Vampire : Vlad the Impaler

lad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler was born in Transylvania, 1431. Transylvania was inhabitated by the Daco-Romans, now known to us as Romanians. The Dacians who were the original inhabitants of the area were conquered by the Romans in AD 101 and AD 105. The entire area was incorporated in the Roman Empire and since then, there were a lot of immigrants coming in/out of the country. The country derived its name from the geographic position beyond the Carpathian mountains, which are full of dense forestation. Early travellers to the region described the country as "trans-silva" which literally means "over-forest" in Latin.
The region's close proximity to the Black Sea means that it is very vunerable to invasion from the Ottoman Turks' to the southeast and the Tatar's Golden Horde on the northeast. If the infidels gained control of the region, they could have free access to central Europe; making it a region of great political significance. Vlad's father; also known as Vlad (in order to avoid confusion, Vlad Tepes would be referred to as Dracula) was the grandson of Mircea the Great; who was famous in history for his diplomatic skills and for his skill at conquering new territories. Mircea's main seat of power was Wallachia, a region that was bordering with Transylvania. With the constant threat of an invasion from the Turks, he sign a treaty of alliance with Sigismund of Luxembord in 1395. Sigismund led the crusades against the Ottoman Turks in which Mircea the Great took part in.

Mircea's son Vlad was initiated into the Order of the Dragon at Sigismund's court.The Order of the Dragon was founded in 1387 by the Holy Roman Emperor to protect the Catholics from the Christian heretics and Muslims. Due to this, Vlad was given the grace of the Prince. In 1431, Vlad was made a knight of the Order of the Dragon. Vlad was now called Vlad Dracul, signifying that he is a member of the Order of the Dragon. The superstitious folk of Wallachia, being unfamiliar with Vlad's knighthood and seeing a dragon on his shield, called Vlad "Dracul" with the meaning of the devil. In Romanian, "Dracul" can mean Dragon or Devil.
When Vlad was made a Knight of the Order, he was given his official staff of duty and declared Prince of Wallachia after swearing allegiance to the Emperor. However, while Vlad was away, Vlad's half-brother Alexandru Aldea had seized the Wallachian throne. According to Wallachian rule, it is legal for any son of the Prince, whether legitimate or not; to claim the throne as long as he was eldest. Due to political reasons, the Emperor chose to recognise Alexandru as the Prince and appointed Vlad as military governor of Transylvania with the task of defending the borders.
Vlad Dracul established his stronghold in the fortress of Sighisoara. He chose the area because of its central and strategic position. The fortress was located on a hillside with unsually thick defensive walls of stone and brick built to withstand even the strongest Turks' artillery. It was during this time in Transylvania that Dracula and his brothers Mircea aad Radu was born. In 1434, Sigismund decided that the relationship of Alexandru and the Turks was too close for his liking. He ordered Vlad to form an army of Transylvanian soldiers and take possession of Wallachia. In 1436, Vlad finally defeated the Turks and entered Wallachia's capital Tirgoviste. With the sanction of the Emperor, Vlad became the Prince of Wallachia. At his father's new court, Dracula was of eligible age for his apprenticeship into the knighthood. During his training, he was introduced to political science, the principles of which were in essence Machiavellian. It was written that it was much better for a prince to be feared than to be loved. It is obvious that this strongly affected Dracula's personality. In 1437, Sigismund died leaving Wallachia exposed to the Turks. With the neighbouring states about to be or already conquered, Vlad signed a pact of alliance with Sultan Murad II of Turkey. It would seem like Vlad used to accompany the Sultan on frequent raids of Transylvania. To ensure Vlad's loyalty to him, the Sultan demanded that his two younger sons Vlad and Radu as hostages.
While Radu was the attention of the Sultan's lusts due to his good looks, Dracula served as an officer in the Turkish army. During his imprisonment, Vlad learned the Turkish methods of torture. Meanwhile, Vlad Dracul had decided to rejoin the Christian alliance. He tried to play allies to both sides, which evantually led to his assasination. Vlad was assasinated in 1447. Vlad's oldest son Mircea was buried alive after being blinded by red-hot irons. The Prince of Transylvania and King of Hungary John Hunyadi had ordered the assasination as punishment for serving the Turks. He then installed Vladislav II as the Prince of Wallachia.
In 1448, while Vladislav II was out of country to fight against the Turks, Sultan Murad II smuggled the young Dracula into the Wallachia and set him up as Prince without any army to back him up. Upon hearing this news, Vladislav immediately returned to Wallacha with his armies. Knowing that there is no way that he could hold on to power, Dracula fled from Wallachia and threw himself under the protection of Prince Bogdan of Moldavia. He remained there until a rival fraction killed Bogdan in 1451. With nowhere else to go, Dracula returned to Transylvania and submitted himself to the mercy of John Hunyadi. John Hunyadi groomed Dracula to be the next prince of Wallachia as Vladislav II was now appeasing the Sultan just as Vlad had done. Dracula became a general in Hunyadi's army, in many campaigns against the Turks.
The Turks continued to advance however, and the Byzantine capital Constantinople fell to the armies of the new Sultan Mehmed the conqueror in 1453. In 1456, John Hunyadi died of plague while fighting the Turks in Belgrade. In the very same year, Dracula defeated Vladislav's son in battle, taking over the throne as Prince of Wallachia. He was barely 25 years when he ascended the throne. The beginning of his reign was hailed by a passing comet, which astrologers of that time thought to be a celestial sign of bad omen. Dracula saw it as a fateful start to his dominance of Wallachia inscribed the comet to one side of his coins.
Dracula estasblished his main residence at Tirgoviste. He ordered his brother Mircea disinterred to find out if the rumors of his murder were true. He found his brother's twisted corpse, hands clenched in agony. The boyars or noblemen by tradition formed the council of Wallachia. Even the Prince have to depend on the council for orders and matters of administrations and justice. This means that the boyars held a greater power than the prince and it was in the boyars' interests that they elected a weak prince, who was least likely to intervene in their decisions. Most of the boyars who had helped Vladislav to the throne were still alive. That along with the fact that the boyars had killed his brother made Dracula decide to get of the boyars. The following account from the oldest Roman chronicle decribes the events that took place in the spring of 1457:

He had found out that the boyars of Tirgoviste had buried one of his brothers alive. In order to know the truth, he searched for his brother in the grave and found him lying face downwards. So when Easter day came, while all the citizens were feasting and the young ones were dancing he surrounded them...led then together with their wives and their children, just as they were dressed up for Easter, to Poenari, where they were put to work until their clothes were torn and they were left naked.

Castle Dracula

The boyars and their families were sent to build an impregnable fortress for Dracula. The weak and older men and women were supposedly impaled. As Dracula did not wish to fight the Turks while he was still quelling resistance within his own lands, he paid the tribute that the Sultan Mehmed demanded. In order to raise the money required, Dracula imposed heavy taxes on imported goods and he passed a law to limit the trade freedom of Saxon traders in Wallachia. Dracula did this as the Saxon merchants' prosperity was based on underselling Wallachia's merchandise, which reduced the amount of taxes collected. With the passing of these laws, the livelihood if many Saxon traders were destroyed, leaving the market open only to pure-bred Wallachians. In order to survive, many Saxon traders decided to break the law, which gave Dracula the excuse to massacre them. Dracula was said to be assasinated in 1476, with his head cut off and sent to the Sultan in Constantinopole. It is not certain if Dracula had indeed died at that time as historical accounts conflicts with each other. Furthermore, the remains of his body were never found. He was said to be buried at Snagov, where an ancient monasry that Dracula helped to rebuild still stands today although it is in ruins. During his reign, Dracula impaled between 40,000 to 100,000 victims. Vlad Tepes is a national hero in Romania today for his resistence to the Turks. His son, Dracula reborn into the world as the Prince of Darkness still chills our minds in this modern society today.

Vampire : The Realm of Mist is