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its current occupant, Alexandru I. In late 1436 to 1437, Vlad Dracul assumed the throne and became Prince Vlad II. In 1447, Vlad and his eldest son Mircea, named for his grandfather, were murdered by an apparent assassination organized by their enemies the Hunyadi.

With the help of the Turkish army, Vlad Dracula, son of Prince Vlad II seized the Walcian throne. Throughout his reign, Dracula demonstrated cruelty beyond compare. Supposedly, in one instance of his cruelty, Dracula invited all the sick and poor of the community to a feast at his castle. After they ate their meal and toasted him for his generosity, Dracula asked them, "Would you like to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?" After an enthusiastic reply from the group, Dracula ordered the castle to be boarded up and burned with all of his guests inside. Afterwards, he claimed that his motive was so that "no one will be poor in my realm" (www.geocites.com/Athens/Aegea n/7545/Dracula.html).

It was also claimed that Dracula liked to set up a banquet table and dine while he watched people die. Apparently, his favorite form of execution was to impale them and watch them die slowly. Throughout his reign, it was said that Dracula had executed anywhere from forty thousand to over one hundred thousand people. After the executions, the corpses would be displayed for all the public to see as a reminder of what happened when a person disobeyed Prince Vlad Dracula.

In 1462, Dracula's sneak attack on the Turks backfired. Sultan of the Turks, Mehmed II retaliated against Dracula's attack by invading Walachia with an army three times the size of Dracula's. When the Sultan reached the capital of Walachia, Tirgoviste, he found what was known in history as "the Forest of the Impaled". On the outskirts of the city, over twenty thousand Turkish prisoners had been impaled on stakes and left to rot on the fields. Dracula's supporters abandoned him and joined forces with the Turks. Dracula's wife, after coming to the belief that her husband was dead, threw herself from their castle's tower and died.

But how does this historical character connect to the concept of vampirism? It was through the writings of the nineteenth century author Bram Stoker that the legends of Vlad Dracula became distorted. In the Dracula, written in 1897, Vlad Dracula was transformed into a man who was not only a tyrannical leader, but also a vampire. There is no evidence that proves that Vlad Dracula was a vampire. The idea is merely the work

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