DRACULA'S LITERARY DESCENDENTS

Dracula, it would seem, is too big for his book. Though Stoker never wrote a sequel, many other authors have risen to the chall­enge, mainly since the 1970s. This is the period when the novel started to become the focus of an academic/critical industry and the Romanian connection became more widely known. There­after, the popularity of video and DVD technology meant that the movies, from Nosferatu through the Uni­versal and Hammer series, made the visual history of Dracula immed­iately available, while the Internet sometimes looks as though it was invented solely for people wanting to discuss (and occasionallybecome) vampires. The short but amazingly influential history ofDracula has thus become better known as time goes by, with an apparently limitless proliferation of comment being inspired by a single novel. There’s obviously a massive hunger for the strictly finite amount of Dracula that Stoker provided, so it’s understandable that other authors have tried to take his story further, demonstrating a range of attitudes to their source material. 

In a sublimely silly series of New English Library paperbacks, Robert Lory brought the Count to 1970s New York, held under the dubious control of an embittered ex-cop by the device of a mini-stake embedded in his heart. Between 1975 and 2002, Fred Saberhagen produced 10 Dracula novels, which start out by re-telling the original story from the vampire’s viewpoint before bringing him into interaction with the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Merlin. Peter Tremayne has written a trio of novels drawing on the shared identity of Vlad Tepes and the vampire Count, while Kim Newman, in Anno Dracula (1992),The Bloody Red Baron (1995) and Dracula Cha Cha Cha (1998) has created a brilliant postmodern fantasy in which history and literature combine in an almost-recognisable melée where Dracula reigns. Some of the sequels draw more closely on the larger cast of the original. Sean Manchester’s Carmel (2000) follows the story of Mina and Jonathan Harker’s grandson, while Freda Warrington’s Dracula the Undead (1997, re-issued 2009) has a re-animated Dracula once again crossing swords with the Harker family. 

2009 has also seen an “official” sequel co-authored (along with film-writer Ian Holt) by Stoker’s great grand-nephew Dacre Stoker: Dracula the Un-Dead. This picks up the threads 25 years after the end of the original, with Mina’s theatre-besotted son falling under the spell of a dashing, charismatic Romanian actor. Meanwhile, the elderly survivors of the first book are being picked off with maximum violence in a complex plot that involves a prominent display of period detail, close attention to Stoker’s working notes, historical and personal references, a nod to Jack the Ripper (see below) and rather more than a nod to Countess Bathory (FT223:38–43). Once again, the character of Dracula is cast in a fresh light. In an interesting afterword, the author discusses his sources, explaining that his family’s relationship with the Dracula industry was a fraught one, and that to some extent his novel was written to reclaim the character in the spirit of the original: 

“Ian, being a true idealist, had a plan that inspired me to not accept the frustrating history of Dracula. He wanted to change history… to re-establish creative control over Bram’s novel and characters by writing a sequel that bore the Stoker name… We aimed to resurrect Bram’s original themes and characters, just as Bram had conceived them more than a century ago. So many books and films had strayed from Bram’s vision – and thus our intent was to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity in some small way.” 

Meanwhile Dracula lives on in a slightly different way in the most recent scholarly edition, The New Annotated Dracula (2009; see FT246:62–63). Along with all the expected footnotes and references, editor Leslie S Klinger manages to infiltrate a meta-fictional structure that the casual reader certainly won’t be expecting. He deals with some of the inconsistencies in Stoker’s plot by explaining that the author was in fact writing up a history of real events, having to blur some of the details to protect the innocent, and being hounded by Dracula himself to provide a version that would fool the public. Thus that unsatisfactory death scene is a smokescreen – Dracula didn’t die and is effectively authorising Stoker’s novel so that his continued depred­ations through Victorian London can go unchecked. As The New Annotated Draculadoesn’t make this whimsical fictional super-structure at all apparent, it is bound to fuel yet more confusion as to just what Stoker intended. 

Less controversially, Dracula has also walked out of the novel and into other fictional worlds. He has appeared in Marvel comics since the 1970s, and in 1991, DC comics published Batman and Dracula: Red Rain, the first of a trio of graphic novels where the Caped Crusader’s bat-like identity found a natural home in the vampire community. The Count makes a great guest-star too; one of his funniest and most knowing reappearances is in Buffy vs Dracula, the opening episode of the TV show’s 5th series (2000). Something of a poseur, seen by the other vampires as overplaying his seductive reputation, he was played by Rudolph Martin, who also in 2000 appeared in the title role of Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, an American film shot on location in Rom­ania and telling the story of Vlad III Dracula (Vlad Tepes.) Fact and fiction continue their complex relationship…

DRACULA THE RIPPER

Fact and more than one fictional creation would find an uneasy alliance in a most unexpected revelation. Dracula was published in 1897, though it’s now generally accepted that Stoker’s reliance on a firm calendar structure places its events in the year 1893. Could they have been inspired by events still earlier – the Jack the Ripper murders that became such a cause célèbre in the London of 1888? The murder of (at least) five prostitutes loomed so large and the killer remained so elusive that the all-too-real case took on an almost supernatural dimens­ion – aided no doubt by the calculating work of journalists who effectively created the persona of Jack the Ripper and may even have inadvertently spurred on the actual killer. An interaction with fiction began at once. Robert Louis Stevenson’s immensely popular novellaThe Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde had been published in 1886, was dramatised the following year and in 1888 became a starr­ing vehicle for actor Richard Mansfield, appearing at the Lyceum Theatre by invitation of Henry Irving. The escalation of anxiety over the Ripper murders brought an unexpected new focus of attention to this study of evil unleashed. The hideous propensities of Mr Hyde, unchecked by any moral impulse, were altogether too close to what was happening in Whitechapel. Indeed, might Mansfield himself actually be the Ripper, as one theatregoer suggested to the police? 

Stoker must have been on-hand during these events, and perhaps took a hint from the way in which real murders were strengthening the sense of fear promoted by a literary fable – and vice versa. While there are no obvious Ripper references in the text of Dracula, in 1901 Stoker wrote a new preface for an Icelandic translation and took the opportunity to indulge in a little sleight of hand, declaring of his novel that: “The strange and eerie tragedy which is portrayed here is completely true, as far as all external circumstances are concerned…” 

Playing this game, he then pretended that Dracula’s activities might already be known to his readers – they would recall them as murders reported some years before and would perhaps have made a connection to an earlier, even more notorious, spate of killings in London: “Many people remember the strange series of crimes that comes into the story a little later – crimes which, at the time, appeared to be supernatural and seemed to originate from the same source and cause as much revulsion as the infamous murders of Jack the Ripper!” 

The hint is ambiguous – is Stoker saying that the motivat­ion (“source”) of the Ripper and Dracula was the same, that both of them appeared to be supernatural (but possibly weren’t), that both sets of killings were vampiric or that the same person was responsible for everything? 

This mischievous piece of plot-stirring is clearly too tempting to leave unexploited, and the Dracula/Ripper relationship has recently been explored in Dacre Stoker’s 2009 novel Dracula The Un-Dead. Jack the Ripper had already crossed over into the world of a major fictional character, having been investigated by Sherlock Holmes in the films A Study in Terror (1965) and Murder by Decree (1979). And in David Stuart Davies’s novel The Tangled Skein (1995), Holmes has also met Dracula (whose first appearance in print he pre-dated by just 10 years.) Despite the reality of the Whitechapel murders, the Ripper, Dracula and Holmes (and perhaps Mr Hyde too) have come to inhabit a shared construct, the semi-mytho­logised, fog-bound late-Victor­ian London where characters loom larger than life. Their paths are undoubtedly fated to cross again… 





RECOMMENDED READING 
David J Skal: Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen, 1992. 
Elizabeth Miller and Robert Eighteen-Bisang (eds): Bram Stoker’s Notes for ‘Dracula’, 2008. 
Christopher Frayling (ed): Vampyres, Faber 1991. 

Some info about Count Dracula's relationships

Vladimir Dracula

The Count has a reasonable relationship with Vlad. Although the relationship had been strained in Series 3, the Count later punched Ramanga after he threatened Vlad. Later the Count hunted Ramanga down and "de-fanged" him as revenge.

In Series 5 their relationship is strained further by the revelation that Vlad is half breather. Vlad attacks his father, angry that he has been lied to his entire life, but their relationship remains largely intact once Vlad has come to terms with things.

Ingrid Dracula

Vampire tradition seems to place females as second-class citizens, forcing the Count to treat her as inferior to Vlad. The Count's bad relationship with his daughter Ingrid is also because she resembles her mother Magda. The Count later reveals that he does in fact love Ingrid, and he kept the drawings she made as a child.

Malik Dracula

The only child of Elizabetta Vaccaria and nearly 300 years old. He has a difficult relationship with the Count as the Count finds out that all these years he had another child. He is also hated by his half-siblings. He recently helped the Dracula Clan to fight off the shadow warriors with an asylum seeker vampire Asan, but it doesn't seem that he is compeltely loyal. It is later discovered that Elizabetta lied to everyone and Malik is not really a Dracula.

Magda Westenra

His first known lover was Magda Westenra who left him for a werewolf named Patrick. The Count never married Magda but together they had a girl named Ingrid; she also agreed to adopt Vlad and pretend he was her son. He is angry with her for running off and leaving him to bring up Vlad and Ingrid on his own. Despite this he remains attracted to her and sometimes falls for her charms.

Elizabetta Vaccaria

The Count was bloodbound to Elizabetta Vaccaria following the murder of Arta at her hand. An ancient vampire law forced the Count to marry her after his brother's death. The Count left Elisabeta and ran off with Magda and Elizabetta became pregnant with someone else's child.

Alexandra McCauley

Miss McCauley was the head-teacher at Garside Grange independant day school and the Count's love interest throughout Series 3 and 4.

Sally Giles

The Count met Vlad's mother Sally at a goth festival in Whitby. He admits that he was very fond of her and never turned her into a vampire. He described her as the most bewitching of women he'd ever seen.

Who really was Count Dracula ?

Here you have another short documentary made by History Channel about who really was the Count Dracula or Vlad the Impaler . Enjoy !

Video Presentation of Bran Castle

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