That's how my brother described Vlad during a conversation last year, and I thought, you know, you're not wrong. For all of his - uh - flaws, we'll say, Vlad was very much a banked fire of a boy, burning furiously, quietly, biding his time, nursing terrible grudges, until he had the chance to roar to vengeful life. Because that's the truth of the Vlad the Impaler story - it's about revenge. His actions were reactions. To what he'd witnessed. To what had been done to him.
Look out, I'm back on my Vlad BS.
But on a serious note...
I watched a History Channel show about Vlad last week, and there was some good info in it...there was also some very Not True stuff...and a boatload of omissions that would have served to put most of his behavior in some kind of perspective. For instance, there was no mention of Radu having been little more than a sex slave during his adolescence - he was simply "Vlad's hated younger brother loyal to Mehmet." No mention of the kidnapping; of the murders of Vlad II and Mircea; no mention of Skanderbeg, and his mentorship of Vlad during captivity. John Hunyadi didn't seem to exist in this version of events; in fact, it was claimed that it was Vlad who reached out to Hungary, after he was on the throne, and begged for "aid in his slaughter," but that "Matthias" refused. It was a quick, glossed-over bit of spectacle that painted Mehmet as wise and fair, only doing his duty, and Vlad as deranged and bloodthirsty. Vlad was, according to this piece, "terrorizing" the Danube, killing his own people. More or less a hit piece, lacking all nuance - no mention of the bishops who begged the Eastern European princes to set out on another crusade, and Vlad taking up the cross at their urging - designed purely to strike fear in the hearts of anyone tip-toeing around the topic of Dracula.
I continue to wonder: why are there so many sources intent on stripping out all the facts and painting the story of Vlad Tepes as a one-sided monster tale? Probably it has to do with entertainment; Vlad the blood-drinker makes for a much better story than the back-and-forth muddied politics, throne takings and losings, castrations and molestations of the real story.
But for me, the real story is fascinating. Not only that, but it also makes sense in a way all the glossy terror portraits don't. I'm certainly glad I'm not a Wallachian citizen living in 1460. I certainly don't condone or excuse anything Vlad did. But I'm a storyteller. And the thing about stories: even the wildest ones have their own logic; you can follow the trails of breadcrumbs, and when you get to the gingerbread house, you aren't actually surprised at all to find the witch there. Or, in this case, to find the Prince of Wallachia there, in his fortress built by his own nobles before he put them to death.
Fiction-writing is largely a psychological exercise for me. It is, as I said earlier, a psychological exercise - writing and reading. On the writing front, I've always loved the challenge of taking a character deemed highly problematic and getting inside their head. Following their logic; viewing the world the way they do. And then painting for the audience - not an excuse, not an endorsement, but an empathetic portrait. I want to write those difficult stories; I want the audience to be challenged, and to find themselves rooting for unlikely protagonists.
To that end: I feel such fatigue and sadness when I look at Twitter and see the anti, purity police movement move from fandom to the published author community. There's a wave; an ugly low rumble: writers shouldn't "normalize" "toxic," "problematic," "abusive" behavior by writing about morally flawed characters. People are good, or people are bad, and one misdeed condemns them for life. Ew, don't write about bad people. And if you do, you better make it clear to the audience that they're BAD, and can't be redeemed; shouldn't be liked or empathized with. Readers shouldn't mourn the loss of a character who was evil.
Books like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are, according to the anti-problematic crowd, objectively bad, thanks to their flawed heroes. Forget nuance, forget what we can gain from those kinds of stories - that's all out the window for some.
I've been saying this for a long time, and I'll keep saying it: it's not the job of adult fiction to tell you what you should do. Fiction is not a manners guide; it's not a sex-ed manual; the purpose of fiction is not to condemn bad behavior, and uplift "pure," "unproblematic" behavior.
Fiction holds a mirror up to the world. Not to one person. Not to one ideal; not to one standard. To the world. And the world is dark, and violent, and scary. People aren't good, or bad, but so, so many shades of gray. Dark stories aren't meant to condone misdeeds. Through fiction we can stand safely on the sidelines and begin to understand the world. We can go anywhere, witness any number of things, and come away richer, more thoughtful, and more empathetic. I can't begin to tell you how important it is that fiction allows readers to put themselves in the shoes of a person who acts, thinks, looks, loves, and lives differently than they do. That is important. Complex fiction encourages critical thinking of all kinds.
(An aside to say how much I now loathe the world problematic after over-exposure. No one in real life thinks you lack moral standards just because you enjoy and find artistic value in a problematic story. I wish people would stop being so afraid that fictional taste was a direct reflection of someone's character.)
To date, I've never written someone as problematic as Vlad - and looking at my catalogue, that's saying something, folks. But I don't look at it that way; not as problematic. I never thought maybe I should write about someone nicer, gentler, easier to empathize with. Vlad was - is, in my series - a person. Every person has their reasons, ugly or not, palatable or reprehensible. Vlad had his. Writing about them was the most challenging, most thought-provoking, most fun I've ever had writing fiction, and I can't believe how much the process taught me - about craft, about patience, about characters...and about the nature of human cruelty and resentment. Because, here's the thing: writing Dragon Slayer didn't make me tolerant of impalement; but it did make me shed tears for two little boys who lived a long, long time ago, and that's the meaning of dark stories. That's why we tell them. Not everyone has to read them, or like them, but they need to exist.
