Bassarab Vlad Drakul
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Introduction
(Also Known as "Count Dracula".)
The sole survivor of the Bassarab dynasty of Walachia, which is now a province of Roumania. For many centuries, this country of the Vlach people was torn by wars and invasions until the great warrior Ralph the Black consolidated Walachia as a nation,
and established the Bassarabs as the ruling family. Reigning under such titles a Vlad I, Vlad II, Vlad III, and Vlad IV, the Bassarabs still had to fight off invasions by Mongols, Turks, and Hungarians, however, and these perpetual wars gave the Bassarabs an unquenchable lust for Blood.
One was so horrifyingly cruel that he became known as Vlad Dracul or Drakul, meaning either 'dragon' or ' devil'. The Walachians said that a man so appallingly evil must have been sired by Satan or a dragon. Also, he bore all the marks of Vampirism and seemed to flourish on human blood.
His successors, Vlad Tapes and Vlad Tsepesh, were equally cruel. Vlad Tapes, known as "The Impaler", liked to have prisoners of war impaled on pointed staked, and injoyed eating his dinner in front of a gruop of impaled prisoners grouning away their lives. In between wars, he indulged this taste for torture by having Walachian men, women, and even children impaled for his pleasure.
Slowly the nation became more civilised and the Bassarabs presented the appearance of learned and cultured aristocrats-although the Turks drowned one of them as the result of a family intrique. By 1658 the dynasty seemed to end with the death of Constantine Bassarab, but there was one survivor or the tinted line.
He was another Vlad Drakul, who had bought a great estste in Transylvania. It is uncertain whether he was a Bassarab descendent or sinply a continuing reincernation of the original Vlad Drakul and of Vlad Tapes and Tsepesh-in fact a vampire maintaining immortalilty by regular engorgenment with human life essences.
This Vlad Drakul lived in Transylvania for about three centuries, but in the 1890s the peasants of his estate were almost exhausted by his continaous blood tax. He decided he must venture further afield, asnd arranged with a firm of London estate agents to buy property in England.
They sent a young representative, Jonathan Harker, to Drakul's castle in Transylvania in order to negotiate the deal. He saw Drakul (whom he named 'Count Dracula') as a tall gaunt old man with sharp teeth, pointed ears, hair in the plam of his hands, and a foul breath-all the symptoms of vampirism. One of Drakul's three female companions manifested herself in Harker's bedchamber, and in a feast of fresh young English blood.
In a complex series of events, Drakul made his way to England and attached himself to a young Lady named Lucy Westenra. After
draining her blood he turned to Harker's young wife Mina, but was eventually foiled by Harker and a group of friends. They chased him back to Transylvania, where Harker cut his throat and another man stabbed him through his heart. These are not, however, the prescribed methods of dealing with vampirism, and there can be little doubt that the last survivor of the Bassarabs still prowls in search of Humen Blood..
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