← Back to the front page

40 Fang-tastic Facts about the History of Vampires

Tim Flight October 24, 2019 26 min

Wiertz Museum - The Premature Burial — The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz, 1854. Wikimedia Commons

25. Dracula was real, but he wasn’t a vampire

Vlad Tepes, 16th-century Austrian copy of mid-15th-century original from Hungary. Wikimedia Commons

Vlad Tepes (‘the impaler’, 1428-c.77) is a Romanian national hero. Ruling Wallachia in the 15^th century, his brutal scare tactics saved Europe from a full-scale Ottoman invasion. His nickname, Dracula, means ‘son of the dragon’, but this isn’t a reference to the devil, as sometimes assumed. His father, Vlad, was nicknamed ‘Dracul’ (‘the dragon’) because he belonged to the Order of the Dragon, an eminent chivalric society. Although Tepes’s enemies, the Transylvanian Saxons, said he dipped bread in human blood, he wasn’t called a vampire. Dracula existed alright, but gives only his name and military background to his fictional namesake.

Written by

Tim Flight

I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk