Vlad

I talked about Val a couple weeks ago, so now it's time to talk about the other half of this epic brother battle, and that would be....

Vlad. 

To be perfectly honest, before I ever wrote a word of this series, Vlad was one of the elements that intimidated me the most. My mental picture of him was a rough sketch; a flash of a red-drenched movie set, a silhouette of a defiant man surrounded by the corpses of the impaled. 

Lovely, right?

Researching, digging deep into the story of his life, allayed my fears, though. Writing a historical figure felt daunting; but, historical figure though he may be, Vlad emerged from my studies as a flesh-and-blood man, who - while admittedly cruel and extreme - was someone whose reasoning I could follow. There's a point A, a point B, and a very wicked point C, but, given the century (the 15th), and the setting, and his experiences, Vlad went from unknowable boogeyman to the kind of character I write all the time: the endlessly, fascinating, badly traumatized, hard to love kind that make for truly excellent storytelling. Armed with reams of notes, I set out to write the real and true Dracula into my vampire epic with two main rules for myself:

One: tread as closely to the facts as possible while maintaining the integrity of the overall story.

And two: be on Vlad's side. 

My approach to historical fiction is this: the past is not the present, and in order to understand the thought processes of the past, we have to look back at history through a lens that, while critical, doesn't enforce current social norms and expectations on people who'd never even considered such things. We can judge the people of the past personally if we want, and we do just that, but from a writing perspective, you have to put yourself in that character's shoes. You have to present their world as they lived in it, without letting an overbearing author voice bleed through. This book, as with White Wolf, is a story about a group of people who lived in the fifteenth century; it's not a Lauren Gilley lecture on how problematic the times were. 

With Vlad, I knew that I had to try my best to get inside his brain; through his correspondence, and through knowledge of his adherence to Machiavellian philosophy, I needed to find a voice for him. To take conflicting reports, horror stories, old letters, alliances and grudges, and paint the reader a walking, talking, speaking portrait of a man reviled by a large portion of history. In my research, I learned that Vlad was incredibly intelligent; that he had a head for battle strategy, and a tongue for languages. He spoke Turkish so fluently that he once managed to pull off a Trojan Horse-style invasion of one of his father's old castles (a scene which appears in the book.) And he understood enough about medicine to use germ warfare against his enemy Mehmet the Conqueror during the campaign of 1462. 

My impression? Vlad was a smart, savage, suspicious, ruthless man grown out of a stolen boy who never forgave a grudge in his life. He was emotionally damaged by his and his brother's time as  hostages, but was patient and wily enough to wait for revenge. Who trusted rarely, ruled coldly, and who meted out a violence that he learned abroad, and perfected to something monstrous in his own palaces and holdfasts. Students of history could go back and forth about his monstrosity, but for my own part, for my own humble little fiction series, I decided that he wouldn't be a villain, and he isn't.

When we last left Val in Red Rooster, we left most of the audience hating Vlad. They might still hate him after this book is through, because Vlad doesn't change; like with Mercy and Michael, I don't believe in altering a character's personality or personal credo just to make him more palatable. But I hope some readers will feel a little more charitable toward him by the end. 

Dragon Slayer ended up being such a massive book because I wanted to tell the whole story. Originally, in early drafting stages, it was focused solely on Val, his past, and his modern love story. But I realized that, since the title of the series comes from both brothers, it had to be a story about both of them. How do two characters go from cute little boys to these legendary criminals feared by mankind? I had to show that story, I realized. This series is filled with so many characters I love and want to share with everyone, but at its heart, it's about these two boys; about their family, and the hurt it's inflicted. 

At the end of DS, we come to a close of what is more or less Act I of the play that is the Sons of Rome series. There are more books to come, definitely, and I'm working away now on Book Four. But at the end of book three, we see our characters in a positive, happy place, and we learn more about the Big Bad they're all going to have to face soon. (If you're wondering when to start the series, after Dragon Slayer is released would be a good place! White Wolf, Red Rooster, and Dragon Slayer introduce all our main players and propel them all into the adventures to come.)

All told, I now love writing in Vlad's voice. I don't know what that says about me! But he's a very direct and uncluttered person. Blunt to the point of rudeness. He's just so him, and so different from any character I've written before. You guys know I don't really like "alpha males," but that's Vlad, no doubt. 

***

Romulus paused just inside the heavy wooden doors, visibly rocking back on his heels. “Hello, nephew,” he said after a moment, and continued forward. He came to a lazy halt, a pace too close to Vlad’s throne for politeness. Smiled. “It’s good to see you again. To see you as a man.”

“You haven’t changed, though,” Vlad said. “Landless, wifeless, crownless. Just as always.”

Romulus laughed, loudly, his head thrown back, his eyes dancing when he leveled them on Vlad next. “Oh, Vlad, you’re charmingly terrible.” He grinned with all his teeth, positively beamed. But Vlad caught a whiff of disquiet; something unhappy in his scent. “I could have used you in the Rome of my day. So many lickspittles, all liars and traitors, but not you. You’re honest, even when you shouldn’t be. I like that. Insults are easier suffered than the knives of conspirators.”