Vlad the Impaler Trivia
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59 free Vlad the Impaler trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Vlad the Impaler trivia quiz is about the historical Vlad III of Wallachia, not the vampire. The easy questions cover what most people know: where his 'Dracula' name actually came from, the empire he spent his life fighting, his favourite method of execution and the novelist who borrowed his name four centuries later. From there it moves through a genuinely strange life: a childhood as an Ottoman hostage, a father and brother murdered by the Hungarians, three separate reigns, a purge of the boyars, and a war with the Saxon merchants of Transylvania that produced Europe's first true-crime bestsellers. The harder end covers the 1462 campaign in detail: the letter counting '23,884 Turks and Bulgarians', the night attack on the sultan's camp, the forest of stakes outside the capital, and the forged letters that got him locked up by the King of Hungary for fourteen years. There are also questions on his wives and children, the German and Russian story cycles, the 2023 blood-tears study and where his head is said to have ended up. Every answer was checked against Vlad's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. For the fictional count, try our Dracula quiz.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which castle is marketed to tourists as 'Dracula's Castle', although it was never Vlad's home?
Bran Castle
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.
Q 02Fiction's Dracula is a count, but what rank did Vlad hold?
Prince
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.
Q 03By which nickname, meaning 'the Impaler', is Vlad III best known in his homeland?
Țepeș
Țepeș was never a name he used himself. An Ottoman chronicler called him the Impaler Lord around 1500, a generation after his death.
Q 04Vlad's father earned the nickname 'Dracul' by joining which knightly order in 1431?
The Order of the Dragon
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'.
Q 05Sigismund of Hungary, whose knightly order gave Vlad's father his name, later won which greater title?
Holy Roman Emperor
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.
Q 06What does 'dracul' mean in modern Romanian?
The devil
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.
Q 07How did Vlad himself sign his name on letters late in his life?
Dragulya or Drakulya
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.
Q 08Vlad ruled Wallachia, but in which other region is he said to have been born?
Transylvania
Transylvania's town of Sighișoara shows visitors a house it calls his birthplace. The birth there is tradition rather than proven fact.
Q 09The real Vlad's cliff-top fortress and the fictional Count Dracula's castle both stand in which mountain range?
The Carpathians
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.
Q 10Which actor played Dracula, first seen as the warrior Vlad, in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film?
Gary Oldman
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.
Q 11How did the sultan secure the loyalty of Vlad's father?
Held two sons hostage
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.
Q 12Which Hungarian commander, famed for fighting the Ottomans, invaded Wallachia in 1447 before Vlad's father was murdered?
John Hunyadi
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.
Q 13Vlad won the throne in 1456 by killing his rival Vladislav II, reportedly in what manner?
In single combat
Q 21In early 1462, Vlad raided Ottoman lands along the far bank of which river?
The Danube
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.
Q 22Which sultan, known as 'the Conqueror', led a huge army into Wallachia in 1462 to unseat Vlad?
Mehmed II
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.
Q 23In June 1462 Vlad broke into the Ottoman camp near Târgoviște with what aim?
To capture or kill the sultan
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.
Q 14What did Vlad stop sending the sultan, putting the two on course for war?
The yearly tribute
The yearly tribute had bought Wallachia's peace since his grandfather's day. When the sultan pressed for the arrears, Vlad chose war instead.
Q 15On taking power in 1456, Vlad launched a purge against which class of Wallachian society?
The boyars
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.
Q 16Vlad's long feud of the late 1450s was with which merchant community north of Wallachia?
The Saxons
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.
Q 17By legend, Vlad arrested the guests at his own feast and marched them off to build his castle on which holiday?
Easter
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.
Q 18Which actor played Vlad as a reluctant vampire in the 2014 film 'Dracula Untold'?
Luke Evans
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.
Q 19The sultan's envoys invited Vlad to talks in 1461, but what were their secret orders?
To take him prisoner
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.
Q 20Vlad tricked an enemy garrison into opening its gates by calling out orders in which language?
Turkish
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.
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.
Q 24In the popular telling, what did the sultan do on seeing the thousands Vlad impaled?
Turned for home
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.
Q 25Nine years before invading Wallachia, the sultan had stunned Europe by conquering which ancient city?
Constantinople
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.
Q 26What relation to Vlad was Radu the Handsome, the sultan's 1462 replacement for him?
Younger brother
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.
Q 27The author of 'Dracula' found his vampire's name in an old book at the public library of which English seaside town?
Whitby
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.
Q 28What do most historians make of the letters Hungary's king produced in 1462 to justify jailing Vlad?
They were forged
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.
Q 29In his Hungarian prison, Vlad reportedly impaled what?
Mice and rats
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.
Q 30Which neighbouring ruler, hard pressed by the Ottomans, asked Hungary's king to free Vlad in 1475?
Stephen III of Moldavia
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.