Vlad the Impaler: The medieval prince who inspired Dracula

Vlad the Impaler is believed to have been born in 1431 in what is now Transylvania, the central region of modern-day Romania. However, the link between Vlad the Impaler and Transylvania is a matter of debate, according to Florin Curta, a professor of medieval history and archaeology at the University of Florida.

"Dracula is linked to Transylvania, but the real, historic Dracula — Vlad III — never owned anything in Transylvania," Curta told Live Science. Bran Castle, a modern-day tourist attraction in Transylvania that is often referred to as Dracula's castle, was never the residence of the Wallachian prince, he added.

"Because the castle is in the mountains in this foggy area and it looks spooky, it's what one would expect of Dracula's castle," Curta said. "But he [Vlad III] never lived there. He never even stepped foot there."

Vlad III's father, Vlad II, did own a residence in Sighişoara, Transylvania, but it is not certain that Vlad III was born there, according to Curta. He said it's also possible that Vlad the Impaler was born in Târgovişte, which was at that time the royal seat of the principality of Wallachia, where his father was a "voivode," or ruler.

However, it is possible for tourists to visit one castle where Vlad III certainly spent time. At about age 12, Vlad III and his brother were imprisoned in Turkey. In 2014, archaeologists found the likely location of the dungeon, located in Tokat Castle in northern Turkey, Smithsonian magazine reported. The eerie place contains secret tunnels and dungeons; it is currently under restoration and open to the public.

In 1431, King Sigismund of Hungary — who would later become the Holy Roman Emperor, according to the British Museum — inducted the elder Vlad into a knightly order, the Order of the Dragon. This designation earned Vlad II a new surname: Dracul. The name came from the old Romanian word for dragon, "drac."

His son, Vlad III, would later be known as the "son of Dracul" or, in old Romanian, Drăculea, hence Dracula, medieval historian Constantin Rezachevici wrote in a 1999 study. In modern Romanian, the word "drac" refers to the Devil, Curta said.

According to Rezachevici, the Order of the Dragon was devoted to a singular task: the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Situated between Christian Europe and the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, Vlad II's (and later Vlad III's) home principality of Wallachia was frequently the scene of bloody battles as Ottoman forces pushed westward into Europe and Christian forces repulsed the invaders.

Bram Stoker read a book about Wallachia in 1890, English professor Elizabeth Miller wrote in "Dracula: Sense and Nonsense" (Desert Island Books, 2020). Although the book did not mention Vlad III, Stoker was struck by the word "Dracula." He wrote in his notes that "Dracula in Wallachian language means DEVIL." Stoker likely chose to name his character Dracula for the word's devilish association.

The theory that Vlad III and Dracula were the same person was developed and popularized by historians Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally in their book "In Search of Dracula" (New York Graphic Society, 1972). Though far from accepted by all historians, the thesis took hold of the public imagination, according to The New York Times.

To consolidate his power as voivode, Vlad needed to quell the incessant conflicts that had historically taken place between Wallachia's boyars. Stories from the time immediately following Vlad's imprisonment in Hungary describe his cruelty in torturing the opposition, including cooking people alive, skinning them, and cutting off their limbs and genitals, according to a 2021 study by Aleksandra Bartosiewicz.

But Vlad's favorite method of public execution of men, women and children was impaling, which involved hoisting a victim on a tall stake. The stake gradually tore their insides over the span of several days before they died of their injuries. Bartosiewicz wrote that estimates range from 40,000 to 100,000 people killed this way by Vlad Țepeș — Vlad the Impaler — as he came to be known in Romanian.

"In the 1460s and 1470s, just after the invention of the printing press, a lot of these stories about Vlad were circulating orally, and then they were put together by different individuals in pamphlets and printed," Miller said. Many of those printing the pamphlets were hostile to Vlad III.

But some of the pamphlets from that time tell nearly the same gruesome stories about Vlad, including a series of legends collected and published in the 1490 story "The Tale of Dracula the Voivode," authored by a monk named Efrosin, who presented Vlad III as a fierce-but-just ruler.

Although a massive number of impalements is often cited in Dracula literature, historian Dénes Harai wrote in a 2025 study that the count is greatly exaggerated due to the sensationalism of the 15th-century reports. Impalement was actually an "exceptional tool for exceptional situations," Harai wrote, and "only a handful of historical records allow us to evaluate the actual number of impalements."

In 1459, for example, Vlad arrested a group of merchants and ordered their impalement. But while one German chronicle claimed the number was 600, another mentioned 41 merchants put to death. Also in 1459, Vlad lured a number of boyars to a banquet to kill them. Although a German chronicle suggested there were some 500 boyars, the place of execution could hold only 40 to 50 impaled bodies, according to Harai.

Based on a thorough survey of the surviving records, Harai has estimated that the real number of impalements Vlad Dracul had carried out was roughly 8% of the total claimed. "These figures certainly do not downplay the brutality of Vlad's rule, but, contrary to the popular legend and the sensationalist claims of some contemporary chroniclers, impalement was not a principal tool for mass killing," Harai wrote.

Not long after the impalement of Ottoman prisoners of war, in August 1462, Vlad was forced into exile in Hungary, unable to defeat his much more powerful adversary, Mehmed II. Vlad was imprisoned for a number of years during his exile, though during that time, he married and had two children.

Vlad's younger brother Radu, who had sided with the Ottomans during the ongoing military campaigns, took over governance of Wallachia after his brother's imprisonment. But after Radu's death in 1475, local boyars, as well as the rulers of several nearby principalities, favored Vlad's return to power, John M. Shea wrote in "Vlad the Impaler: Bloodthirsty Medieval Prince" (Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2016).

In 1476, with the support of the voivode of Moldavia, Stephen III the Great (1457-1504), Vlad made one last effort to reclaim his seat as ruler of Wallachia. He successfully stole back the throne, but his triumph was short-lived. Later that year, while marching to yet another battle with the Ottomans, Vlad and a small vanguard of soldiers were ambushed, and Vlad was killed.

But Vlad may have been suffering from health issues just before his death. In a 2023 study, researchers used mass spectrometry to study a letter Vlad penned in 1475. The researchers found biological evidence that Vlad had a respiratory tract infection and that he likely had hemolacria, a condition that makes a person cry blood-tinged tears. Hemolacria can result from simple injuries or infections of the eye, but it can also be caused by systemic diseases such as anemia or nervous system issues.

There is much controversy over the location of Vlad III's tomb, Rezachevici noted in a 2002 study. He is said to be buried in the monastery church in Snagov, on the northern edge of the modern city of Bucharest, in accordance with the traditions of his time. But recently, historians have questioned whether Vlad might actually be buried at the Monastery of Comana, between Bucharest and the Danube, which is close to the presumed location of the battle in which Vlad was killed, according to Curta.

One thing is for certain, however: Unlike Stoker's Count Dracula, Vlad III most definitely did die. Only the harrowing tales of his years as ruler of Wallachia remain to haunt the modern world.