The Historical Dracula
Vlad Dracul, prince of Wallachia, the son of the dragon, known by his enemies and followers alike as Tepes, the impaler. Westerners know him better was Count Dracula, thanks to Bram Stoker’s seminal gothic novel and the plethora of Hollywood films that followed.
Vlad: The Last Confession
by C.C. Humphreys
Sourcebooks Landmark
C.C. Humphrey’s morbidly fascinating historical novel, Vlad: The Last Confession, drives a stake through the heart of the vampire myth surrounding Vlad Dracula, but the picture of the real character that emerges is no less chilling. While Humphrey’s tried to stick closely to the historical facts, the reality is there just aren’t that many facts to go on. Much of this story – though more representative of the times, events and characters – is as fictionalized as Stoker’s Dracula.
Humphrey’s paints Vlad Dracula as a brilliant, complex, deeply religious, deeply patriotic and fiercely independent man. Born into a noble family in a tiny kingdom at the crossroad of history in the 15th century, Vlad is exposed to the great learning, and the extreme cruelty, of the Turkish empire while he is held as a hostage to ensure his father’s obedience. Meanwhile his homeland, once a thriving trade center, degenerates into a den of thieves and a haven for bandits. When he returns home to claim his throne, Vlad uses everything he has learned and suffered from the Turks, including execution by the slow and ignoble death by impalement, to clean up his homeland.
Machiavelli once famously noted that if a ruler must choose between being loved and being feared, it was better to be feared. Vlad certainly took that advice to the extreme. It was said that he placed a golden goblet by a public well, and no one would dare steal it for fear of his wrath. He used the same tactics in his personal crusade against the invading Turks, and very nearly won against overwhelming odds.
While Vlad: The Last Confession is an exciting, fascinating novel, it is also punctuated by extreme and graphic violence, and cruelty that boggles the mind. It is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. I have a pretty high threshold for content, and I admit that it was hard for me to wade through some of the scenes Humphreys describes. You have been warned.
