[SteeMagazin]^History >> The Historical Dracula vs. The Fictional Dracula

Anyone who has read Bram Stoker's Dracula knows the horrors of Dracula's deeds. But were those deeds real, in fact, was the Count Dracula himself a real historical person? Those are the questions we are going to try to answer today.

Far away over the snowy tops of the Carpathians, in the heart of the Balkans, above the hostile Borgo Pass (today in Romania) resided Count Dracula, patiently waiting for the arrival of Jonathan Harker and for the unveiling of his treacherous, dreadful plans which will compromise lifes of many. Thus begins the story of Dracula, in which his nature appears to be supernatural, extraordinary. In fact, in Bram Stoker's story, Count Dracula is not a human at all, he is a vampire. A vampire with terrible unnatural powers distinctive to those to whom Stoker refers to as the "Un-Dead". In his novel, however, Stoker does not explain the origins of vampires and the "Un-Dead" and leaves ourselves to our own imagination. These folklore stories on which the novel was based were, I suppose, older than Stoker, but surprisingly enough Romanians did not hear of them too often. Stoker's success and that of the cinematic interpretation of "Dracula" gave rise to the development of tourism in Romania. Though this sounds great, especially for Romania, here we encounter two problems:

The first problem is the Communism. How does Communism fit in this story, you might ask. Well, The cinematic presentation of Dracula that gave it rise had been released sometime in 1960s. It was at that time that the autocratic communist regime led by Nicolae Ceausescu began. Naturally, though suffocating in problems, as it was with socialist republics of the Eastern Bloc, Romania was trying to present themselves to tourists in the greatest light possible. All of the Communist leaders behind the Iron Curtain tried to be as self-dependant as possible, not to depend on USSR as much. So Ceausescu was promoting tourism to some extent, but it was against his own policy to promote a story like Dracula. There were too few "ideological" markers in his favor to this story, and too many against it. How would a country striving for progress and prosperity be able to fit in folklore tales which would surely arouse curiosity between the folk? There is another problem arising from this one. How would Romanians react to Dracula, a historical person of big importance for their country, being presented as a vampire had they known it?

The second problem is, though Dracula really existed, he was nowhere near being a vampire. I'm not saying him not being a vampire is a problem, but that this caused confusion in distinguishing the two. Whom Romanians recall as "Dracula" or "Draculea" ("Son of the Dragon"), was a historical person named Vlad III., also known as Vlad the Impaler, because he used to impale his enemies on wooden sticks and torture them. His enemies were at that time (aroud 1450) the Ottomans, who were occupied conquering the Balkans and expanding their territory.
The Castle in which the Count resides in Stoker's novel does not actually exist, but as Romania is home to many such castles, in tourist circles castle Bran (near Brasov) was brought in connection with that from the novel. Romanians slowly started to adapt their costumes in favor of tourists, opening thus few Dracula-themed hotels. Some of them even had the same menu which Jonathan was offered with in Count's castle.

Though at first it does not seem so, the subject of Dracula is quite a complicated one if one had not been formerly introduced to it. It is, however, an interesting one as well, bringing together the tension and gloominess of Stoker's masterpiece toghether with historical fact. All set beneath beautiful snowy tops of yet undiscovered beauty.

I am at some parts loosely reffering to an article titled "Romania's problem with Dracula" which you can find and read here: https://www.historytoday.com/duncan-light/romanias-problem-dracula

This is @steemagazin original content.
Links to the photos:

1. https://moneyweek.com/475250/dodging-dracula-in-transylvania/
2. https://www.wheretwogoto.com/exploring-transylvania-three-days/
   3.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler

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