destiny. It is completely
inescapable here. You cannot understand Vlad
without understanding Wallachia. Which is modern
day southern Romania, right? Right. But you should
think of it less as a country and more as...
a corridor, a buffer zone. Okay. To the north,
you have the Kingdom of Hungary, a Catholic European
power. To the south, across the Danube River,
you have the Ottoman Empire. And the Ottomans
are this Islamic, rapidly expanding superpower
that has its sights set on conquering, like Rome
and Vienna. Precisely. And Wallachia is the ham
in the sandwich. It's the kill zone. It is the
kill zone. It's the buffer state. If the Ottomans
want to invade Europe, they have to march through
Wallachia. If the Hungarians want to push back
the Turks, they fight in Wallachia. So being
the prince of Wallachia was arguably the most
dangerous job in Christendom. I think so. You
were never safe. You had to play both sides constantly
just to survive. Always switching alliances.
And playing both sides. Well, it has consequences.
In 1442, Vlad's father... hits a breaking point.
He has to prove his loyalty to the Ottoman sultan,
Mira II. And the price of that loyalty isn't
gold or land. It's his children. And this is
the moment that breaks the boy and makes the
monster. It was a practice. Well, you could call
it hostage diplomacy. It was standard procedure
for the Ottomans. To ensure a vassal state like
Malakia wouldn't attack them, the sultan demanded
collateral. And he took Vlad, who was about 11
or 12 at the time. So young. And his younger
brother, Radu, who was only about 6. I want to
pause on that for a second. 11 and 7, these are
elementary school kids. They're taken from their
home, handed over to the enemy, and taken to
a fortress called Ivriges in Anatolia. This is
not a study abroad program. No, it is imprisonment
with a constant hanging threat of execution.
They knew, because they were told, that if their
father made one wrong move back home, the sultan
would kill them. Goes like that. Probably execute
them on the spot. They lived with that sword
hanging over their necks every single day for
years. But here's where the story really splits,
because you mentioned the two brothers reacted
to this trauma in completely opposite ways. This
is the key insight. This is the Cain and Abel
dynamic that drives the entire narrative forward.
So what happened? Radu, the younger one he adopted,
he was described. as being incredibly handsome.
History knows him as Radu the Handsome, and he
was charming, malleable. He eventually converted
to Islam. He even befriended the sultan's son,
the future Mehmed the Conqueror. So Radu integrates.
He kind of becomes one of them. He becomes fully
integrated into the Ottoman court. He plays the
game. He realizes, you know, the Ottomans are
the superior power, and he decides to join the
winning team. But Vlad? Vlad survives by resisting.
He was stubborn. He was likely abused because
of that stubbornness. Physical punishment was
very common. He watched his brother become friends
with their captors and he hated him for it. He
saw it as a betrayal. He viewed Radu as weak,
as a traitor, but... And this is the part that
defines his entire military career. He didn't
just sit in the dark and sulk. He studied. What
was he studying? He's a prisoner. Everything.
He learned fluent Turkish. He memorized their
military command structure. He analyzed their
psychology. He watched the Janissaries, the Sultan's
elite troops train. Wow. He was locked in a cell
or at least under house arrest, basically radicalizing
himself and taking detailed notes on exactly
how to destroy the people holding the keys. He's
downloading the enemy's operating system. system.
He's figuring out all the bugs in the code. That's
a perfect analogy. Meanwhile, while he's doing
all this, back home, the Game of Thrones situation
is just getting completely out of hand. It is
a total bloodbath. In 1447, while the boys are
still hostages, the Wallachian nobles, they're
called the boyars, they stage a coup. Um, no.
They conspire with John Hunati, who's the regent
of Hungary. They kill Vlad's father and his older
brother, Mircea. What they did to him is, it's
horrific. This is the part that really turns
my stomach. The records say the Boyars blinded
Murcia with hot pokers and then buried him alive.
Buried alive. Just imagine the psychological
impact of hearing that news while you're sitting
in an Ottoman dungeon. Your father is dead. Your
older brother was tortured to death. And the
people who did it are your own countrymen, the
nobles who were sworn to protect your family.
That betrayal is the absolute bedrock of Vlad's
worldview. He learns two things in captivity.
One, the Ottomans are an existential threat that
must be stopped at all costs. And two, you cannot
trust your own aristocracy. The boyars are treacherous
snakes. The only way to survive is to be more
terrifying than the enemy and more ruthless than
your own people. Trust no one. Strike fear into
everyone. That's the formula. So when he finally
gets out. after being released by the Ottomans
as, what, a puppet ruler, which obviously didn't
work out for them, he eventually takes the throne
for his second reign in 1456. And this time...
He is not interested in diplomacy. He goes straight
for the jugular. He does. And this brings us
right back to that Easter feast we started with.
The red wedding moment. Exactly. He invites all
the boyars, the very nobles he suspects of killing
his father and his brother, and he asks them
a simple question over dinner. What's the question?
How many princes have you survived? That is a
trap. A total trap. Some of them bragged, oh,
I've seen 10 princes rule. Some said 20. To them,
this was a boast about their longevity, their
power. To Vlad, it was a confession of treason.
It proved they were disloyal, just churning through
rulers whenever it suited them to keep the central
government weak. So the dinner party ends abruptly.
Very abruptly. He has the leaders executed and
paled on the spot. But for the younger, more
able -bodied ones, he doesn't kill them immediately.
He enslaves them. What does he do with them?
He marches them up a mountain to a place called
Ponari without stopping, and he forces them to
build his fortress. His castle. These are soft
-handed aristocrats. They've never worked a day
in their life. Exactly. The chronicles say they
worked until their fine clothes literally fell
off their bodies and they died of exhaustion.
He works the old aristocracy to death to build
his new stronghold. That is some heavy, heavy
symbolism. He is physically replacing the old
feudal system with a structure built on their
bones. It's brutal, but it's incredibly efficient.
He then replaces them with a new meritocracy.
Right. He promotes peasants and lower -ranking
soldiers who are loyal to him. Yes. He builds
a state machine that answers only to him. He
creates a new nobility that owes everything to
Vlad. But he doesn't stop with the nobles. He
picks a fight with the economy, specifically
with the Transylvanian Saxons. And these are
the German -speaking merchants who had settled
in the region. Usually a ruler wants to keep
the merchants happy. They bring in the tax revenue.
Why go after the money? Because it was a trade
war but with body counts. The Saxons were bypassing
Wallachian customs duties. It was tax evasion,
essentially. They were hurting local merchants.
Okay, so there's an economic reason. There is.
But worse, they were playing politics. They were
actively funding Vlad's rivals. They were sheltering
other claimants to the throne, people like his
half -brother Vlad Kalugurl or another rival
named Dan. So they were funding a regime change
against him. Precisely. So Vlad decides to impose
sanctions. But his version of sanctions involves
sharp wooden poles. He raids their villages in
Transylvania around the cities of Braav and Sibiu.
And this is where the legend of the impaler really
takes root and spreads to the West. It is. Because
he didn't just kill the men who were fighting
him. He impaled everyone. Merchants, women, children.
No one was spared. We have to talk about the
cauldron story here because the sources get very
well, very specific about his creativity during
these raids. They do. The German pamphlets from
the time. And remember, these are written by
the Saxons. He was attacking claim all sorts
of horrors. They claim he forced mothers to be
impaled together with their babies. And then
there is a story about a giant copper cauldron.
OK, set the scene for us. The claim is that he
built this massive pot with holes cut in the
lid. He would put people. That is just unbelievably
gruesome. Do we buy that? Is that historical
fact or is that 1400s propaganda? I think we
have to be incredibly skeptical. These stories
were written by his enemies, the people he was
killing. They had a vested interest in portraying
him as the literal Antichrist to get the rest
of Europe to hate him and, you know, maybe send
an army to stop him. Did he boil people? Maybe.
He was certainly capable of it. But the fact
that these stories spread so widely tells you
about the level of fear he inspired. He wanted
people to believe he was capable of anything.
It's pure psychological warfare. If your enemy
thinks you're a demon who boils people alive,
they might think twice about cheating on their
taxes or funding your rival. Exactly. Fear was
his primary currency. It was his main tool of
statecraft. But all of this, the nobles, the
merchants, the boiling cauldrons, this is all
just the warm -up act, isn't it? This is local
politics. The main event was always going to
be the Ottoman Empire. The inevitable collision.
Vlad knew it was coming. He had already stopped
paying the tribute, the jizya tax, to Sultan
Mehmed II. And let's just remind everyone who
Mehmed II is. This isn't some local warlord.
This is the man who conquered Constantinople
in 1453. He ended the thousand -year -old Byzantine
Empire. He is the most powerful man in the entire
geopolitical neighborhood. Defying him is basically
suicide. It was seen as madness. But Vlad provokes
him intentionally. There is a famous story recorded
by the historian Antonio Bonfini about the turbine
incident. Oh, this one is classic, Vlad. It's
so dark, but it's also weirdly witty. It is.
So Ottoman messengers come to Vlad's court to
demand the tribute. They bow, but they refuse
to take off their turbans in his presence. When
Vlad asks why, they cite their religious custom
and their law. And Vlad, being a spickler for
etiquette. Vlad says, then I shall strengthen
your custom. So he orders his guards to nail
the turbans to the ambassador's heads. Three
spikes each, driven right into the skull. Now,
you never have to take them off. It's a message.
It's a very clear message. I do not submit to
anyone. Your customs do not apply here. So Mehmed
gets the message, and I assume the corpses of
his envoys. He decides enough is enough. He sends
a team to trap Vlad. He does. He sends a commander
named Hamza Bey and an envoy, Catabolinos, to
ambush him. They tell Vlad they just want to
negotiate. But remember... Vlad knows the item
in playbook. He grew up with these people. He
anticipates the trap. He brings a bigger army
and he captures their entire ambush party and
he impales them all. He gives Hamza Bey the highest
stake of all to honor his high rank. It was a
gruesome form of professional courtesy. You could
say that. Then things escalate very, very fast.
This isn't just a border skirmish anymore. No.
In the winter of 1461 -62. Vlad crosses the frozen
Danube River and goes on an absolute rampage
in Ottoman territory. He devastates the region.
And this is where we see his obsession with data.
He writes a letter to Matthias Corvinus, the
king of Hungary, and he tallies his kills. He
was obsessed with the numbers. He kept a scorecard.
He writes, and I'm quoting the number here, I
have killed 23 ,884 Turks and Bulgarians. 23
,884. Not about 20 ,000. That specificity is
chilling. He even noted that this count did not
include those he burned alive in their homes.
And to prove his numbers, he sent sacks of noses
and ears to the King of Hungary. Sacks of noses
and ears. Can you imagine being the courier for
that particular package? This forced Mehmed's
hand. The Sultan gathers an enormous army. The
sources vary, but they say upwards of 150 ,000
men. Wow. It was an invasion force second only
to the one that took Constantinople a few years
earlier. He is coming to wipe Wallachia off the
map. And Vlad has, what's his army size? Maybe
30 ,000 men. And that's being generous, mostly
peasants, mercenaries, and light cavalry. He
is outnumbered at least five to one. So he can't
stand and fight. If he meets them in an open
field, it's just... It's game over. Correct.
It would be a slaughter. So he uses a scorched
earth strategy. This is a strategy of total denial.
Okay. As the massive Ottoman army marches north
into Wallachia, Vlad retreats. But as he goes,
he burns his own villages, he poisons the wells,
he kills all the livestock. He turns his own
country into a wasteland to starve the enemy.
Exactly. Imagine marching through that. It's
June, it's sweltering hot, you're wearing heavy
armor, you're thirsty, but the water gives you
dysentery. There is no food to forage. And all
the while, Vlad's men are probably harassing
them. Day and night, Vlad's light cavalry is
hitting their flanks, firing arrows from the
woods, and then just... disappearing the ottoman
soldiers are demoralized they're terrified and
they're starving and then comes the night attack
yeah june 17 1462 this is the scene that should
be in the blockbuster movie it is pure unadulterated
chaos vlad realizes he can't win a battle of
attrition so he tries to cut the head off the
snake In the middle of the night, he takes a
small elite force, maybe a few thousand men,
and charges directly into the center of the Ottoman
camp. That's a suicide mission. It's an assassination
mission. His one and only goal is to kill Sultan
Mehmed in his tent. If the sultan dies, the army
likely disintegrates. So what happens? They tear
through the camp, torching tents, slaughtering
anyone in their path. The Ottomans are completely
confused. They're fighting each other in the
dark, thinking they're surrounded. They miss
the sultan, right? They do. They mistook the
vis - Sears tents for the Sultans. They miss
Mehmed by just a few hundred yards. The dawn,
Vlad had to retreat, but the message was sent.
The message being that he's crazy enough to run
into an army of 150 ,000 men just to take a shot
at the king. Precisely. But Mehmed keeps marching.
He reaches the capital, Targoviyet. He's expecting
a siege. He's expecting a final glorious stand.
Instead, he finds the city gates wide open. The
city is deserted, but as he rides through the
valley leading up to the city walls, he sees
it, the forest of the impaled. This is the image
that haunts history. Can you describe it for
us? It was a tableau of horror designed specifically
for the sultan. 20 ,000 rotting corpses on stakes.
These were the Turkish and Bulgarian prisoners
from the earlier raids. 20 ,000. Men, women,
and children arranged in a vast, silent forest
of death. 20 ,000 bodies. That is a stadium full
of people displayed like some kind of macabre
art installation. The chroniclers say birds were
nesting in their rib cages. The smell of death
was overpowering. It reportedly stretched for
miles. How does the sultan react? I mean, this
is a man who has seen war. He conquered Constantinople.
Even he was shaken to his core. The Greek historian
Chalk Kondiles writes that the sultan was seized
with amazement. Mehmed reportedly said, It is
not possible to take the country of a man who
does such great deeds, who has such a diabolical
understanding of how to govern. He was. Impressed.
In a horrified way, yes. He recognized that Vlad
was willing to go to lengths that no civilized
ruler would even contemplate. It broke the Ottoman
army's spirit. How could it not? They couldn't
fight a ghost who left forests of dead bodies
behind him. They were sickened. Mehmed turned
his army around and went home. So tactically,
Vlad won. He repelled a superpower using psychological
warfare. Tactically, yes, a stunning victory.
But strategically, he lost. Because Mehmed was
smart. He realized he couldn't beat Vlad on the
battlefield, so he beat him with politics. What
did he do? He left behind something more dangerous
than an army. He left behind Radu. The handsome
brother. The one who played the game. Radu stayed
behind with a contingent of Ottoman troops and
a simple political message. He went to the Wallachian
nobles. the ones Vlad hadn't killed yet. And
he said, look, my brother is a maniac. He's going
to get us all killed. He's burning your fields.
He's poisoning your water. I am friends with
the sultan. If you support me, the war ends.
Trade resumes. No more stakes. And the people
were exhausted. They were starving because of
the scorched earth campaign. Exactly. Vlad had
saved the country, but he had destroyed it in
the process. The nobles flipped. They chose the
comfortable puppet over the dangerous hero. Vlad
was forced to flee to the mountains. And this
is where the betrayal goes to another level entirely.
He runs to his ally, the king of Hungary, Matthias
Corvinus. He must be thinking, I just fought
off the Turks for you. I held the line for Christendom.
Help me retake my throne. Instead, Corvinus arrests
him, puts him in handcuffs. Why? Why would he
do that? Vlad is the best weapon he has against
the Turks. It was about money and politics. Corvinus
had taken a whole lot of money from the Pope
to lead a new crusade, but he didn't really want
to fight the Ottomans anymore. It was too expensive,
too dangerous. So he needed an excuse. He needed
a reason to explain to the Pope and the Venetians
why he wasn't fighting. He needed a scapegoat.
And he frames Vlad. He produces forged letters.
These letters allegedly showed Vlad writing to
the sultan, offering to switch sides and betray
Hungary. Wait, the guy who just impaled 20 ,000
Turks is now offering to join them? That makes
zero sense. It made no sense at all. And modern
historians have analyzed the Latin in these letters
and found it to be clumsy and submissive, completely
unlike Vlad's known writing style. It was a clear
forgery. But it was enough. It was enough for
Corvinus. He used it as an excuse and he threw
Vlad in prison at Wiesgrad for 14 years. 14 years.
So Vlad sits in a cell for a decade and a half.
And while he's sitting there, something fascinating
happens. The world starts talking about him.
This brings us to what might be the first instance
of viral fake news in history. The timing is
incredible. Johannes Gutenberg had just developed
the movable type printing press in the 1450s.
The entire media landscape of Europe was changing
forever. Right. And what was one of the first
bestsellers in Europe? The Bible, sure, but also
pamphlets about the horror stories of Vlad Dracula.
The Saxons got their revenge in print. They absolutely
did. They printed these pamphlets in Nuremberg,
in Bamberg, all over the German -speaking lands.
And they were like horror comics. They featured
these graphic woodcut illustrations of Vlad dining
among the steaks with severed heads on his table.
There's that famous detail about him dipping
his bread in blood. That's from these, isn't
it? That specific detail appears in these pamphlets.
He liked to dip his bread in the warm blood of
his victims. Is it true? Probably not. It sounds
like pure folklore. But it stuck. Wow. It became
the defining image of him for the entire Western
world. A mindless, sadistic butcher. But there
was another narrative, right? A competing story.
If you go east, the story changes completely.
Yes, it does. The Russian and Slavic narratives,
like a text called the Skazani, they paint a
very different picture. They don't deny the cruelty.
They absolutely admit he impaled people. But
they call him zlamadry. Zlamadry. What does that
mean? It means evil wise. Evil wise. That's a
complex concept. It sounds like an oxymoron.
It implies that his cruelty had a purpose. It
wasn't random sadism. It was a form of brutal
justice. There is a famous legend in these Russian
texts about a golden cup. Tell me. It says Vlad
placed a solid gold cup at a public fountain
in the town square of Targovye for anyone to
drink from. And nobody stole it. It stayed there
for his entire reign. because the people were
so utterly terrified of the consequences of stealing
it. To the Russian chroniclers, this was proof
of his greatness. He established absolute order.
You could leave gold in the street and no one
would touch it. That's a powerful idea. To a
medieval peasant living in constant chaos and
danger, that kind of security might have been
worth the terror. So you have these two competing
versions. To the Germans, he's a psychopath.
To many of the locals and the Russians, he's
a harsh but effective sheriff. Precisely. And
history is written by the victors, but it's also
written by the people who own the printing presses.
The Saxons won the PR war because they had the
technology. So he rots in prison for 14 years.
Does he ever get out? He does. In 1476, the political
winds shift again. A new powerful prince of Moldavia,
Stephen the Great, argues that they need Vlad
back on the wall to stop the Turks. The threat
is rising again. So Corvinus lets him go. He
releases him, but there's a condition. Vlad has
to convert to Catholicism. Giving up his Orthodox
faith, that must have been a bitter pill for
a man who saw himself as a crusader for his faith.
It was pure political necessity. He marries Corvinus'
cousin to seal the deal, and he marches back
into Wallachia for a third reign. But he's a
man out of time. The world has moved on. He isn't
the young dragon anymore. And his final reign
is very short. Less than two months. He is killed
in battle near a place called Snagov in late
1476. But even his death is a mystery. What are
the theories? Some sources say he was assassinated
by a Turk in disguise. Others, citing the Russian
sources, say his own men mistook him for a Turk
in the confusion of battle and killed him. Killed
by friendly fire. After everything. Potentially.
But the aftermath was very clear. His head was
cut off, it was preserved in honey to stop the
rot, and it was sent to Constantinople. Mehmed
displayed it on a high state for all to see.
The impaler gets impaled post -mortem. Talk about
ironic justice. A grim end. And his body, we
don't really know. Wow. Legend says he was buried
at Snagov Monastery on an island. But archaeological
excavations there in the 1930s, they found no
body. Only horse bones. He just vanished. He
simply vanished from the historical record. Which,
of course, leaves plenty of room for the vampire
myths to creep in. Speaking of which, we have
to address the Bram Stoker connection directly.
Did Stoker know all of this? Was he reading these
German pamphlets about the blood dipping? Surprisingly,
no. Stoker's research was, well, it was thin,
to be polite. He was sitting in the British Museum
in the 1890s, and he found the name Dracula in
a book by a British diplomat named William Wilkinson.
The book just had a footnote. A single footnote
that said Dracula meant devil in the Wallachian
language. So Stoker just thought, cool name,
I'll take it. Pretty much. His working title
for the book was Count Wampire. Count Wampire?
Can you imagine if he hadn't found that one footnote
you'd all be dressing up as Count Wampire for
Halloween? Stoker didn't know about the Order
of the Dragon or the Night Attack or the Brother
Radu. The historical connection is almost completely
accidental. That's incredible. He took the name
and he took the general location of Transylvania
and he just made up the rest. That is wild. The
most famous monster in all of literature is based
on a footnote. But before we wrap up, you sent
me a link to a scientific study from August 2023
that absolutely blew my mind. Oh, yes. We have
to talk about the tears. This is just fascinating.
This is where modern science meets medieval history.
A team of scientists from the University of Catania
analyzed three letters written by Vlad from 1457
and 1475. OK. They used a technique called mass
spectrometry to basically harvest peptides and
proteins from the surface of the paper residue
left by his skin and sweat 500 years ago. So
they extracted his biology from a piece of paper
that is basically CSI, Transylvania. It is. And
they found peptides that are associated with
the retina and with tear fluid. But specifically,
they found markers of a condition called hemolacria.
Yeah, that means. It means he cried tears of
blood. No way. You're kidding me. It's a real
but very rare condition where blood mixes with
tear fluid. It can be caused by infections, inflammation,
or just extreme physical or emotional stress.
So when Vlad wept, whether from rage or grief
or the smoke of battle, it is chemically possible
that. Red tears rolled down his face. That is
the most metal fact I think I have ever heard.
Yeah. The man who inspired Dracula literally
cried blood. You cannot write fiction that good.
It certainly adds a visceral biological layer
to the legend, doesn't it? And it makes you wonder
if people saw that back then and thought he was
genuinely supernatural. How could you not? So
bringing it all together, we have a hostage child,
a vengeful prince, a mass murderer. By any modern
standard. A defender of Christendom by medieval
standards. And finally, a pop culture vampire
icon is a messy, messy legacy. It's deeply complex.
If you look at him through the lens of the Geneva
Convention, he is a war criminal who committed
genocide. There is no getting around the 20 ,000
stakes. That is horror, pure and simple. Right.
But if you look at him through the lens of a
tiny country trying to survive against a massive
invading empire. Well, then he's a tragic hero
who did the unthinkable to preserve his nation's
independence. He was a monster, but maybe he
was the monster Wallachia needed at that specific
moment in history. That is the central question,
isn't it? And you have to remember the version
of him we all know, the sadistic madman. That's
the version his enemies paid to print. We view
him through the lens of Saxon propaganda. That
is a lot to process. The next time you see a
plastic set of vampire teeth at a Halloween store.
Just remember the 15th century geopolitics behind
them. And maybe check if the person wearing them
is crying blood. The terrifying thought to end
on. So to you listening, think about the monsters
in your history books. Ask yourself, who wrote
the chapter? And what were they trying to sell
you? Thanks for diving deep with us. We'll see
you on the next one.