59 Fun Facts About Vlad the Impaler

Which castle is marketed to tourists as 'Dracula's Castle', although it was never Vlad's home?

Bran Castle owes the billing to its looks, all towers and turrets on a rock above a mountain pass. Its real ties to Vlad are thin, and historians say it was never his home.

Fiction's Dracula is a count, but what rank did Vlad hold?

Prince is the usual English for voivode, the title Vlad held over Wallachia. He won and lost that throne three times between 1448 and 1476.

By which nickname, meaning 'the Impaler', is Vlad III best known in his homeland?

Țepeș was never a name he used himself. An Ottoman chronicler called him the Impaler Lord around 1500, a generation after his death.

Vlad's father earned the nickname 'Dracul' by joining which knightly order in 1431?

The Order of the Dragon gave him the byname, since Dracul then meant 'the Dragon'. His son's famous name Dracula simply means 'son of Dracul'.

Sigismund of Hungary, whose knightly order gave Vlad's father his name, later won which greater title?

Holy Roman Emperor was the crown Sigismund went on to win. He had founded the order to defend Christian Europe against the Ottoman advance, and Vlad's father grew up at his court.

What does 'dracul' mean in modern Romanian?

The devil is what dracul means today, though in Vlad's time it was a knightly honour. The author of 'Dracula' copied out a footnote saying the name meant devil in the Wallachian language.

How did Vlad himself sign his name on letters late in his life?

Dragulya or Drakulya was his own choice, a form of 'Dracula' taken from his father's byname. 'The Impaler' was a label that others pinned on him later.

Vlad ruled Wallachia, but in which other region is he said to have been born?

Transylvania's town of Sighișoara shows visitors a house it calls his birthplace. The birth there is tradition rather than proven fact.

The real Vlad's cliff-top fortress and the fictional Count Dracula's castle both stand in which mountain range?

The Carpathians hold both. Vlad's ruined stronghold clings to a cliff in their southern foothills, and the novel opens with a coach ride over one of their passes to the Count's door.

Which actor played Dracula, first seen as the warrior Vlad, in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film?

Gary Oldman's Count begins the film as Vlad, a knight back from war with the Turks. Four centuries on, he sails for England to win back a lost love he believes reborn in Mina.

How did the sultan secure the loyalty of Vlad's father?

He held two sons hostage to keep their father loyal. Vlad did not return until 1448, when he made his first grab for the throne with Ottoman backing.

Which Hungarian commander, famed for fighting the Ottomans, invaded Wallachia in 1447 before Vlad's father was murdered?

John Hunyadi had fallen out with Vlad's father and put his own candidate on the throne. By 1456 he was backing Vlad instead, weeks before an epidemic in his army camp killed him.

Vlad won the throne in 1456 by killing his rival Vladislav II, reportedly in what manner?

In single combat, by one tradition: the two rivals fought hand to hand in front of their armies. Vlad had a score to settle, since Vladislav had taken the throne when his father was murdered nine years before.

What did Vlad stop sending the sultan, putting the two on course for war?

The yearly tribute had bought Wallachia's peace since his grandfather's day. When the sultan pressed for the arrears, Vlad chose war instead.

On taking power in 1456, Vlad launched a purge against which class of Wallachian society?

The boyars, Wallachia's great landowners, had murdered his father nine years before. Vlad handed their council seats to obscure loyalists and knighted men from the free peasantry.

Vlad's long feud of the late 1450s was with which merchant community north of Wallachia?

The Saxons sheltered rivals for his throne, so he raided their towns and impaled his captives. One German tale has him kill 600 merchants, while a rival's own letter counts only 41.

By legend, Vlad arrested the guests at his own feast and marched them off to build his castle on which holiday?

Easter was the feast, by legend. The older guests were put to death on the spot, and the younger were marched into the mountains to rebuild a ruined fortress, where few survived the labour.

Which actor played Vlad as a reluctant vampire in the 2014 film 'Dracula Untold'?

Luke Evans plays him as a devoted father who bargains for a monster's powers to save his people from invasion. Dominic Cooper is the sultan he must stop.

The sultan's envoys invited Vlad to talks in 1461, but what were their secret orders?

To take him prisoner and carry him off to the sultan was the plan. Forewarned, Vlad sprang his own ambush first, and the commander sent to seize him ended up on the tallest stake.

Vlad tricked an enemy garrison into opening its gates by calling out orders in which language?

Turkish was a language he spoke fluently, and he had passed his boyhood at the Ottoman court. The ruse worked: his men stormed in and destroyed the fortress.

In early 1462, Vlad raided Ottoman lands along the far bank of which river?

The Danube was the frontier, and Vlad crossed it to burn a long string of villages and forts. His own report to Hungary's king put the dead at an oddly exact 23,884.

Which sultan, known as 'the Conqueror', led a huge army into Wallachia in 1462 to unseat Vlad?

Mehmed II led the invasion in person after Vlad's raids killed thousands of his subjects. He never caught Vlad, but he left a rival on the Wallachian throne.

In June 1462 Vlad broke into the Ottoman camp near Târgoviște with what aim?

To capture or kill the sultan was the goal, but his riders hit the wrong tents, those of two viziers. They fought on for hours and then slipped away, leaving their target unharmed.

In the popular telling, what did the sultan do on seeing the thousands Vlad impaled?

He turned for home, the story goes, leaving the chase to others. A Greek chronicler put some 20,000 bodies on the stakes, and has him say that a man who did such things could not be robbed of his country.

Nine years before invading Wallachia, the sultan had stunned Europe by conquering which ancient city?

Constantinople fell in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire. With the great city gone, small border states like Wallachia stood next in the path of Ottoman expansion.

What relation to Vlad was Radu the Handsome, the sultan's 1462 replacement for him?

His younger brother had sided with the Ottomans and came back leading their troops. As the campaign wore on, more and more of Vlad's nobles deserted to Radu.

The author of 'Dracula' found his vampire's name in an old book at the public library of which English seaside town?

Whitby was his holiday base in the summer of 1890, and an 1820 book on Wallachia there mentioned a ruler called Dracula. He repaid the town by making it the place where the Count comes ashore.

What do most historians make of the letters Hungary's king produced in 1462 to justify jailing Vlad?

They were forged, most scholars agree: the grovelling tone and clumsy Latin sound nothing like Vlad. The king had taken money from Rome and Venice for a war he never fought, and needed someone to blame.

In his Hungarian prison, Vlad reportedly impaled what?

Mice and rats, the gossip went, stuck on bits of wood as he had once done with men. A Russian tale adds that he bought birds at market to torment, and took up sewing to earn his keep.

Which neighbouring ruler, hard pressed by the Ottomans, asked Hungary's king to free Vlad in 1475?

Stephen III of Moldavia, by most accounts Vlad's cousin, wanted a proven fighter ruling next door. The two had not always been friends: in 1462 Stephen besieged a fortress that Vlad's troops rushed to defend.

What is Vlad said to have done to win his release from Hungarian captivity?

Convert to Roman Catholicism is what the old accounts say he did, leaving the Orthodox faith he was raised in. A Russian tale has the king put it bluntly: take the Catholic faith or die in prison.

In one tale, Vlad killed a Hungarian officer who chased a thief into his house, for what offence?

Entering without permission was the crime: nobody, Vlad told the king, walks in on a great ruler unannounced. In the tale it was the officer, not the thief, who paid with his life.

In the early 2000s, plans were dropped for what Dracula attraction beside Sighișoara, the town that claims Vlad's birthplace?

A theme park was planned between 2001 and 2003 for a nature reserve on the edge of the medieval town. Locals and critics abroad fought it as a threat to both, and the scheme was dropped.

In early 1476 Vlad fought for Hungary against the Ottomans in which region, helping to capture Srebrenica?

Bosnia was his comeback campaign after years out of power, fought in the Hungarian king's army. He went straight back to old habits there, impaling prisoners en masse.

The sultans demanded a levy of Wallachian boys from Vlad and his father, to be trained for which elite corps?

The Janissaries were the sultan's elite infantry, filled by taking Christian boys from their families and raising them as soldiers. Vlad is said to have refused outright, one of the snubs that led to the 1462 invasion.

Snagov Monastery, by tradition Vlad's resting place, stands where?

A lake island holds the monastery, reached today by footbridge or boat. Vlad is credited with giving it thick walls, a prison and an escape tunnel, turning a house of prayer into a bolt-hole.

By one early account, how did Vlad die on his last campaign?

His own men killed him by mistake, in one telling, striking him down at the very moment of victory. Rival accounts blame a hired assassin or an ambush by an enemy patrol.

After Vlad was killed, what was sent to the sultan?

His severed head, reportedly preserved in honey, went to the sultan, who displayed it on a stake in his capital. It was a pointed end for the man who made the stake his trademark.

When archaeologists opened the tomb long said to be Vlad's in the 1930s, what did they find inside?

No human remains lay beneath the stone, so his resting place is still unknown. A second monastery, at Comana, now claims the grave as well.

Vlad's eldest son also won the Wallachian throne, in 1508; by which name is he remembered?

Mihnea the Evil got the name from the rival nobles who drove him out within two years. He fled abroad and was killed outside a church in Sibiu.

Which King of Hungary, named for the raven on his arms, jailed Vlad and later made him an in-law?

Matthias Corvinus held Vlad captive for years, then married him into his own family and backed his return to Wallachia. The byname comes from corvus, Latin for raven.

In one legend, Vlad burned down a hall full of beggars he had invited to feast; what was his reason?

To end poverty, by his own grim logic: with the beggars gone, he is said to have told his nobles, no one in his realm would be poor. The tale has him bar the doors before the fire was lit.

When messengers from the sultan refused to remove their headgear, Vlad reportedly did what?

Nailed the turbans to their heads, the story goes, so that they need never take them off again. In other versions the visitors are Italian envoys in hats, but the hammer and nails never change.

What invention helped make the German stories about Vlad's cruelty some of Europe's first bestsellers?

Movable type printing was only a few decades old when printers found that horror sold. Pamphlets about Vlad went through edition after edition in German towns, with gruesome pictures on the front to catch the eye.

The early Russian tale about Vlad is kinder than the German ones, presenting him as cruel but what?

Just, because in the Russian telling his savage punishments fall on any wrongdoer, whatever their rank, and keep the land in order. The German pamphlets show the same acts as the work of a monster.

A 2023 analysis of Vlad's letters suggested he may have had which rare condition?

Haemolacria, tears partly made of blood, was suggested by proteins lifted from letters he wrote. The same traces hinted at a chest or skin infection, though other hands had touched the paper over the centuries.

Which novelist's 1897 book was the first to connect the name Dracula with vampirism?

Bram Stoker took little more than the name: the history book he copied it from mentioned the title, not the stakes. Scholars now doubt he knew much about the real Vlad at all.

In the early notes for the novel 'Dracula', what was the vampire going to be called?

Count Wampyr was the working name, and the story was first set in Austria. The author swapped it for Dracula after meeting that name in a book on Wallachia.

A papal envoy who met Vlad left a vivid description of his face; what facial hair did it note?

Just a moustache: the envoy wrote that his face and chin were shaved apart from it. He met Vlad as a prisoner at the Hungarian court and reported that the man had killed 40,000 people.

The famous oil portrait of Vlad hangs far from Romania, in a castle of curiosities above which Alpine city?

Innsbruck's Ambras Castle has long shown the painting in a gallery of monsters and marvels. His most familiar face was painted in the 1500s, decades after he died.

How is Vlad widely remembered in Romania today?

As a national hero, who stood up to a far stronger empire to keep Wallachia free. In a famous 19th-century poem, Eminescu begs him to come back and clean up the country.

Rebels seized Vlad's elder brother Mircea in 1447, blinded him, and then killed him in what manner?

Buried alive at Târgoviște, the accounts agree, though they differ on who did it. Their father was caught and killed in the marshes soon after, and within a year Vlad was back to claim the throne they had lost.

Which British royal has publicly claimed Vlad the Impaler as an ancestor?

King Charles III said in 2011, before he was king, that the family tree proved it, through his great-grandmother Queen Mary. He joked that it gave him a stake in Romania, where he owns a village house.

According to legend, what did Vlad leave at a public fountain, certain that no thief would dare take it?

A golden cup stood at the fountain for any traveller to drink from, the old tales say, and nobody dared steal it because thieves under Vlad did not live long.

A document Vlad signed on 20 September 1459 is the oldest known record of which Romanian city?

Bucharest first appears by name in that charter, as a citadel where Vlad held court; the little fortress town grew into Romania's capital.

How does legend say Vlad's first wife died as Ottoman troops neared their castle in 1462?

She leapt from a tower into the river below, the legend says, rather than be taken captive. Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula film opens with a version of her death.

What do the title-page woodcuts of the 1499 and 1500 German pamphlets about Vlad show him doing?

Dining among impaled victims, at a table set beside the stakes, is the scene on both title pages. A 1488 Nuremberg edition had put his portrait there instead.

A 1463 painting now in Ljubljana gives Vlad's features to which figure at the trial of Christ?

Pontius Pilate wears Vlad's face in the panel, painted while he was a prisoner in Hungary, as stories of his cruelty spread through German-speaking lands.

In 1462 Vlad reportedly paid whom to slip in among Ottoman soldiers?

Plague victims, along with people sick with leprosy, were reportedly paid to mingle with the invaders and spread infection. His retreating army also poisoned wells and burned crops.