The very first appearance of "Count Dracula" is in Bram Stoker's novel DRACULA (1897). But Stoker did not make up the name "Dracula". There was a Dracula in the 15th century: Vlad the Impaler. Stoker didn't know much about him (at least I don't think he did) but he came across his name in a book he was researching entitled AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPALITIES OF WALLACHIA AND MOLDAVIA (1820). This book has a very short section on a "Voivode Dracula" who fought against the Turks. What attracted Stoker to the name "Dracula" was a footnote by Wilkinson which stated that "Dracula in the Wallachian language means devil". Not quite accurate, but that is what Stoker saw and copied into his notes. He was originally going to call his vampire "Count Wampyr" but changed it to "Count Dracula." This change is clearly made in Stoker's own notes for DRACULA which are located at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia.

The real Dracula (about whom we know much more than Stoker ever did) was NOT a Count, nor was he a vampire (or ever associated with vampires). The two Draculas have become greatly confused in many people's minds. It is my contention that Stoker was not, as many think, inspired by accounts of Vlad the Impaler to create the character of Count Dracula. There is no evidence for that view. I explore this fully in Chapter 5 of my book DRACULA: SENSE & NONSENSE. {See CREDITS page] Count Dracula, of course, was not the first vampire. Vampires had existed in folklore and legend for hundreds of years, back to ancient times. Stoker came across some information about vampire beliefs in Transylvania which he used in the novel. He was also familiar with earlier vampire literature written in English during the 19th century.

In spite of the attention paid to Vlad by historians both in Romania and the West, he is still to some extent an enigma. Even the name by which he is called is a matter of disagreement. While there is ample evidence that he himself used the sobriquet "Dracula" (or variations thereof) and was referred to as such in several 15th and 16th century sources, many Romanian historians still insist on using the name "Tepes" (meaning "Impaler"), a hardly flattering nickname first assigned to him by Turkish chroniclers. Historians attempting to reconstruct his life have had to sift through numerous printed accounts of his atrocities (many of which are clearly biased) as well as equally biased Romanian oral narratives and legends that paint him as a heroic patriot. There are also conflicting versions about key events, most notably how he was killed and where his remains are buried. But one fact does emerge from all of this material. Whatever Vlad might have been, nowhere is it stated that he was (or was believed to have been) a vampire. That association is clearly the result of the fact that Bram Stoker decided to appropriate the name "Dracula" for his villainous Count - much to the chagrin of many Romanians who see the novel as a denigration of one of their national heroes.

But this raises a key question. To what extent did Bram Stoker actually base his Count Dracula on Vlad the Impaler? Although for many people today the two have become almost synonymous, the nature of the connection is highly speculative. There is no longer any doubt where Stoker found the name "Dracula". We know from his working papers (housed at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia) that by March 1890 he had already started work on the novel, and had even selected a name for his vampire - Count Wampyr. We also know that, in the summer of the same year while vacationing at Whitby, he came across the name "Dracula" in a book that he borrowed from the Whitby Public Library. William Wilkinson's An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) contains a few brief references to a "Voivode Dracula" (never referred to as Vlad) who crossed the Danube and attacked Turkish troops. But what seems to have attracted Stoker was a footnote in which Wilkinson states that "Dracula in Wallachian language means Devil." Stoker supplemented this with scraps of Romanian history from other sources (which he carefully listed in his notes) and fleshed out a history for his Count Dracula. Wilkinson is Stoker's only known source for information on the historical namesake. Everything else is speculation.

And there is plenty, some of it rather farfetched. For example, it has been suggested that Stoker drew the concept of the staking of a vampire from his knowledge of Vlad's penchant for impaling his enemies on stakes; that Renfield's fondness for insects and small animals is a reenactment of Vlad's habit of torturing small animals while he was held prisoner in Hungary; or that Count Dracula is repelled by holy symbols because Vlad betrayed the Orthodox Church by converting to Roman Catholicism. Such speculation has arisen from a basic assumption (yet to be proved conclusively) that Stoker knew much more about Vlad than what he read in Wilkinson; that his other major sources were the Hungarian professor Arminius Vambery, and his own readings in the British Museum (both of which are indirectly alluded to in the novel).

Much has been written of what Stoker may have learned from Vambery. Claims have been made that Vambery supplied Stoker with information on Transylvania, vampire lore, and Vlad himself; some suggest that Vambery may even have introduced Stoker to some of the 15th century materials about Vlad. But all of this is speculation based on circumstantial evidence. We do know that the two met at least twice. While we do have a record of these meetings (Stoker refers to both in his 1906 book, Reminiscences of Henry Irving), there is nothing to indicate that the conversation included Vlad, vampires, or even Transylvania. Furthermore, there is no record of any other correspondence between Stoker and Vambery, nor is Vambery mentioned in Stoker's notes for Dracula. As for the theory that what Van Helsing in the novel learns from Arminius (generally seen as a tribute to Vambery) parallels what Stoker himself gleaned from Vambery, just about every scrap of this material can readily be traced to Stoker's known sources.

While Stoker did conduct some research at the British Museum, there is no evidence to indicate that he discovered further material about the historical Dracula. Much speculation surrounds the possibility that he may have gained access to one of the 15th century German pamphlets about Vlad the Impaler with a woodcut portrait accompanied by the caption "A wondrous and frightening story about a great bloodthirsty berserker called Dracula". This has led some to conclude that Stoker's physical description of Count Dracula is actually based on this portrait of Vlad. But again, the concrete evidence just is not there. It is much more likely that Stoker drew the description of Count Dracula from earlier villains in Gothic literature, or even from his own employer, Henry Irving.

Count Dracula, as Van Helsing tells us, "must have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk". Indeed he was! But it is significant that nowhere in Stoker's novel is Dracula referred to as "Vlad", nor is there any reference to Vlad's famous atrocities, in particular his use of impalement as his favorite means of execution. Why would Stoker - a writer who meticulously included detail after detail (some very insignificant and obscure) from his known sources - ignore something that would have added so much to his delineation of his villain? Either he knew more and chose not to use it, or he used what he knew. Pending much more concrete evidence than has to date been unearthed, I would accept the latter. All we know for certain is that Stoker found the name "Dracula" in Wilkinson, obviously liked it, and decided to use it.

The fusing of fact and fiction, while of questionable merit in reconstructing history, is a superb tool in the hands of an imaginative writer. As we today, unlike Stoker, know much more about Vlad the Impaler (thanks primarily to the work of Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally), it is hardly surprising that the Count and the Voivode have merged. The most noted occurrence in film is in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 rendition Bram Stokers' Dracula, though a connection between the vampire Count and his historical namesake had been made almost 20 years earlier in the Dan Curtis production of Dracula with Jack Palance. Examples of the fusion in fiction are numerous, including such novels as Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron (by Kim Newman), Children of the Night (Dan Simmons), the trilogy Dracula Lives! (Peter Tremayne), Drakulya (by Earl Lee) and this present trilogy ["The Diaries of the Family Dracul" by Jeanne Kalogridis (1997)]. Fiction has made Vlad what he never was in life - a vampire - and has thus granted him, like his fictional counterpart, immortality.