History is sometimes told through stories and this is a fact but sometimes, these stories are not a hundred per cent loyal to what really happened in history. This relationship between “history” and “story” is going to be the base for this work because I have decided to do my essay about one of the topics given which is: “From history to story: Vlad the Impaler vs. Count Dracula”.
I chose this topic because I love history and I am very curious about historical characters such as Prince Vlad Tepes, which some people consider it is one of the inspirations to the Dracula’s author, Bram Stoker, and some other people think the opposite. It is not sure if he really based his character on Vlad Tepes but I think that there are some quotes on his book…show more content… Why did Stoker want to name one of the principal characters as “Dracula”?
As I said before, Vlad the Impaler’s father was known as “Vlad Dracul” which is translated into English as “Vlad the dragon”. The reason why his name referred to that animal is because the “dragon” was the symbol of the Christian society set up by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, whose main purpose was to protect the empire from the Ottoman Turkish and to defeat them. They wanted to prevent the Ottoman to conquer Europe (it was a religious problem because the Ottoman were Muslim).
To explain a little bit the meaning of this name, I have found that the Romanian name to Vlad the Impaler was Vlad III Draculea. Draculea came from the word “drac” (which means “dragon”, as I said before”) and the suffix “-ulea” means “the son of”. That it is why I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Count’s name is the same as this historical…show more content… His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seems to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache…”
When I read this, I instantly started to think about a picture of Vlad the Impaler and I saw some aspect of this description that, for me, it fits with a famous and very well-known picture of Vlad, which is the next one:
The Count Dracula’s features I am talking about (the ones that I think it fits with this photo of Vlad the Impaler) are the shape of the face, which Bram Stoker described it as “strong”, the other one is the shape of the nose (Count Dracula has “a high bridge” and a “thin nose”) that it is clearly a similar feature in Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. The next feature is the “heavy moustache” that Count Dracula has and as we can see in the picture of Vlad, one of the features that are more obvious at first sight is the black