Wallachia

Published on May 26, 1897 and written by Bram Stoker, The novel tells the story of Dracula's move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood leading into an epic battle with Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Dracula, in Wallachian language, means devil.

That was where Stoker got the name.

He based his famous character on earlier fictional vampires and used his own imagination to make him bigger and badder than his predecessors.

Even in his verbal sparring with Torgo, Dracula comes to realize his arrogance and blindness to all around him.

Dracula, the Lord of Vampires, former Wallachian royalty, is forced to hear how Torgo rose above him in some ways.

Torgo transformed long before Dracula.

Torgo fought Attila the Hun, rose from comrade to general in his homeland's military, was bitten in the neck by a peasant, and became a vampire.

Vlad the Impaler or Vlad III, also known as Dracula, the Prince of...

And we're going to do this in the English way, Wallachia.

I know in Roman-ish, it's...

I think it's Wallachia, if I'm not mistaken.

There's a lot of Romanians where I live, so I kind of hear Romanian now and then.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's pronounced in their language, but we'll do it in the English way because it's easier for me to do.

He himself, he was an outsider to the throne.

He was born, as, you know, Gareth had mentioned, a legitimate son.

though it could, to be sure, have happened anywhere in the world.

By way of orientation, for those of you not familiar with the affair, I should mention that B is a small place in Wallachia, south of Transylvania, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains.

The people from Bucharest and Brasov, who had second homes here, referred to it simply as a village, while the locals spoke defiantly of a town, because of the big weaving mill that had once stood on the river and made workers of a great many peasants.

For my family, ever conciliatory, B was a charming health resort.

Handsome and charming, with a thirst for blood, he is a cunning monster whom Stoker's protagonists battle throughout the story.

At one point, the professor Abraham Van Helsing appears to explicitly link Dracula to Vlad the Impaler, speculating, quote, "...he must indeed have been that voy void Dracula, who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkeyland." If it be so, then was he no common man, for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the land beyond the forest." Though Stoker never otherwise ties Dracula to the Wallachian ruler in the novel, He was known to have read an 1820 book entitled An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with various political observations relating to them.

Written by the British Consul to Wallachia, William Wilkinson, the book delves into the history of the region, including the many bloody exploits of Vlad the Impaler.

But who exactly was Vlad the Impaler? While the Wallachian ruler was, of course, not a vampire, he seemed to share a similar bloodlust with Stoker's monster.

During his reign, which lasted on and off from 1448 until 1476, Vlad the Impaler is believed to have killed as many as 80,000 people.

He once boasted of killing peasants, men and women, old and young.

I'm All That's Interesting staff writer Kalina Fraga.

And I'm All That's Interesting staff editor Cara Johnson.

So on August the 8th.

he goes and finds a book in the library by the Quayside called An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia along with Transylvania, which is modern Romania, by William Wilkinson, published in 1820.

And this history mentions a 15th century prince called Vlad Tepes, who was said to have impaled his enemies on wooden stakes and was known as Vlad the Impaler.

And he was also known as Dracula, the son of the dragon or the devil.

And in Wallachia, Drakwal can also mean devil.

And Stoker made a note of this name along with a date and goes back to work on his book, his work in progress.

But whilst he was here, and this is interesting, he hears about a shipwreck off the coast from one of the coast guards who he talks to of a Russian vessel on the Tate Hill sands below Eastcliff.