Although not the first ever vampire novel, Dracula was enormously influential in defining modern ideas of vampires, and for forever associating them with Romania.
Vlad III was the ruler of Wallachia, an area that covered a large part of Romania’s current land mass. It was due to Vlad’s apparent lust for blood that he was given the epithet ‘the Impaler’. However, during his lifetime he also had another, more instantly recognisable name. Vlad III was known as Dracula and many people therefore reported that Stoker based his character on a real historical character, but the evidence does not support this.
Vlad III’s father, Vlad II, was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order charged with fighting the enemies of Christianity. In the case of the Wallachian ruler, this meant the Turks on his southern border. As a member of the Order of the Dragon, Vlad added the Romanian word for dragon – dracul – to his name, and became known as Vlad Dracul. As son of the dragon, Vlad III was referred to as Vlad Dracula. Importantly, however, the word dracul has a dual meaning in the Romanian language as it also means ‘devil’. This made Vlad III the son of the devil.
We know from his notes that Bram Stoker read the 19th Century British Consul William Wilkinson’s book about life in Romania, ‘Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia’. The book made several references to the term Dracula, but Stoker’s only interest in the word was that it was associated with people who portrayed devilish or cruel behaviour. It was because of the literal meaning of the word that Stoker took it to name his blood-sucking creation.
