Vlad spent his childhood in Sighisoara, was taken hostage by the Turks, then went to his uncle in Moldavia, and to the Hungarian regent's court Iancu de Hunedoara, a Romanian nobleman (whose daughter Vlad later married) becoming prince of Wallachia on August 22,1456. Known as one of the most dreaded enemies of the Ottoman Empire, Vlad Dracula started organizing the state, the army, the law, applying death penalty by impaling all those he considered enemies. highwaymen, robbers, beggars, cunning priests, treacherous noblemen, usurper Saxons, who tried to replace him either by his cousin Dan the Young or by his natural brother Vlad the Monk. The Ottoman historians nicknamed him Vlad Tepes, as he came to be known in Romanian historiography, but he used to sign with his father's name, Dracula. This is testified in Bucharest's first documentary mentioning, dated September 20, 1459 and in the portrait of Odhsenbach Stambuch from Stuttgart. Arrested by his coming bother-in-law, Matei Corvin, because of a treacherous malevolent, Vlad Tepes spent more than ten years in prison, at Visegrad near Buda. Back to the throne in 1476 with the help of Stephen the Great, prince of Moldavia, of the Senate of the Republic of Venice and of the pope Sixt 4th, Vlad resumes his fight against the Ottomans but towards the end of the same year he is killed at Snagov by Laiota Basarab who followed him to the throne of Wallachia. His tumultuous life as well as the harshness of his punishments entered long lasting legends that were immediately spread all over Europe, first in Romanian and Slavonic and then in German, the latter being the most exaggerated.

Nevertheless, at the end of the l9th century when Bram Stoker from Dublin had published his novel "Dracula", few of his readers knew that he was referring to a historical character. The author was also a stage director, member in the Golden Down parapsychologic association in London and a passionate researcher of Irish and Hindoo vampirism. His novel, published in millions of copies, has as its main hero a vampire Szekler count, named Dracula. The action develops against a Transylvanian background about which the author himself says: "I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool". An obstacle to correctly understanding the facts was that the stories about Dracula were going around in different languages: German, Romanian, Hungarian, Paleoslavonic, Greek, Turkish and in different communities that had little in common. Beyond imagination and fancy Vlad Tepes lived in a troubled and insecure, cruel and unpredictable time when the same deeds could make anyone either a hero and a political genius or a monster.

Those were times when diplomacy and military strategy were not enough. Some of his contemporaries or successors preferred acceptance. He, and not only he, if we are to think of Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great) for instance, often resorted to cruel acts. There is no doubt about one thing: For everything he did - and they were not trifles - Vlad Tepes deserves by all means his somehow foredoomed name Dracula. His cruelty wasn't accidental.

To get a picture of those times here are some more facts. From the South, the Otoman invasions were more and more frequent and impetuous. In the North-East, Stefan cel Mare of Moldavia, with whom Dracula had shared some of his youth at the Governor of Hungary's court, the Transylvanian Iancu de Hunedoara, wasn't too tolerant either, especially in times of war. In the North there was the country of Transylvania. To get into it, the only way to escape from the Otomans, it was necessary tofirst get through the "sieve" of the Transylvanian Saxons who were most of the time wavering and ready to desert to the enemy even when the advantages were merely of a temporary nature. And lastly, in Budapest, the ambitious and proud King Matei Corvin, Romanian by birth, was unpredictable and willing to replace the promised help by a dark prison. Dracula enjoyed them all, more or less. In fact, his malefic reputation is mostly due to the afore-mentioned Transylvanian Saxons whom he punished every time he found them guilty of treason and hypocrisy. Their hate for the Romanian ruler was as great as the latter's cruelty. It was then that the first stories appeared about the ruthless vampire ruling over the Carpathians whose tempestuous and righteous manner was not to those merchants' taste.

In order to create a more vivid image of Dracula, next to the old city of Poienari in the village of Arefu round a campfire, the descendants of Dracula's knights tell stories inherited from their ancestors about the dreaded prince. At Sighisoara, the best-preserved 15th century city, the very pavement stones remind us of Dracula's childhood. The tourist may have dinner at his house. Not far from there is the place where he used to raise the infamy pillar and the gallows scaffolding to punish the malefactors. In addition, for the traveler's more comprehensive image of the epoch, they set up a witch trial very common in Transylvania up to the 18 th century.