The Man, The Myth, The Character

Vlad held his brother, and tipped his head back, gaze going to the weathered wooden cross that hung above the altar.

God help me, he prayed. Help me kill them all.

From Dragon Slayer

Copyright © 2018 by Lauren Gilley

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't at least heard of Dracula. Whether they've read the book, watched one of the many film depictions, or have caught brief snatches of legends amidst Halloween-time documentaries, it's a familiar name in pop culture, and the literary canon. But, and perhaps Bram Stoker's novel is to blame, so often the Dracula we see in media is a heavily fictionalized depiction; a blood-sucking character straight from nightmare that shares very little with the real man himself. 

He was always going to be a part of my paranormal series - because how could he not be? I had a vague sense of who he was, and what he was famous - or infamous - for, and a headful of stark imagery: namely the "Forest of the Impaled." But it wasn't until I began researching and story-mapping in earnest that a heretofore unheard of, for me anyway, image of Vlad Dracula began to coalesce. Monster? Warlord? Fiend?

Or the product of a violent age and a tumultuous childhood? 

These aren't questions I have set out to answer. Rather, it's been my aim to take bald fact, and piece together an emotional framework for a character all too often reduced to a bloodthirsty beast in Western textbooks and fiction. I think he's fascinating, and I leave it up to my readers to decide whether they love or loathe him.  

In Fiction

If you've read Stoker's Dracula, then you are familiar with a certain decadent red velvet imagery. Dark, candlelit castles, musty coffins, lightning flickering above the jagged peaks of the Borgo Pass. Dracula - Count Dracula, here - is presented, on the surface, as a monstrous drinker of blood with unhealthy appetites for young, virginal women. But look beyond the surface, and the novel serves as a darkly comedic commentary on the way women's sexuality was, and often still is, treated as a sort of affliction, casting the woman in the role of a damsel who needs saving by "virtuous" men. Is Dracula the villain? Or are Harker and Van Helsing? It's a fascinating, often fun debate. 

In film, Dracula is a more overt threat: blood- and sex-crazed, depraved, bent on killing or drinking everyone in his path. Dressed in capes and pointed collars, mesmerizing innocents with his hypnotic power, he is a demon that needs killing. The most accurate portrayal remains that of the Luke Evans film Dracula Untold. While it isn't a one-to-one factual comparison of Vlad's real life, and Evans plays him with the kind of tortured responsibility that makes the audience root for him more than they would the real Vlad, most likely, it does a great job of introducing some history rarely told in the West: namely, that Vlad was a prince ruling over a vassal state of the vast and powerful Ottoman Empire, and that he staged a resistance to Mehmet the Conqueror's advancing forces. I love the costuming, the rich visuals for the janissary troops, and I especially love that Vlad is, accurately, portrayed as a skilled warrior, rather than a cape-wearing fop who preys upon young girls. 

While the long and oftentimes unbelievable story of Vlad doesn't usually find its way to the screen, it's nevertheless a story made for Hollywood. 

In Reality 

Historical texts treat him strangely. Though they often talk of his coldness, his unfeeling brutality, and ponder the reasons for his thirst for violence, his early years make it abundantly clear that Vlad was only cold outwardly; that he nurtured an unrelenting rage that, despite the hardening of battle and hardship, never flagged in all his years. For me, the compelling aspect of his character is his motivation: while there have always been leaders looking for wealth, for glory, for power; kings who wanted empires, kings who could never satisfy their tastes for women, Vlad had little interest in personal gain. All evidence points to him having two main goals: avenging his father's death, and reclaiming autonomy for Wallachia. 

He is known for his violence, and he was violent. Violent on a scale that was staggering, when you imagine all those prisoners of war impaled on stakes and planted along the road. The Forest of the Impaled. But for context, it was a violent age: an age in which naval battles were won with Greek fire; in which impalement and beheadings and flayings and all sorts of hideous tortures were commonplace among the rulers of every nation. It was an age of butchery. Before Vlad was impaling captives, his Ottoman captors were doing it; doubtless he learned the art as a boy at the Ottoman court, where he was held as a political hostage until he was seventeen. 

A violent man in a violent century, most likely talked about to this day because he accomplished something impossible. Something you'll read about in Dragon Slayer, and which I'll talk about in greater detail after the book is out. 

In MY Fiction

I've never written a character like Vlad. I took the emotionless, bare bones facts of his life, and built an emotional journey around that. I almost regret to admit that, like so many before me, I've made my version of Vlad a vampire. It's my great hope that a Romanian reader who might stumble upon the book will think my portrayal respectful. He's a vampire, yes, but that is most definitely not his most important feature. Before that, he is a son, a brother, a prince, a hostage, a knight; a brilliant, though rebellious student with a head for languages, and an inventive tactician. He is so incredibly intense. Being inside his head is a bit staggering. Where other characters would war with themselves over issues of morality, Vlad is very concise; he isn't brutal for the joy of it, but resolute in his insistence that certain people need to be killed, and that the right messages need to be sent to his enemies. 

Vlad is in no way a romantic lead. He is not a bad boy, and he is not even a little bit charming. Though I've always tried to write my male characters as complex, human individuals, I don't know that I've managed. I started with imagery, and worked to shape a person. In this instance, with Vlad - with all the characters in this series -  they are people first and imagery second. You can read Vlad's story, and Val's story, too, without the burden of thinking "this sort of character should act this way." They just are. 

Up to this point in the series, Vlad is...not a good guy. I don't know that the glimpses of his past in DS will soften anyone's impression. I always say that I don't set out to write heroes, or to ever excuse any character's horrific behavior, and that holds true now. But I think Vlad's story is fascinating. And he is an integral piece of the puzzle that is this series, and the overarching storyline that will eventually connect all the characters; they're being drawn to a big showdown, and they're going to need all the help they can get, even from the man history calls "The Impaler."