Guest Blog: Voivode vs. Vampire – Dracula in Modern Literature

By Gemma Norman, University of Birmingham

The name ‘Dracula’ is a name synonymous with vampires: the handsome, seductive aristocratic Count of Bram Stoker’s novel is the image that first comes to mind upon hearing the name. Most people have also heard the name Vlad the Impaler, but it’s rare to find someone who knows that they are one and the same person. Known in Romanian as Vlad Ţepeş and in Turkish as Kazıkulu Bey (The Impaler Prince) Vlad III ruled three times as Voivode (from the Slavic for warlord) of Wallachia. A member of the House of Drăculeşti, a branch of the House of Basarab Vlad gained the name ‘Dracula’ from his father, also called Vlad who was known as ‘Dracul’ or ‘The Dragon’ due to his membership in this chivalric order under the patronage of King Sigismund of Hungary. This Order was sworn to fight the Ottoman Turks and keep the Balkan lands free of Turkish invasion. So proud was the young Vlad of his father’s role that he came to be called ‘Dracula’ meaning ‘Son of the Dragon’ though some interpretations have read it as ‘Son of the Devil’ and in addition he took upon himself the mission of war against the Turks.

Whatever the translation of the name Bram Stoker found it appropriately macabre enough to rename his protagonist, who was originally to be called ‘Count Vampyre’, to ‘Dracula’ thus precipitating over a century of gothic horror canon which became more famous than the actual history. However there is indication that Stoker’s research did go beyond simply the borrowing of a name. In the novel the Count boasts of the exploits of his ancestors as great warlords and gives hints as to the history of the real Dracula. Also in 2009 the Official sequel to the gothic horror bestseller was published as Dracula: The Un-Dead. Author credits go Dacre Stoker, a descendent of Bram, and Ian Holt a prominent Dracula historian who between them resurrected information in Bram Stoker’s old research notebooks which hinted that a sequel had been planned. In The Un-Dead another famous historical ‘vampire’ is brought out to play in the form of Countess Elizabeth Bathory; often credited for having played a significant role in the characterisation of Stoker’s original, this sequel now sees both Bathory and Dracula in a very alpha vampire battle, settling old debts and grudges with the wealth of history and animosity that only immortals could have.

Despite the constant popularity of vampires the historical Dracula has made a recent comeback of his own in modern literature with many authors taking research into his vampire alter-ego a step further. Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian both use Dracula as a vampire but he is also the historical Vlad who has been turned into a vampire. This representation of Dracula is effective in romanticising his history as it pits the immortality and seductiveness of the vampire against the barbarity of the Impaler’s age which is a dramatic contrast. Stoker’s Dracula was to some extent a ‘fish out of water’ protagonist who aspired to the urbanity of the Victorian gentleman, which was an identity at odds with the blood-lust of the vampire. Anno Dracula shows that blood-lust given full licence in Victorian England and Dracula is very much the villain of the novel. The Historian is a little more complex. Kostova’s vampire is a scholar as well as a seducer and still has the ability to control human slaves by his bite which he uses to lure the brightest academic minds he can find into researching his history, to some extent trying to keep his legacy alive through the agency of the historians. But there is the suggestion of his trying to encourage a revisionist scholarship in his own history, and despite the cavalier attitude of Kostova’s Dracula he does attempt to justify his history and defend himself against false accusations.

Historical novelists have also started using Dracula’s history independently of the vampire legend. These titles include Vlad Dracula: The Dragon Prince by Michael Augustyn, Dracula Chronicles: Son of the Dragon by Victor T. Foia and Vlad: The Last Confession by C. C. Humphreys. These stories also use the chivalric legacy of the Order of the Dragon in their representations of Dracula in his warlord persona. The problem of this is the same as with any other work of historical fiction, how far should historical accuracy be compromised for the sake of artistic licence? With the Dracula legend already so far removed from historical reality already there is a temptation for a historian to be overly strict on this point. Vlad: The Last Confession is thoroughly researched (you can find the photo album of the author’s research visit to Romania on his website) and uses the framing device of a confession given by Dracula’s former priest, his best friend and his mistress after his death. This selection of characters allows for covering several keys of the historical Vlad’s identity, as a Christian against the Muslim Turk, as a patriotic warlord protecting his land and as a lascivious individual having famously fathered several bastards in a style similar to Henry VIII. Humphreys makes much of Vlad Dracula’s youth spent as a hostage at the Ottoman court and the rift that occurred between himself and his brother due to the latter’s conversion to Islam and loyalty to Sultan Mehmet II. That said, Humphreys is not above using the fantastic elements of the Dracula legend when he stages a seeming return from the dead for his main character in a style very similar to the conspiracy theories that surround the death of Christopher Marlowe in Elizabethan England. Whether or not such possibilities occurred in reality is difficult to say given the obstacles to researching Dracula’s history. The first of these is the problem of any historical investigation which is the bias of primary sources: even if an author had the linguistic skills needed to plough through the Romanian and Slavonic language source material there is the lack of the historian’s training in assessment of these sources. Additionally Drăculeşti historiography is marred by blatant nationalism on the part of Balkan historians, where he is still revered as a hero, and the Western temptation towards the sensational aspects of his life with an omission of more mundane matters such as economic policy. However history and literature are not the same discipline and it is unfair to impose the limitations of the historian’s craft upon the novelists whose skill is in their imagination. On the other hand it is gratifying to see a growing awareness of the potential of Dracula’s history as inspiration for popular culture. The vampire legend will always be a colourful aspect of Dracula literature but present readers now have more options for Voivode as well as vampire in the selection of their reading material.

Gemma Norman is a first-year PhD student in Ottoman Studies at the University of Birmingham.
In addition to having an interest in representations of History in Popular Culture and several other historical fields, she is also involved with the postgraduate student society for the Centre for Byzantine Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies. http://gembirmingham.org/