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Full articles here:Known as the historical model of Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler is considered a national hero in his native country - Romania. Vlad III Dracula is a Romanian national symbol of fight for independence against ottomans.
Vlad Tepes (spelled Tepes, pronounced tse-pesh) is a fifteenth century voivode or prince of Wallachia of the princely House of Basarab. Wallachia is a province of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria.
Vlad the Impaler was born in November or December 1431, in the fortress of Sighisoara, Romania. His father, Vlad Dracul, at that time appointed military governor of Transylvania by the emperor Sigismund, had been inducted into the Order of the Dragon about one year before. The order was a semimilitary and religious society, originally created in 1387 by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli.
Its emblem was a dragon, wings extended, hanging on a cross. The dragon was the symbol of the devil and consequently and alternate meaning of 'drac' (the devil) was dragon. The main goals of such a secret fraternal order of knights was mainly to protect the interests of Catholicism, and to crusade against the Turks. This order provides an explanation for the name "Dracula;" "Dracul," in Romanian language, means "Dragon", and the boyars of Romania, who knew of Vlad the Impaler' father induction into the Order of the Dragon, decided to call him "Dracul." "Dracula," a diminutive which means "the son of Dracul," was a surname to be used ultimately by Vlad the Impaler.
The first thing he had done as the prince of Wallachia was trying to seek revenge for his father and his brother deaths. On Easter Sunday of what we believe to be 1459, he arrested all the boyar families who had participated to the princely feast. He impaled the older ones on stakes while forcing the others to march from the capital to the town of Poenari. This fifty-mile trek was quite grueling, and those who survived were not permitted to rest until they reached destination. Vlad the Impaler then ordered them to build him a fortress on the ruins of an older outpost overlooking the Arges river. Many died in the process, and Dracula therefore succeeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies. What is left today of the building is identified as Castle Dracula.
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On the other hand, he made donations to various churches and monasteries, one such place being the monastary at Lake Snagov where he is supposed to have been buried, he tried to reduce the economic role of the nobility and increase the rights of peasantry, reinforced some castles, like the one at Poienari, where he also had a personal house built nearby.
Romanian attitudes
Romanian folklore and poetry, on the other hand, paints Vlad Ţepeş as a hero. His favorite weapon being the stake, coupled with his reputation in his native country as a man who stood up to both foreign and domestic enemies, gives him the virtual opposite symbolism of Stoker's vampire. In Romania, he is considered one of the greatest leaders in the country's history, and was voted one of "100 Greatest Romanians" in the "Mari Români" television series aired in 2006.
A contemporary portrait of Vlad III, rediscovered by Romanian historians in the late 19th century, had been featured in the gallery of horrors at Innsbruck's Ambras Castle. However, this original has been lost to history, but a larger copy, painted anonymously in the latter half of the sixteenth century, now hangs in the same gallery[1][2]. This copy, unlike the all the cryptoportraits contemporary with Vlad III, seems to have given him a Hapsburg lip, although he was not a member of the Hapsburg lineage.
His image in modern Romanian culture has been established in reaction to foreign perceptions: while Stoker's book did a lot to generate outrage with nationalists, it is the last part of a rather popular previous poem by Mihai Eminescu, "Scrisoarea a III-a", that helped turn Vlad's image into modern legend, by having him stand as a figure to contrast with presumed social decay under the Phanariotes and the political scene of the 19th century (even suggesting that Vlad's violent methods be applied as a cure). This judgment was in tune with the ideology of the inward-looking regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu, although the identification did little justice to Eminescu's personal beliefs.
All accounts of his life describe him as ruthless, but only the ones originating from his Saxon detractors paint him as sadistic or insane. These pamphlets continued to be published long after his death, though usually for lurid entertainment rather than propaganda purposes. It has largely been forgotten until recently that his tenacious efforts against the Ottoman Empire won him many staunch supporters in his lifetime, not just in modern day Romania but in the Kingdom of Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Venice, and even the Holy See, not to take into account Balkan countries. A Hungarian court chronicler reported that King Matthias "had acted in opposition to general opinion" in Hungary when he had Dracula imprisoned, and this played a considerable part in Matthias reversing his unpopular decision. During his time as a "distinguished prisoner" before being fully pardoned and allowed to reconquer Wallachia, Vlad was hailed as a Christian hero by visitors from all over Europe.
http://www.draculas.info/vlad_iii_dracula/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_III_the_Impaler
monastery of Snagov-The Impaler's grave
Dracula's Castle-Poienari
Catacombs in Bran Castle(I've been trhough here)
Germanic Illustration on Vlad the Impaler:
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