Dracula – as he is perceived today – is a fictitious character whose name derives from the appellation given to Vlad Tepes, the ruler of Wallachia from 1456-1462 and 1476, and who, for largely political reasons, was depicted by some historians of that time as a blood-thirsty ruthless despot. Stoker ‟ s character, Count Dracula, first appeared in the novel“ Dracula”, published in England in 1897, by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. But the name“ Dracula”, far from being a frightening term, derives from the Crusader Order of the Dragon with which Order both Vlad Tepes and his father had been associated. The rest of the Dracula myth derives from the legends and popular beliefs in ghosts and vampires prevalent throughout Transylvania.
Stoker ‟ s Count Dracula is a centuries-old vampire, sorcerer, and Transylvanian nobleman, who claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains. In his conversations with the character Jonathan Harker, Dracula reveals himself as intensely proud of his boyar culture with a yearning for memories of his past. Count Dracula appears to have studied the black arts at the Academy of Scholomance in the Carpathian Mountains, near the town of Sibiu( then known as Hermannstadt). While Stoker named his Transylvanian Count
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“ Dracula”, he was careful not to suggest an actual link to the historical character of Vlad Tepes. While Stoker ‟ s character Van Helsing muses as to whether Count Dracula might be the Voivode Dracula, he obviously is not since Count Dracula of Transylvania is plainly not Prince Vlad Tepes of Wallachia and Stoker was disinclined at all to make his character a real person of historic significance. In the villages near Bran, there is a belief in the existence of evil spirits called ghosts or“ steregoi”( a variant of“ strigoi”). Until half a century ago, it was believed that there existed certain living people –
“ strigoi” – who were leading a normal life during the day but at night, during their sleep, their souls left their bodies and haunted the village tormenting people in their sleep. These evil spirits haunt their prey from midnight until the first cockcrow, when their power to harm people faded.“ The undead [ i. e., ghosts, vampires ] suffer from the curse of immortality,” writes Stoker,“ they pass from one period to another, multiplying their victims, augmenting the evil in the world …” The Dracula character derives from these local myths.