Vlad the Impaler: A Life From Beginning to End (Medieval History)

by Hourly History

The word “drac” originally meant dragon, but in modern Romanian, it means devil.

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

“Desecrate the earth and father it with horror.” —Hollow, Vlad

Vlad’s first wife, whose name is not known, was in the castle at the time, and upon seeing the army surround the castle, reportedly remarked she would rather feed the fish of the Argeş than fall into Turkish hands. She then, so the story goes, threw herself off the cliff into the river below.

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth with the grasses waving above one’s head and listen to silence. To have no yesterday and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

The association with vampirism and his portrayal in fictional accounts are most certainly not part of the legacy Vlad Țepeș would have envisioned, but in a strange twist of fate, he has been ensconced in literature as, ironically, an immortal being.

Vlad the Impaler has, in a sense, risen from the dead. His legacy lives on, and if the facts of his life are in any way accurate, his fictional namesake pales in comparison, pun intended, as a bringer of death.