How old is count dracula

Vlad Tepes lived in Sighisoara the first four years of his life. This is why Dan made up his mind that the Dracula amusement park must go there.

In the autumn of , the minister displayed his elaborate plans to potential investors in a glossy page brochure. Now, critics said, the Dracula scheme would cause even more injury. A dapper, year-old engineer, the outspoken Danesan was convinced that Dracula would bring thousands of jobs to town. Maybe not everyone. Dorothy Tarrant, an American scholar who has worked in Sighisoara for years, said she feared that the park would become a magnet for cultists.

The place gets mobbed by young people with Satanic motifs, who are drinking and smoking pot and sleeping in the streets. Of course what many protesters feared was not just the park but the 21st century itself. Like it or not, modern-style capitalism will soon come barreling into Transylvania, and with it will come not only jobs, investments and opportunity, but also flash, tinsel and trash.

How long will it be before Sighisoara takes on the carny-town atmosphere of souvenir shops, cotton candy and tour buses? How soon before the local kids are gorging on vampireburgers and greasy French fries, or maybe cruising those quaint cobblestoned lanes for drugs?

Those were the kinds of anguished questions being asked not only in Sighisoara but worldwide, wherever aesthetes considered the matter. In November, Dan announced on national TV that Sighisoara would be spared after all, and he followed up in February by revealing that the town of Snagov, just north of the Bucharest airport, was now his choice as the park site. Groundbreaking is planned for May. The developers had lost; Transylvania had won. The magnificent 16thcentury church where Vlad Tepes is supposedly buried is on a nearby island in SnagovLake.

Small pensions all around Romania are terrific bargains. Dracula is more than years old and still alive! Of course, almost everybody has heard about this Nosferatu: through movies featuring Max Schreck, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee or Gary Oldman; in several books, including the recent Vampire Chronicles of Anne Rice, or even in bedtime stories told to us in our childhood.

We all have an idea of who or what the Count is. However, on the other hand, Vlad Tepes Dracula , the historical figure who inspired Bram Stoker's novel, is definitely less well-known. Vlad Tepes was born in December in the fortress of Sighisoara, Romania. Vlad's father, governor of Transylvania, had been inducted into the Order of the Dragon about one year before.

The order — which could be compared to the Knights of the Hospital of St. John or even to the Teutonic Order of Knights — was a semi-military and religious society, originally created in by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli.

The main goal of such a secret fraternal order of knights was to protect the interests of Christianity and to crusade against the Turks. The boyars of Romania associated the dragon with the Devil and decided to call Vlad's father "Dracul," which in the Romanian language means "Devil;" "Dracula" is a diminutive, meaning "the son of the Devil. Vlad followed his father and lived six years at the princely court. Vlad was held there until This Turkish captivity surely played an important role in Dracula's upbringing; it must be at this period that he adopted a very pessimistic view of life and learned the Turkish method of impalement on stakes.

The Turks set Vlad free after informing him of his father's assassination in He also learned about his older brother's death and how he had been tortured and buried alive by the boyars of Targoviste. When he was 17 years old, Vlad Tepes Dracula , supported by a force of Turkish cavalry and a contingent of troops lent to him by Pasha Mustafa Hassan, made his first major move toward seizing the Walachian throne. Vlad became the ruler of Walachia in July of During his six-year reign, he committed many cruelties, hence establishing his controversial reputation.

His first major act of revenge was aimed at the boyars of Targoviste for not being loyal to his father. On Easter Sunday of what we believe to be , he arrested all the boyar families who had participated at 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 no one was permitted to rest until they reached their destination. Dracula then ordered the boyars to build him a fortress on the ruins of an older outpost overlooking the Arges River. Many died in the process. Dracula, therefore, succeeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies. What is left of the building today is identified as Poenari Fortress Cetatea Poenari.

Vlad Tepes adopted the method of impaling criminals and enemies and raising them aloft in the town square for all to see. Almost any crime, from lying and stealing to killing, could be punished by impalement. Being so confident in the effectiveness of his law, Dracula placed a golden cup on display in the central square of Targoviste. The cup could be used by thirsty travelers, but had to remain on the square. According to the available historical sources, it was never stolen and remained entirely unmolested throughout Vlad's reign.

Crime and corruption ceased; commerce and culture thrived, and many Romanians to this day view Vlad Tepes as a hero for his fierce insistence on honesty and order. It's worth mentioning that most written sources regarding his reign are based on the numerous propagandistic pamphlets spread by the Germans with the help of their new invention, the printing press.

In the beginning of , Vlad launched a campaign against the Turks along the Danube River. It was quite risky, the military force of Sultan Mehmed II being by far more powerful than the Walachian army. However, during the winter of , Vlad was very successful and managed to gain several victories. To punish Dracula, the Sultan decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Walachia.

His other goal was to transform this land into a Turkish province. He entered Walachia with an army three times larger than Dracula's. Finding himself without allies and forced to retreat towards Targoviste, Vlad burned his own villages and poisoned the wells along the way, so that the Turkish army would find nothing to eat or drink.

Moreover, when the Sultan, exhausted, finally reached the capital city, he was confronted by a most gruesome sight: hundreds of stakes held the remaining carcasses of Turkish captives, a horror scene which was ultimately nicknamed the "Forest of the Impaled.

The scene had a strong effect on Mehmed's most stout-hearted officers, and the Sultan, tired and hungry, decided to withdraw it is worth mentioning that even Victor Hugo, in his Legende des Siecles, recalls this particular incident.

Nevertheless, following his retreat from Walachian territory, Mehmed encouraged and supported Vlad's younger brother, Radu, to take the Walachian throne. According to legend, this is when Dracula's wife, in order to escape capture, committed suicide by hurling herself from the upper battlements, her body falling down the precipice into the river below, a scene exploited by Francis Ford Coppola's production. Vlad, who was definitely not the kind of man to kill himself, managed to escape the siege of his fortress by using a secret passage into the mountain.

He was, however, assassinated toward the end of December The only real link between the historical Dracula and the modern literary myth of the vampire is the novel.

Why does Jonathan Harker first travel to Transylvania? Where do Jonathan Harker and Mina get married? Who gives Lucy blood transfusions? Why does Holmwood stab Lucy with the stake? Who is killed in the final confrontation with Dracula? Characters Character List. Count Dracula A centuries-old vampire and Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula inhabits a crumbling castle in the Carpathian Mountains. Read an in-depth analysis of Count Dracula. Van Helsing A Dutch professor, described by his former pupil Dr.

Read an in-depth analysis of Van Helsing. Jonathan Harker A solicitor, or lawyer, whose firm sends him to Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction with Dracula.