Only Dracula's birthplace, Sighisoara (Segesvár in Hungarian, I don't know the Saxon name) is in Transsylvania, and our beloved Dracula was born there because his father was made governor of Transsylvania by the king of Hungary (Sigismund, actually came to Hungary as a prince from Luxemburg, who around the same time also became the Emperor of all German lands). Dracula's father was a bastard of a Wallachian ruler, and exiled, when said Hungarian king took him up in his court.
Dracula's father then had the then Wallachian ruler murdered and took his place, but remained subservient to the Hungarian crown, as a buffer to the Ottoman Empire. After the Turks invaded Transsylvania through Wallachia, a later Hungarian king (Wladislaus, this time from Poland... co-king of both Poland and Hungary) banished him, that was when Dracula was sent to Istambul as a hostage to secure the Sultan's support for his rule. The final fall-out with Hungary was due to lack of significant for a Hungarian campaign against the Turks, which thus ended in catastrophe. The possible sender of the assassins of Dracula's father, Hungarian baron John Hunyadi, was also of Vlach descent.
(Hunyadi was the then-governor of Transsylvania and overall military commander, and later the European hero of the age when his army held up the first major Turkish invasion against Catholic Europe at Nándorfehérvár, today's Belgrade, in 1456. A little-known fact is that the papal order of the noon bell was originally issued to call people to pray for the besieged, but with the news of victory reaching many places earlier than the order, it turned into victory celebration and later wasn't revoked. Today, Hunyadi is forgotten except in affected countries where each claims him their own hero.)
Finally, to make the implicit theme in the above complementation of the Dracula story explicit: Central-Eastern European nationalisms all remember these stories in a sub-sampled way, where THE OTHERS were evil schemers and murderers and OUR ANCESTORS were heroes, and real complexities are forgotten. The thus created past grievances that never existed then serve to fuel chauvinism. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
lack of significant support... (which was, obviously, because of his children held hostage in Istambul) *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Especially tonight...
* Alex, if you're reading this, drop in a comment to reassure me -- and the others... ;) When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
PS, can't resist - You forgot to mention that Hunyadi was also a duke in Korea; his brother Sumsang is also usually mentioned... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Interesting! Could you tell more about this? (The Turkish too?) I thought you are a trained economist, do economic studies extend this far back and touch on so much 'real' history? ('Real' as in: sequence of who slaughtered whom in time :-) ) *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
My PhD was about the independence of Ukraine, so I did look into the history of the region for various spells of independence or control by others (an incredibly long list, btw).
The amazing Turkish speech was at a CERA conference, but sadly I could never get access to a written version of it (CERA did not have it, apparently) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
FYI, Sighisoara was known in German as Schassburg, which I believe means the "sixth" town out of the Big 7 the Saxons fortified during this era.
While it is true that Vlad mostly controlled Wallachia, which is southern and eastern Romania (today), he also controlled parts of what is now Moldova. But two of his most famous mass impalements occurred in Sibiu and Brasov, both in Transylvania, and his victims were the Saxon merchants and Hungarian nobles.
Technically speaking Transylvania would only be united with the rest of Romania in 1918. What's interesting (to me anyway) is that it isn't called Transylvania in the local languages, that being the Latin name (for "beyond the forests").
It is referred to in Romania as "Ardeal" which few Romanians know is a corruption of the Hungarian name "Erdelyi" (apologies for spelling) for the area.
Stoker I don't think put "Dracula" in Transylvania by error, just stole the name and notoriety of Vlad (the dragon/devil "Draculea") and combined it with the vampire legends. The book Dracula takes place some 400 years after Vlad's actual reign.
There are still tours you can go on to follow Harker's "route", which start in the city now known as Bistrita.
Pax Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian
Yeah, extension of the extension: I believe Dracula, like his father, was also named governor of Transsylvania for some time (by king Matthias Corvinus, son of John Hunyadi) while he too was in exile - but don't have time to look this up now.
"Erdelyi" (apologies for spelling)
Erdély. Comes from erdő, which means forest.
BTW, with reliance on my cultural anthropologist brother, on Transsylvania's (current) settlement: the Hungarian tribes, mostly the "Eigth Tribe" of the Turkic Kabars (rather than the seven with Finno-Ugric ancestry) first settled only in the lowlands 1100 years ago - the mountains were settled only later, but then simultaneously by the Székelys (who are probably descendants of the Kabars to the most part) and the vlachs, and the Saxons (strange choice of name, they were actually immigrants mostly from Hessen and Schwaben) were invited about the same time to work the mines. Thus even if the Romanian nationalist mythology of the Daco-Roman continuity (not to speak of even stranger Hungarian nationalist mythologies) is wrong, the silly competition of who came first should be a non-starter. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
What's interesting, as I am sure you know, is that in Romania the Szekelys are considered "different" than the rest of the Hungarians. Indeed, many Hungarians from Hungary come to Romania to visit the Szekelys and see where they live, esp because they live in the "old ways" which haven't changed much over the centuries.
Romania is certainly an interesting country and the more time I live here, the more I learn about it and all the various peoples who live here, including the Lipoveni, a sort of Russian cult who hail from near the Black Sea coast.
They (or more correctly: their foremen) were certainly separate at the time of Transsylvania's relative autonomy - when from 1437, in the "unio trium nationum", Hungarian noblemen, Székely foremen and Saxon patricians were granted equal rights (and peasants, including all vlachs/Romanians, denied all rights - this agreement came just after the defeat of a peasant revolt). As for earlier times, the continuity from the Kabars is only tentative (I'm again relying on my brother here). *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Then again, a small region around Făgăraş (Hungarian: Fogaras) - the same region for which vlachs (Romanians) are first mentioned in Transsylvania in written documents (from 1210, 1223 and 1231) - was granted as a fief in exchange for submission to the crown to the Wallachian prince for about 100 years (until Matthias captured Dracula).
I don't know where Dracula's main seat was, it must have been near today's Bucharest, but here are some pictures (and a map) for one castle he definitely owned and lived in (unlike in Bran): Poienari.
According to what I found, Vlad Ţepeş didn't control Moldavia either: it was ruled at this same time by its greatest ruler, Stefan the Great (who, by the way, conducted a similar punitive campaign for the exact same reasons against a Saxon city in Transsylvania).
Dracula was eventually dethroned when his noblemen and the Turks allied against him, he fled to Transsylvania, where he was detained and sent to Matthias's court, where he was put under house arrest - because of a letter (a copy survives in the Vatican) in which he proposed his alliance against Hungary to the Sultan, allegedly captured by said Stefan of Moldavia, and probably a forgery by the Saxons.
The earliest sources (the same middle-age yellow press you refer to, and some diplomatic notes) say that he was shown to visitors of the court kind of to scare them; and that when he was released and put back on the Wallachian throne 12 years later (to be murdered shortly after), he converted to Catholicism. (So one could say that both Dracula in his second reign and his father were puppet kings of the Hungarians, too.) *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
