I hope I don’t need to explain that I don’t mean the iconic DRACULA dracula. Not Bram Stoker’s creation, famously played by Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella, Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman and many others. And I CERTAINLY don’t mean the sparkly Cullen family members. As fun as it is to imagine that Bram’s flourishy caped creation is lurking out there in the shadows, I’m afraid he was based on a more conventional human, although one with probably a bigger body count to his name.
I’ll admit to being a bit startled in this day and age when ANYBODY doesn’t know that Dracula was based on a real jerk of a 15th century Eastern European warlord and ruler, Vlad Dracul Tepes, who was affectionately titled “The Impaler”. Aside from his penchant for impaling his enemies on big stakes outside his castle, his murderous activities pretty much ran the wincingly imaginable gamut, and he was rumored to drink the blood of his victims to boot. As “defenders of Christianity” go, Vlad was pretty much on the ‘we wish people would quit asking about it’ list for the church. But ol’ Bram just HAD to write one of the most popular characters in literary history…
The upshot is, Vlad was a pretty bad dude. To say the least. Add the “Dracula” myth to his legend, and the fact that no one actually knows what happened to him and you’ve got something that is gonna fuel speculation. He ‘disappeared’ during battle; some reports have him dead, some led away in chains, but no one really knows for sure. Until possibly now.
Some Estonian researchers think they’ve found the final resting place of The Count in a church in Naples. The tomb in question is covered with Transylvanian symbols and images of the dragon (what the ‘dracul’ in Vlad’s name meant) and two opposing sphinxes which represent the city of Thebes (also called ‘Tepes’). Considering everyone else in the tomb is a regular Italian nobleman and that some rumors say Vlad was ransomed off to his daughter who lived in Naples, it looks like they’ve got a solid case.
But they want permission to open it…
Doesn’t seem to matter how much we recognize the fictional differential between Count Dracula and Vlad Tepes, it still makes one want to run screaming NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE!