Vlad Tepes

I suppose that many of you have heard about this person even once in your lifetime. May be you were even scared of him, but I am convinced that you know nothing in particular about Vlad Cepesh or Graf Dracula.
“Once upon a time lived a blood-thirsty Duke Dracula. He put men on a stake, grilled them on coal, boiled human heads in a big boiler, tore of their skin while they were alive, ripped them into pieces and drunk their blood…” – was telling us Wan Helsing while looking through the book written by Bram Stocker. Many of you can remember this episode from Francis Ford Coppola’s movie “Dracula”, and probably, exactly this episode showed you that half of Graf Dracula’s story was based on reality, and that he was not an imaginary character.

One of the most famous characters in history has a prototype – Duke Wallachia Vlad Dracula Tepes. "Tepes" comes from Romanian Tepea – stake. So actually his name means a person who puts man on a stake. The Turks called him 'the Impaler Prince'.

Dracul means "Devil" in Romanian while Dracula means "son of Dracul" and therefore "son of the Devil". He was a member of “Order of the Dragon”. So like the most furious person he was given his name Dracula.

A lot of historians say that he was much more furious than Heron and Neron. We have too much evidence, to prove, that Graf Dracula was one of the cruelest men in history.

When Vlad was 25 he become a head of Wallachia. While he ruled Romania, this country could stand against Turkish forces, and could even make them retreat. Main point was that Dracula made everyone afraid of him because of his cruelty. He put men on stakes, burned his own villages to make enemies starve. By the way putting men on stakes was one of the most popular ways to punish guilty people.

In Dracula's domain, there was a significant lack of thieves as they knew that there was a stake for each one of them. A golden cup could be used by anybody, the only restriction was that it had to remain on the square. Historic sources state that it was never stolen throughout Dracula's reign.

Dracula's castle is often said to be Bran Castle. Now we know for certain that even though Dracula stayed there a couple of times, his real castle, now in ruins, is located at Poenari only attracting a few devote fans of Dracula. It was built in a very strategical position surrounded by numerous trees which makes it very difficult to reach.

It is a documented fact that Vlad's head was cut and taken to Constantinople to ensure the Turkish population that the reign of Vlad was truly over.