Vlad Ţepeş, the Wallachian prince at the heart of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

How my fascination with Vlad Ţepeş began

I have been a keen horror film buff since I was a kid, and this is something else I can attribute to my dad. He gave me a 1958 collectors’ first edition of Forrest J Ackerman’s classic Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and I was hooked from that moment on. I would pore over the pages studiously, marvelling at the old black and white stills of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney et al, and patiently wait for the next showing of these classics on television (we only had two channels in those days - I remember my parents getting a new tv set that could receive BBC 2 just so I could watch Hurd Hatfield’s seminal performance in the title role of The Picture of Dorian Gray).

I never did forgive Steven Kennyon for not returning that much loved, prized copy of Famous Monsters when we were both eleven - well, maybe a bit when I finally managed to replace it on eBay a couple of years ago, even if it did set me back sixty quid. I undoubtedly have it to thank for stirring in me an interest not just in the classic portrayals of Dracula by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, but also the fifteenth century prince of Wallachia, Vlad Ţepeş, the real inspiration behind Irish novelist Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire count.

Even as a child, I was fascinated by this mysterious prince - a national hero in his own country for delivering his people from the marauding Turks. How had he earned the name Vlad the Impaler (Ţepeş) and was he really the inhuman monster he is often made out to have been?

My research into the character was obviously limited as a child - it was mainly down to what I could learn in books or glean from infrequent tv documentaries. Much of what you read is biased too - poor Vlad is portrayed almost as the antichrist in many volumes, and this is wildly opposed to the opinion of most Romanians today.

Bela Lugosi, the definitive screen Dracula (Universal 1931)

In adulthood, my fascination with the subject and the man as strong as ever, I decided I would have to go on a journey to get to anything like the real facts about Vlad III of Wallachia. I would have to go to Transylvania.

Take a look at my post ‘Transylvanian Journey - discovering the real Dracula’ for more of this story