Free Rage by Jerry Langton

course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula .
    An Irish immigrant, Stoker worked hard and eventually became business manager of the world famous Lyceum Theatre in London. While there, he earned extra money and became quite well connected by writing sensational novels—what we’d call pulp fiction today. While researching his books, Stoker became quite interested in Eastern European legends, particularly that of the vampire.
    Although stories of the dead rising to eat the flesh and blood of the living are commonplace in most Western cultures, including those of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the vampire legend we know today originated in Southeastern Europe, including Transylvania—the northern part of Romania, where it borders Hungary.
    Although there were significant and often bizarre regional differences—Albanian vampires were said to have a preference for high-heeled shoes, while a Bulgarian one could be identified by his single nostril—the armature of the story was surprisingly consistent throughout much of the region. Vampires were dead humans who rose at night to drink the blood of living humans. Blood gave them strength and warded off a permanent grave. They feared and hated sunlight, and they could only be killed by esoteric means, including a stake to the heart or decapitation.
    Stoker became intrigued, as he saw the potential for both horror and sexuality in the blood-sucking undead. He also wanted to play on the rising current of fear of foreigners that was then plaguing much of the British Empire. He knew he needed a compelling, charismatic nobleman as the lead character. An avid student of European history, Stoker settled on a combination of two notorious men, Gilles de Rais and Vlad Tepes.
    De Rais was a fifteenth century French nobleman who used his position, good looks and abundant charm to get away with murder. He did get away with it for years, until he was implicated in the disappearance of a local priest who he’d been seen arguing with. Investigators discovered in his castle the remains of between 80 and 200 children, mostly boys, who de Rais had tortured, raped and murdered (often not in that order). His two henchmen told the complete story of how de Rais sent them to recruit the youngsters, ranging in age anywhere from 6 to 18, for him to have his deadly way with. The trio were hanged in 1440 and de Rais has since become identified as the first modern serial killer.
    Tepes, on the other hand, was (and still is) to many people something of a hero. Although his father, Vlad II, was King of Wallachia (approximately the southern half of modern-day Romania), Vlad was born in Transylvania after his father was exiled by powerful Wallachian nobles loyal to the mighty Ottoman Empire. The second of three sons, Vlad III was later given by his father to the Turkish sultan as part of deal to stave off an Ottoman invasion.
    Vlad hated his life as a captive and was frequently beaten for his insolence and refusal to convert to Islam. He secretly vowed to make the Turks pay.
    In 1447, Vlad II was discovered in Transylvania and assassinated by Wallachian knights. Fearing rebellion, the Turks invaded and placed Vlad III on the throne as a puppet ruler. It made sense at the time: he was the legitimate claimant to the throne after his older brother Mircea was blinded by iron stakes and buried alive by political rivals; he had lived for so long under the boot of Ottoman oppression, they believed, that he would be too timid to do anything but what they told him.
    It might have worked if Wallachia hadn’t been invaded later that year by John Hunyadi—the man who killed Vlad II—forcing Vlad III to flee to Hungary. Eventually, the Hungarians convinced Hunyadi that Vlad III was a valuable ally, so he was pardoned and brought back to Wallachia as a political advisor. And when Hunyadi died of plague in 1456, Vlad III succeeded him as king.
    Vlad quickly decided that his primary purpose as king was to protect himself. He eliminated a