Dracula: Some historical background

Vlad were a fifteenth century voivode or prince of Wallachia of the princely House of Basarab. Wallachia is one of three provinces of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria. Wallachia first emerged as a political entity during the late thirteenth century from the weltering confusion left behind in the Balkans as the East Roman Empire slowly crumbled.

The first prince of Wallachia was Basarab the Great (1310-1352), an ancestor of Dracula. Despite the splintering of the family into two rival clans some member of the House of Basarab continued to govern Wallachia from that time until well after the Ottomans reduced the principality to the status of a client state. Dracula was the last prince of Wallachia to retain any real measure of independence. In order to understand the life of Vlad Dracula it is first necessary to understand something about the nature of Wallachian society and politics.

The throne of Wallachia was hereditary but not by the law of primogeniture; the boyars or great nobles had the right to elect the voivode from among the various eligible members of the royal family. As with most elective onarchies during the Middle Ages the power of the central government tended to be dissipated among the nobility as various members of the ruling family vied for the throne.

Wallachian politics also tended to be very bloody. Assassination was a common means of eliminating rivals and many of the voivodes ended their lives violently and prematurely. By the late fifteenth century the House of Basarab had split into two rival clans; the descendants of Prince Dan and those of Prince Mircea the Old (Dracula's grandfather).

These two branches of the royal house were bitter rivals. Both Dracula and his father, Vlad II Dracul, murdered rivals from the Danesti upon reaching the throne. The second ascendant fact of fifteenth century Wallachian political life was the influence of powerful neighbors. In 1453 Constantinople and the last vestiges of the Byzantine or East Roman Empire, which had blocked the Islam's access to Europe for nearly one thousand years, succumbed to the armed might of the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mohammed the Conqueror. Long before the fall of the Imperial City the Ottomans had penetrated deep into the Balkans.

Dracula's grandfather, Mircea the Old, was forced to pay tribute to the sultan early in the fifteenth century. The Hungarian Kingdom to the north and west of Wallachia reached the zenith of its power during the fifteenth century and assumed Constantinople's ancient mantle as defender of Christendom. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the princes of Wallachia attempted to maintain a precarious independence by constantly shifting allegiances between these powerful neighbors.

Dracula ruled as Prince of Wallachia on three separate occasions. He first claimed the throne with Turkish support in 1448. On this occasion he ruled for only two months (November-October) before being driven out by a Danesti claimant supported by Hungary. Dracula dwelt in exile for several years before returning to Wallachia to kill the Danesti prince, Vladislav II, and reclaim the Wallachian throne with Hungarian support. Dracula's second regnal period stretched from 1456 to 1462. It was during this time that Dracula carried out his most famous military exploits against the Turks and also committed his most gruesome atrocities.