Dracula

We’re getting near Halloween, which always reminds me of the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes. I asked my Romanian friend what modern Romanians think of Dracula, and he sounded almost wistfully nostalgic. “He was very tough and protected the country.”

I’m always searching for kooky things to watch on tv, and whenever there’s a show about vampires, the producers of these shows always find someone that claims to be the reincarnation of Vlad Dracula Tepes. Turns out Dracula is alive and well, and in multiple bodies. The form he seems to like the most is “gothic” people in Victorian frocks and top hats.  I don’t know why anyone would want to be Dracula, there doesn’t seem much romantic about him, other than his ferocity.

There is another Eastern European noble, of Transylvanian and Hungarian heritage, who might not have killed as many people as Dracula, but was stone-cold evil, and maybe one of the worst women to ever live. Hungary’s Countess Elizabeth Báthory gets my vote as the closest thing to a “real” vampire the world has ever seen. Through her own records, it is believed she killed well over six hundred girls and bathed in their blood. Before killing them, she did things that are best not discussed. I believe that the similar charges against France’s Gilles De Rais, an ally of Joan of Arc, were all crap. He wasn’t really an evil satanic devil worshipper and child killer, those were confessions under torture. When Countess Báthory was arrested, she was unrepentant. * She felt entitled, in a sort of psychopathic Caligula way, to do whatever she wanted.

*Regarding her behavior on arrest.The source of this is from my own memory of a book I can't name that I read when I was in fourth grade. So don't quote me!