Count Dracula

Some of you guys were asking me about the story ofp Dracula, and why he is a 'Count'. First of all, a 'Count' is a nobleman, people of the higher classes or the royalty, and it comes from the French word comte.

The story Dracula was modelled after a Romanian ruler called Vlad III, or more commonly as Vlad the Impaler. To cut a long story short, he was extremely cruel has a habit of executing any prisoners he takes in war by impaling them on tall stakes. In Romania's history, there was already legends of people who are 'undead', and this English writer Bram Stoker uses Vlad's nickname 'Vampire' to create this legend.

Dracula starts with a man called Jonathan Harker who goes to Count Dracula's castle to handle a property deal, but eventually, he find that the Count doesn't allow him to leave, and notices that he does not have reflections in mirrors and can climb down the steep walls of the castle like a bat. He also finds other vampires in the castle, but was saved from them by Dracula himself. After he escapes, his fiancee helped him recover from the trauma but she herself was bitten. With the help of scientist Van Helsing, they eventually managed to kill Dracula.

Interesting thing is, why would an English writer have the idea of writing a story about a Romanian monster? It was because at that time, Western Europe started to feel threatened by the Eastern European citizens, who started to migrate in to work and live. The story reflects the fear and suspicion that the English have of these strange people, by showing them as being weird gypsies and blood (money) suckers, to put it simply.