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Have you ever been sorry you asked something? Don’t be! PLSJ’s Reference Librarian J.L. finds the answers to questions you thought might not even have an answer.
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Episode Transcript
00:00:08 Welcome to P LSJ's podcast, where the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County shares with you our favorite quirky questions leaders in our community are reading, interviews local authors, and so much more! This podcast is part of the "Ask Us" series where the Reference Librarian shares answers to some of our favorite questions from the past, and provides information on topics you've pondered, but didn't know who to ask. Now you do!
00:00:41 Hello and welcome to “I'm Sorry I Asked” where people ask silly questions to our reference librarian and they're sorry that they asked. I'm JL, your reference librarian. Today, my question was, was Dracula a real person? The answer, oddly enough, is yes, he was. The person who was known as Dracula was Vlad the third, the prince of Wallachia, also known as Vlad Tepes, which means Vlad the Impaler and ruled over Wallachia, well, three separate times and lived from probably about 1431 to 1476. We don't really know the date of his birth. We have a decent idea about the date of his death because it was fairly final. He was the son of Vlad the second, also of Wallachia, and that's where the name Dracula comes from. It was an order of knighthood that was founded by the Holy Roman Emperor to defend Christianity and fight the Ottoman Turks called the Order of the Dragon and Vlad the second, his father, was inducted into this order and thus took the name Dracul, which meant dragon, and no, it didn't mean devil as some biographers will say. It meant dragon because he was a member of the order of the dragon. He was very proud of that. His son who was also inducted into the order of the dragon became Dracula, son of the Dragon. Now, his father had about a tumultuous a life as Vlad himself, Wallachia, which is now a part of Romania was a fairly unpleasant place to live as far as politics went. It was pretty much between Hungary, which was at that time one of the great powers in that part of Europe and the Ottoman empire, which was one of the great powers in the world at that time, which meant that whoever was running Wallachia was probably a puppet of one of these powers or another. It was also subjected to the Voivode of Wallachia, the noblemen who were doing a lot of political maneuvering, trying to put their candidate on the throne, trying to appease one of these powers or another, and just generally a bunch of corrupt idiots.
So, somebody who's going to run this had to be not only political and probably in control of one of these powers or the other, or both, but had to be pretty nasty. Vlad the second and Vlad's oldest brother Mircea were actually both killed in this case, by the Hungarians who didn't like, what they considered a Turkish puppet on the throne, leaving Vlad and his brother Radu or Rudolf who were at that time, both in Turkey because their father had actually put them out to the Turkish as foster children so that they could basically serve as hostages so that he wouldn't go after the Turks. Vlad decided that he didn't like the Hungarians any more than, and the Turks decided they didn't want what they thought was a Hungarian puppet on the throne, so they helped Vlad come back. He managed to take over.
This was not permanent. Uh, he was deposed at least one other time got back, was deposed again, and was finally killed in battle with the Turks. He is however, thought of positively for managing to get Wallachia under some semblance of a rule of law. This is also one of the reasons that people are kind of afraid of him because he was a brutal leader. Impalement was his favorite form of capital punishment, and that's pretty much, you would think, a person was put on a stake alive and allowed to slide down, often taking hours to do so. It was not a pleasant way to die and he did not reserve this for anyone in society. If you were caught stealing, you were impaled. If you were a corrupt nobleman, you were impaled. If you were an unloyal soldier, you were impaled. If you were accused of adultery, you were impaled. You have to admit, it saved some time for figuring out what penalty. Um, he wasn't, he was a brutal enough ruler, but he also managed to bring some semblance of order. Uh, one of the stories of Vlad is that a merchant, assuming the order had come, left his purse out, and when he came back, it was gone. He complained about Vlad and Vlad had his, his soldiers track down the thief and return the merchant’s purse with one coin added. When he asked the merchant, did he get his money back, the merchant said yes, and he mentioned the coin and Vlad said, very good, had you not mentioned that coin I would have impaled you for dishonesty.
He also left a cup in the town square for people to drink out of. It was a gold cup, fancy, but you knew that the king himself, or prince in this case, had left it there and if you stole it, you were probably going to end up on a pole somewhere. He was eventually, as I said before, deposed one of several times the last time by his brother. He managed to get the Turks thinking well of him but then went to war against them and was killed in battle in Hungary. He was, of course, decapitated and his head was impaled on a stake in Istanbul so people would know that Vlad the Impaler was impaled.
So, Vlad the Impaler was known as Dracula. Was he a vampire? Obviously not, but he was a canny general, a brutal ruler, and when Bram Stoker needed somebody to be his vampire, he found this example from history. I hope you're not sorry you asked.
Have a question you want the answer to? Visit the library's website at steubenvillelibrary.org or email the reference department at [email protected].
