Yes, Dracula did exist—sort of. He was not the ruler of Transylvania, but of Wallachia; he was not a count, but a voivode (a local governor or “prince”); and he was not a vampire. Still, the truth about Vlad Tepes (1431-1476) is enough to make anyone lock the lid to his coffin at night.
Dracula’s story begins with his father, the ruthless Vlad Basarab, who became known as Vlad Dracul (dragon) for his membership in the Order of the Dragon. “Drac” in Romanian can be translated as either dragon or, fittingly, devil. In a diplomatic move, Dracul sent his 10-year-old son, Dracula (Son of the Dragon), to the Ottoman Empire as a hostage in 1442. There, Vlad learned his preferred method of torture: impalement. Victims of impalement—which involved the insertion of a large wooden stake into the victim’s body, avoiding piercing the vital organs—begged for a swift death throughout the slow, agonizing process of blood loss and exposure to the elements.
Known as Vlad the Impaler, Dracula impaled not only murderers, thieves, and political rivals but also the destitute and the crippled in a bid to rid his territory of poverty. His crowning achievement, however, was in turning the Turks’ gruesome practice against them. In 1462, the invading Turks turned tail at Wallachia’s border—which had been decorated with 20,000 of their impaled countrymen—and Vlad’s legacy was born.