Helloooooo everyone!
It's my turn on the Hunting Prince Dracula blog tour and in keeping on theme with last year's Stalking Jack the Ripper post, I will be giving a brief history of who Prince Dracula is. You can check out last year's blog post on Jack the Ripper here.
ABOUT
Title: Hunting Prince DraculaAuthor: Kerri Maniscalco
Series: Stalking Jack the Ripper #2
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Release Date: September 19th 2017
Goodreads Page
Synopsis:
In this hotly anticipated sequel to the haunting #1 bestseller Stalking Jack the Ripper, bizarre murders are discovered in the castle of Prince Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula. Could it be a copycat killer…or has the depraved prince been brought back to life?
Following the grief and horror of her discovery of Jack the Ripper’s true identity, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has no choice but to flee London and its memories. Together with the arrogant yet charming Thomas Cresswell, she journeys to the dark heart of Romania, home to one of Europe’s best schools of forensic medicine…and to another notorious killer, Vlad the Impaler, whose thirst for blood became legend.
But her life’s dream is soon tainted by blood-soaked discoveries in the halls of the school’s forbidding castle, and Audrey Rose is compelled to investigate the strangely familiar murders. What she finds brings all her terrifying fears to life once again.
(tw: blood, murder)
Vlad the Impaler
Vlad III Dracula was born in 1431 in Transylvania (now in Romania) and was the prince of Wallachia -- an area that is now also a part of Romania. The name of Dracula means "son of Dracul" in reference to Vlad's father's induction into the "Order of the Dragon" a group created by the Holy Roman Empire to protect Christian Europe from the invading Ottomans.
Of course with the nickname of Vlad the Impaler, he was most definitely not a peaceful man. After being deposed two months into his reign, Vlad fought for eight years to regain the throne. It was during this second reign that he gained his "Impaler" nickname. Vlad became known for impaling his enemies, both foreign and domestic, on stakes and leaving them to die. Most notably, in a battle in 1462, he retreated from a battlefield, leaving thousands impaled in his wake in order to deter the Ottomans from following.
While it is quite widely considered that Bram Stoker's Dracula was based off Vlad the Impaler, it has been argued that while Bram Stoker was influenced and inspired by the historical figure rather than having created a "supernatural version".
According to Collins in his paper on the validity of Vlad Tepes as the direct inspiration for the vampiric Dracula, the historical figure and the vampire are completely separate, with Vlad the Impaler having never been mentioned by name in the novel. Any real information that pertains to Vlad the Impaler is influenced heavily by An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldovia -- a history book written by William Wilkinson in 1820. Stoker interweaves the history drawn from this book with his own lore for Dracula.
The vampiric Dracula delves into his own family's history in the novel and mentions two separate Draculas -- one who crossed the Danube and had "an unworthy brother" (clearly the one who is drawn from the Impaler's personal life) and one who is drawn from the Impaler's military exploits. It is this second Dracula that Stoker's vampire identifies with.
In the end, we can only speculate as to how the real Dracula influenced the fictional.
Sources:
Brittanica
Collins, Andrew. "The Originality of Bram Stoker’s Character Count Dracula." Notes and Queries 58.4 (2011): 570-6. Web. 25 Aug. 2017.
Obviously 2 sources aren't enough for an academic paper, but this isn't one and I feel as if this is enough information to be somewhat aware of the historical background to this novel.
Check out the giveaway that's running all tour long! Next stop on the blog tour is Justice Reads!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kerri Maniscalco grew up in a semi-haunted house outside NYC where her fascination with gothic settings began. In her spare time she reads everything she can get her hands on, cooks all kinds of food with her family and friends, and drinks entirely too much tea while discussing life’s finer points with her cats.
Her first novel in this series, Stalking Jack the Ripper, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It incorporates her love of forensic science and unsolved history.
Happy Reading!
Kerri must have had so much fun researching this!
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