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Avapithecus — Vlad the Impaler
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Published: 2025-10-07 14:42:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 13926; Favourites: 144; Downloads: 8
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Description
You fuckers have no idea how busy August was for me- I barreled through so many sheets of paper to get ahead of everything so that I could just spend my vacation visiting my parents in Georgia doing absolutely jack shit. It's a grueling time of year for me, but it was so worth it! Because now I'm back home in my beloved Indianapolis, and I'm so ready to hop back on the research train. It's time for the spooky season once again! 
Actually um… not that Dracula. Not yet. No, I mean the man who originally bore the title, and that's… also not who you think. “Dracul” is the title bestowed upon Vlad II of Wallachia in February 1431, when he was inducted into the Order of the Dragon. “Wow Ava that's a lot of proper nouns you've never talked about on this blog before” I know I know, I'm unfairly unfamiliar with the history of this corner of the world too. Let's take this one nugget of context at a time. The Order of the Dragon was a chivalric organization founded in 1408 by the King of Hungary (and future Holy Roman Emperor), Sigismund of Luxembourg. He was one of the few nobles who was able to walk away from the meat grinder that was the Battle of Nicopolis against the Ottoman Empire in 1396, and that was not taken as a sign of divine providence. The catastrophic loss was already in part the result of disloyal infighting amongst Sigismund's noblemen, and if you think the tragic loss of 15,000 soldiers is gonna be enough to convince wealthy men with powerful ambitions that hey, maybe the real victory was the friends we made along the way afterall, then I'd like to know which rock you've been living under this whole time so that I can crawl under there where it's safe and quiet myself.
The long, brutal slog to reasserting his authority culminated in the Battle of Dobor, wherein two hundred Bosnian nobles were slaughtered. Once literally no one was left to be disloyal to him, Sigismund established the Order of the Dragon in order to redirect the violence towards the unrelenting Ottoman conquest, symbolized here as “followers of the dragon”, whom Saint George was said to have slain. While I can't deny the Order's symbol of a dragon parodying an ouroboros by noosing itself with its own tail is pretty badass, the naming convention here a little wonky and really doesn't help the modern confusion about how the Romanian word for dragon, “dracul”, can also be used to mean “devil”, in fact this is the exclusive meaning of the word today. This has led a lot of people to interpret Vlad the Impaler's nickname “Dracula” to mean “son of the Devil”, which was used as a pun by his political opponents at the time, but is not how it was intended to be understood. I'm getting ahead of myself though. If we wanna get to Dracula, first we gotta briefly talk about his father.
Vlad II was a political hostage in the Sigismund's court, at the time a common practice to ensure young nobles grew up loyal to their allies. Upon his induction into the Order of the Dragon, Vlad was given both the epithet “Dracul” and a contentious appointment as Voivode of Wallachia. “Voivode” literally translates to “warlord” but is functionally interchangeable with “prince”. Wallachia meanwhile is one of three historical kingdoms which formed the territorial foundations of modern day Romania, the other two being Moldavia and the more famous Transylvania. Control of this region was fiercely competed for between Hungary and the Ottomans, and despite literally owing everything he had to Sigismund, as soon as that old codger dropped dead in 1437, Vlad turned straight to sucking Sultan Murad's Turkish delight. He even took advantage of a peasant uprising in Transylvania to help the Ottomans raid the weakened territory. To deal with this, Hungary appointed the war hero János Hunyadi as Voivode of Transylvania, and when it became evident that Hunyadi was a seasoned badass, Vlad flipped his allegiances again, to which the Ottomans were understandably like “dude, what the hell??” This, at last, is where the guy whose name is the title of this post comes in.
Vlad III was born in the city of Sighișoara in 1431, the second of four brothers, two of whom aren't all that important to today's story. Vlad's little brother Radu, however, will be a crucial chess piece, and it all began when the Ottomans called Vlad II to Gallipoli to hold him accountable for his treachery in 1442. Sentenced to imprisonment at Adrianople until 1444, the only way he could buy his way out of jail time was to leave Vlad III and Radu behind as political hostages in his stead. They had… different experiences in Ottoman custody, to say the least. Vlad was described as gangly, sickly (vampiric I suppose, for lack of a better word), and an insufferable angsty teen who constantly got them both whipped as punishment for their troubles. As for Radu, whose nickname was “the Handsome", his relationship with the Sultan was… complicated, to say the least. According to a Byzantine chronicler in the Ottoman court, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, the man who'd later win a reputation for being so unstoppable he was called “Mehmed the Conqueror" had a distasteful appetite for… younger boys. He describes an incident wherein Mehmed tried to force himself on Radu, and the preteen rightfully fought back by stabbing the older man with a dagger and hiding in a tree. Sadly, persistence eventually turned into submission, Radu figuratively and metaphorically whipped into becoming the Sultan's favorite “lover”. Some have hypothesized that Vlad may have had similar advances made on him, and that this is what inspired his later affinity for… you know… “death by pegging”, but execution by impalement was not unheard of in the Ottoman legal system. Vlad would've witnessed this form of punishment in its original literal form, and I really don't think we need to add disgusting headcanons to this poor kid's already tragic childhood.
Dear old dad was absolutely no fucking help. He joined Hunyadi's disastrous crusade against the Ottomans in Varna, knowing full damn well in his own words that his treachery “allowed my children to be butchered for the sake of the Christian peace”. The boys were too useful to Mehmed to kill for their father's crimes though. In 1447, Vlad II’s complete lack of loyalty had finally got him assassinated by Hunyadi's agents, and his eldest son Mircea was buried alive. This left Vlad III as his next legitimate heir, so Mehmed sent him back to Wallachia with a troop of Ottoman janissaries to defend his claim from Hunyadi's rival choice, Vladislav II. While militarily successful, Vlad had no support amongst the Wallachian nobility, and his power only lasted all of six months before he was overthrown and replaced. No one really knew what to do with him after that. Mehmed was more focused on noogying Constantinople, while Hunyadi didn't really care what happened to Vlad so long as he didn't try to usurp his puppets. Vlad was thus exiled into obscurity, stewing in a useless border patrol position in Moldavia, growing increasingly bitter about how everyone had abandoned him… and wondering if bathing in all of their blood would fill the dark, empty hole in his soul.
Tired of waiting for Vladislav to die of natural causes, Vlad strutted up to his fortress at Târgoviște and challenged him to single combat in 1456, the way all political disputes should be handled. Vlad slew Vladislav where he stood and reclaimed his father's title, but that of course wasn't enough. The noble boyars who had murdered his father and brother were still kicking. But hey hey hey, Vlad told them, I'm sure this is all a big misunderstanding. He invited 200 noblemen to a massive banquet for Easter 1457 to “discuss their differences”, which of course is Romanian for “ram a wooden spike up their asses and leave them like that to die for up to 3 days”. This is obviously where Vlad finally earns the name we all know him by today, Vlad Țepeș, meaning “Vlad the Impaler”, but oh don't worry you sick fucks, it gets worse. The boyars and their family members who were spared this gruesome fate were then dragged in chains to the ruins of Poenari Castle and forced to rebuild Vlad's new palace with their bare hands. Those who became unable to continue due to starvation and exhaustion were then also impaled, because nothing motivates people like a cartoon executioner ominously sharpening one end of a comedically large log.
In addition to being cruel, Vlad was also a steaming racist, because we gotta fill the douchebag checklist as quick as we can! Wallachia had a large population of German-speaking Saxons, mostly wealthy merchants whom Vlad perceived as in the way of his conquest of Transylvania. He sacked the Saxon town of Bistrița in 1457, then moved on to Brașov in 1459. According to German poet Michel Beheim, who wrote the unsubtly named The Story of a Bloodthirsty Madman called Dracula of Wallachia for the entertainment (I guess?) of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, the carnage at Brașov involved impaling (well no shit Sherlock), rounding up citizens to be boiled and/or skinned alive, forcing mothers to eat their own children, and dipping his bread in the blood of his victims, though apparently that last one is a bit of a lost translation, more accurately expressed in English as “washing his hands in blood”, which I'd argue is even more gruesome. We should be careful about Beheim though, as he was very clearly writing for an established political enemy of Vlad and probably embellished a shit load of atrocities. At the same time though, much like Rodrigo Borgia and the chestnut story, I think there is a certain level of “I mean… come on” we have to consider here, now isn't there? Are we really gonna look each other in the eye and act like a man whose nickname is “the Impaler” wasn't all that bad?
Now Vlad had become so preoccupied with slaughtering his own people that it kinda slipped his mind that he was still technically an Ottoman vassal who was supposed to be paying tribute to Mehmed. Feeling an insufficient jingle in his wallet, Mehmed sent two lackeys, Thomas Katabolinos and Hamza Bey, to Wallachia in 1460 to arrest Vlad. Vlad however pulled an Uno Reverse card and (say it with me now!) impaled the envoys, making a point (ha) to position Hamza on the highest stake as a parody of his higher rank. I've seen this incident conflated with an anecdote by the Hungarian King's historian, Antonio Bonfini, where two Turkish envoys sent to Vlad refused to remove their turbans because that would've been a religious taboo, an understandable sentiment which Vlad agreed with by… nailing the turbans to their skulls. The relevant passage of Bonfini I saw quoted online makes no mention of Katabolinos and Hamza specifically though, and it would seem to contradict Chalkokondyles's version of events, so I think this might just be a bit of narrative confusion.
The end result was the same tho: Mehmed was pissed. Mehmed was Emperor of Rome now, and I cannot conceive of a higher insult. Oh actually, I kinda can. Because Vlad, trained in Quranic literacy during his boyhood captivity, proceeded to march to the ambush site at Giurgiu, in disguise, speaking fluent Turkish, and persuaded the janissaries to open the gates for him. As soon as the lock was thrown open, Vlad charged his army in and annihilated the Ottoman garrison. This was unacceptable, as clear a declaration of war as there ever was, and so Mehmed marched into Wallachia himself with several hundred thousand men to deal with this impudence. By June 1462, Mehmed was at the gates, with Vlad's long-since converted brother Radu by his side no less, of Târgoviște. Vlad knew he couldn't repulse them militarily, having only 30,000 men in his employ, many not even men yet. Instead, he tried to shatter Ottoman morale with a surprise night attack on the enemy camp on the 16th. His intent was to sneak his men in and make a beeline for the Sultan's tent, assassinating him and throwing the whole Turkish chain of command into confused panic. His information was faulty though, and the tent they attacked was actually that of viziers Mahmud and Ishak Pasha. Unable to locate Mehmed, Vlad retreated towards Târgoviște, and Mehmed gave chase. What Mehmed found when he reached Târgoviște though was a desolate wasteland, scorched to the ground and replanted with an entire forest of 20,000 impaled men, women, and children. Mehmed was stunned by this completely unnecessary display of emotionless cruelty, summarizing his decision to pull out of this accursed place by saying “it was not possible to deprive of his country a man who had done such great deeds, who had such a diabolical understanding of how to govern his realm and its people.”
Mehmed left the task of wrenching Wallachia out of Vlad's hands to Radu. While Vlad spanked his brother on the battlefield twice, Radu's sales pitch of “hey everyone, support my throne because I don't put babies on spikes!” was a bit too fucking difficult to reject. Mass defections amongst Vlad's ranks forced him to retreat into the Carpathians, from where he had hoped to convince King Mattias Corvinus of Hungary to send back up. Corvinus had no interest in picking a fight with the Ottomans, however, even though the Pope and Venice were breathing down his neck about it. In order to kill two birds with one stone, Corvinus had letters written with Vlad's forged signature claiming that he was secretly working with the Ottomans to overthrow the Kingdom of Hungary in exchange for keeping the Wallachian throne. On this justification, Vlad was imprisoned for the next fourteen years, and Radu was free to reign as the new Muslim ruler of Wallachia in his stead, finally bringing a semblance of peace and unity to the region.
Unfortunately, as benevolent as Radu was, he wasn't able to back it up with political strength. In 1471, he got into a pissing match with Stephen III of Moldavia which weakened his hold over Wallachia. The boyars eventually side-stepped Radu entirely by electing Basarab the Old to usurp him in 1473. Radu tried to reclaim his throne multiple times, until syphilis took his life in 1475. This was an extremely precarious situation for Corvinus, as Basarab would maintain the peace with the Ottomans, and he'd cut Corvinus out of the deal to do so. Mehmed took the opportunity to invade Moldavia in 1476, and in his desperation, Corvinus released Vlad from prison to throw at the problem. Vlad, probably itching to shove a stick up a human's ass after having to suffice by skewing rodents in his cell for over a decade, laid waste to the countryside. Once Basarab was overthrown, Vlad turned all of his violent resources to ousting his oldest arch nemesis from his country once again. It would ultimately amount to nothing, though, as violence so often does. On January 10th, 1477, Stephen III of Moldavia drafted a letter confirming that Vlad's decapitated corpse was found amongst the rotting remnants of his ambushed army between Bucharest and Giurgiu, the Impaler's head sent off to Mehmed as a trophy. While his war crimes were at last staked through the heart, Vlad left behind an infamous legend which is still on the tongues of Romanians to this day, distasteful as I may view that. And, of course, across the planet there are still mortals trembling in their boots at the mere utterance of the cursed name “Dracula”, but that's a story we will get to in time…
Design notes, oh hell yeah, this Dracula fucks hard! See, all I needed was a week vacation to recalibrate and pump out a banger… battle with the summer heat and my scanner aside 
