Butterfly effect

Quite often I am being asked, mostly by my foreign friends but also by some Romanian friends who was this guy Dracula and how the hell was he so cruel… Well, for all of you, in order not to repeat this story over and over again, please read this article.

How come you heard of a prince that was ruling over a small area somewhere in eastern Europe in the 1400s?

Well, you didn’t. You heard about Dracula which is a fictional character created by Bram Stoker. This gentlemen is only remembered for his novel Dracula (which most of you probably have not read) in which he presents a loosely connected collection of short stories that paint a bleak picture about the gentlemen somewhere in Transylvania which died, returned as vampire and potentially died again, nobody really knows. As a vampire he drinks blood occasionally and has some odd habits and hobbies but we suspect he does so only to impress wives which seem to be quite young, charm full and demanding. Speaking of wives, he has three of them which raises a few question marks about his religion and beliefs but also about the morality of his lady companions.

In any way Bram Stoker tried to make his character more believable and mysterious by placing him somewhere in eastern Europe (which in 1897 when the novel was written probably sounded like the crossroads between the Amazon and the moon landing) and mixing in a bit of history. So he decides that Mr.Dracula should actually be Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (also known as The Impaler).

Well, Bram Stoker did manage to deliver a novel but he got his historical facts wrong, really wrong.

So who was Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia?

Vlad was a ruler born within the area of present day Romania to a family which originates in present day Romania. He ruled in 1448; 1456–1462 and 1476 and apparently did a good job by implementing some form of justice. Of course this prompted the great powers of the time (mainly the Ottomans) to get him imprisoned and killed.

Without getting to much into the details of his history one might wonder how come he became so popular although the novel is mediocre at best. Well, it made a good Hollywood story, it has bad bad guys in far away countries, it has chicks, blood and some form of storyline.

Was his name Dracula?

Emblem of the order of the dragon

Sort of. His name was Vlad III from the House of Draculesti. His surname would have been Dracula which can be translated as the Devil or the Son of the Devil. But the story would be misleading if left at that. The house of Draculesti actually originates from Mircea cel Batran (grandfather of Vlad), quite a significant figure in the history of Romanians. In any way, this guy, Mircea the First “cel Batran”(the older but not by age, by history timeline) managed to kick the Ottomans in the shins a couple of times, in the process defending also the Kingdom of Hungary. This made him quite popular with Sigismund of Luxemburg (which had an eye for the throne of the Kingdom of Hungary) who promptly decided to knight him in the Order of the Dragon, which was Sigismund’s own private knight club.

Now Mircea was hit in a sweet spot and took this very personally, naming his house after the order and supposedly putting it on his personal coat of arms. Now the problem was that his subjects were not exactly skilled in the language of the order, nor did they have a word that would accurately translate Dragon (this further proves the poing that the country was dragon-free at the time). So Mircea decided to go with an approximate translation.

The House of Draculesti is the Romanian translation of the Order of the Dragon. Vlad Dracul means Vlad (of the order of)the Dragon.

Good, glad we got that out of the way, so we are dealing with a noble guy named after the Order of the Dragon.

How come he was know as the impaler?

Because he impaled people. It was a process of killing the thieves, Ottomans and the corrupt ruling class by means of slowly sticking a wooden pole trough the victim causing death. The method was used both as a torture method but also as a quite effective marketing campaign. Apparently the records show that criminality went south in his country, he brought consensus amongst the ruling class and the Ottomans decided to postpone some of their friendly visits in the area when they encountered supposedly large amounts of occupied poles on their way to the royal palace.

It sounds horrible, I know.  But let’s take it into context, these were the 1400s.

Impaling was not invented by Vlad, he was not the first and not the last to practice it. There are documented accounts which state it was used about 900BC, the Romans used it, Vlad used it, the Swedes used it in the 17th century, the French used it in the 18th. I suspect at the time it wasn’t considered particularly cruel or unusual although Vlad had a tendency to do it in large numbers.

So there you have it, a guy with a decent name, ruling his country quite well and using the incentives of the times to impose order. Nothing special..

So how come he became so well known? What was special about him?

Arguably he was pretty run of the mill in the torture arena, he did manage to put order in the country and defeat the Ottomans in the process. This was quite unusual at the time given the fact that his country was probably less then 5% of the area of the Ottoman empire. He also found that the Saxons in the country (which were traders in the country) preferred the stable trade environment provided by an Ottoman rule to Vlad’s trials and tribulations so they worked against his and the country’s best interest. As a conclusion Vlad decided to impale a few of them, just to make a point about this.

His actions made him quite unpopular with the Ottoman leaders which were tasked with conquering the small country but also he didn’t really get invited to the parties of the Saxons anymore. The ottoman leaders needed a justification, the Saxons needed somebody to defend their interest.

Both entities started creating a huge propaganda about the supposed cruelty of Vlad. This propaganda would provide the perfect excuse for the Ottomans for not doing the job and for the Saxons it drew the attention of the Pope himself.

Funny story about the Pope, he allocated quite large amounts of money to fight the Ottomans. Now he didn’t allocate them to Vlad but to Matei Corvin (another guy born in present day Romania which at the time was busy running Hungary). Matei however had other plans with the money and didn’t fight the Ottomans at all, after all, Vlad was doing a swell job by himself. But when the Pope came around asking for the bill the propaganda about Vlad was right up Matei’s alley which decided to scare the life out of the Pope, forge a letter of Vlad pledging allegiance to the Ottomans, capture Vlad and come squeaky clean while keeping the money. Which he actually did and held Vlad in captivity for a number of years.

Vlad was a nice guy even in captivity, he actually was so nice that Matei Corvin (King of Hungary) decided to marry one of his cousins with him, Ilona. In the mean time the former country of Vlad, Wallachia was ruled by a guy who was incapable of fighting the Ottomans. Matei found himself in a bit of a predicament, he could have been put in the unconformable situation to fight the Ottomans by himself. Being such a good leader Matei Corvin released Vlad and sent him back to Wallachia, reinstating him as ruler.

Vlad died while fighting the Ottomans in 1476, aged 45.

So there you have it, noble man, good leader, swell guy using the tools of the time, propaganda, money laundering, war. Is it me or the real story would make a reasonable good movie?