Timesuck with Dan Cummins - BONUS 7 - Vlad "the Impaler" Dracula: Man Behind the Vampire

Episode Date: July 14, 2017

How do you become the real life basis for the most famous monster of our time? By being one of the most sadistic and terrifying figures who ever lived. Vlad impaled, disemboweled, boiled, burned, hacked, tortured, and beheaded his way in world wide notoriety, his name still recognizable over 500 years after his death. Forget medieval - we go full-evil - on the darkest edition of Timesuck yet.  Like the new logo? Hire Timesucker Anduin Vaid for all your graphic design needs. Hit him up at [e-mail] He's incredible! (And he's a Timesucker)  Live in or near Ft. Collins, Colorado? Head over to Maxline Brewing, Tuesday, July 18th, for a FREE Timesuck Trivia night starting at 7PM! Meet other Timesuckers, drink some great beer, and win some cool prizes!

Vlad Teppis. Vlad Dracula, the original vampire, the impaler prince. What does someone have to do to inspire a legend that becomes the basis for the most famous monster of our time? Why do we still know of this fairly minor political player from the 15th century today? How much of today's Dracula monster is based on this very real man. Impaling, being boiled alive, being burned to death, disemboweled, hacked to pieces, drowned buried alive, all of this covered, and so much more as we explore the dark, cruel world of 15th century Eastern Europe. The rise of the modern vampire myth and the life of one of history's most notorious sadists. It's time to go medieval.

It's time to go full evil. It's time for today's blood sucking, insanely violent addition of time suck. Insanely Violent Edition of Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Friday, everybody. I'm Dan Cummins and thanks for listening to today's 700 iTunes Review Bonus Edition of the Suck. Thanks for all you new listeners for joining our growing cult of the curious. I am very excited for today's time suck. Thanks for all the iTunes reviews, new subscriptions, new recommendations for others to listen.

This show grows because of you. Thanks also for clicking that Amazon button at time suck podcast.com to do your shopping, free way to donate to the show, and for making it to the shop, buy and sign books and CDs, buy all three generations of the TimeSuck T-shirts, shirt made out of unicorn scrotums, koala anuses, chinchilla labias, only the finest, and of course the softest shirt materials known to mankind. All sizes are back in stock on the first two shirts and most sizes are currently in stock for the most recent shirt. Still working on getting some TimeSuck hats, probably take them on their sale. Gotta get it right. Getting some other stuff, putting the most recent shirt. Still working on getting some time suck hats. I probably take them on their so I gotta get it right. I'm getting some other stuff, putting the most design details so far into those hats. They're gonna look fucking great. Very excited to have the awesome help on that.

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at timesookpodcast.com if you can't remember. And he's also a very experienced senior graphic designer for higher that I can put you in touch with. And don't worry, while the new logo is now on all TimeSug social media, the classic logo on the first generation to still forever part of the show, still there in the shop, still always part of TimeSug. Special thanks to Erika Valleye, Austin Steers, Matthew Dannos, Brandon Maddox, Brett Offencamp, and anyone else I missed who requested today's time suck topic.

And now, it is time for some time sucker updates. not a little long recently. I feel like you get longer and longer. It makes it too long to wait to get back into the story. I love doing these, but there is a limit where it becomes a little bit much. And I've listened to some feedback and I thought the same thing myself, I really did. So going forward, gonna do my best to stick to three updates per show. I know that means that a lot more people can't make it on

with that, but please keep sending them in. I really love reading them. And yeah, and I just feel like that's a good amount to really kind of like reflect on what's happened before, but also kind of keep the days a show moving forward. Always working on making this the most entertaining version of the Suck It Can Be. And the first one is from Jessica Cassias.

I appreciate the phonetic spelling you included in the email, because you know who you're emailing it to. The subject is women are physically weaker than men. Now, this is regarding my comments last week regarding the word pussy, the great pussy debate we got into, how I get, how it's offensive to some women because of the association it has in modern usage with physical weakness and about how on average women are less strong physically than men. That's what I said. I threw out some stats to back that up that up. And I also said to how it's okay that that's the way things are and that we're still equal.

And Jessica made me feel great about that by saying in her message to the Almighty Master Time Sucker, thank you for explaining that women are physically weaker. I hate going to the gym and hearing women talk about being physically equal to men, we're not. Nothing wrong with that. Just accept it in regards to the pussy offensive ness, here's some Betty White on the subject. Betty White apparently said, why do people

say grow some balls? Balls are weak and sensitive. Very true. If you really want to get tough, grow a vagina. Those things take a pounding. So that's Betty White's quote. So whenever I want to give my husband shit about his weightlifting, I tell him to quit, you know, being a pair of balls and vagina up. So thanks for being awesome and help me through my day at work. Well, thank you, Jessica. I love that. Inside and out, I fucking love very white.

How cool is she? 95 years old. She's 95 years old, still working, still hilarious. And by the way, this is so random. If you get a chance, watch an episode of The Golden Girls. I'm not fucking kidding. Probably sounds like I'm kidding. I am not kidding.

A hilarious show. The writing holds up. I swear, it is funny today is it was when it came out. And I just love that like, I love that that show just got made by the way. The Golden Girls because I've known enough like network execs where that had to be the toughest fucking pitch ever. It's like, wait, what? You want to show about four old women talking to each other? How is that going to appeal to our prize 18 to 35 demographic?

But they fucking did it in a work because it's great. All right. And vagina up, you pussy. All right. Second update here. Today's Graham Switzer responded to my call to Native American listeners that I made in the Atlanta episode to see if one of last week's idiots of the internet was correct Graham Switzer responded to my call to Native American listeners that I made in the Atlanta episode to see if one of last weeks it is at the internet was correct in his outlandish claim that all Native Americans have known of the lost city of Atlanta's four years. He said, he said, love the episode.

One thing I have to say is the guy who made the remark about Native Americans is a dumb shit. I'm a Chickasaw Indian with Native American identification card, the proofs I'm legit. Granted, I'm not 100%. But I will go ahead and say that this is the dumbest shit I have ever heard. Never in my tribe out of Adolklahoma have I heard some stupid shit about this nonsense. Obviously, this is an uneducated human being to probably watch this. Online videos all day about this crap in between his porn binges.

Again, love the show, keep sucking brother. Thank you, Graham. I love in between porn binges. He's looking at stuff up. And I had other Native American time suckers expressed the exact same sentiment about this guy as a fucking moron, which I knew, but it's great to hear.

Oh my God, that was one of my favorite idiots of the internet so far. And last update for today, many of you, including Time Sucker, Adolfo Campos, have written in with an HH Holmes update. I don't know what sister hit me over by this as well. And there's a show about him on the history channel apparently right now called American Ripper,

where a descendant of his, this guy Jeff Mugget, claims among other things that Holmes was Jack the Ripper over in England. And just, there's been a lot of time suckers writing in basically to say like what do I think about this? And is it you know a good update? It is I mean needs to be addressed I guess because it's out there But I don't buy it not for a second. Sorry to be a party pooper. I haven't watched the show So in all fairness, I've not watched the history channel show

I just don't have a lot of faith in the history channel discovery channel Those networks anymore being just truthful at all. They're just so sensationalist. I read some reviews and that was the angle that they definitely also shared was that it was just kind of sensationalist. And I have actually come across Jeff Mudge it before. I came across him in my initial research. I've watched some of his interviews just on YouTube

and I've listened to him talk. And he seems fucking 100% wackadoodle to me. I know he was a lawyer, I know he had a good career, but you know, just because he had a good career, it doesn't mean he's not fucking loony tunes. And he seems like a nut. He seems crazy in his eyes. He seems crazy in his demeanor to me,

like a subtle crazy, but it's there. And I just, you know, I just think he wants some kind of attention for this. And he desperately wants them to be true that I don't think is true. Like, yes, H.H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H And there's no evidence at all. Like it's a 100% speculation based on his whereabouts being unaccounted for at the times of these crimes. But you know what, pretty much everybody's whereabouts were unaccounted for back then.

You know, because back in the days before GPS tracking and transaction records being recorded for like every single sale ever. You know, so it's, I don't know. I just think it's kind of nonsense. I do think homes may have killed a crazy amount of people in Chicago. I'd be willing to bet he killed me,'t know, I just think it's kind of nonsense. I do think homes may have killed a crazy amount of people in Chicago. I'd be willing to bet he killed, you know, over 100 people there before I buy that he

killed anyone in England. But let me know anyway how the finale ends. Maybe they will uncover something groundbreaking. I fucking, I doubt it. But maybe they will and let me know if there's some legit kind of new evidence that comes for it. Please, please do that. And speaking of killers, let's get into Dracula.

Next time, suckers, I need a net. We all did. Oh, man, the count. Remember him from Sesame Street, purple dude, with a black suit, cape, monocle for some reason, who love to, you know, count. There's one but, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, two, that's two but, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, three, three buts. The guy loved to laugh at his own counts.

And then there was a count Chocula with his chocolate sweeties. Remember the chocolate sweeties? The dude who hates Frankenberries? And fucking no one hates Frankenberries, more than count Chocula. You find me, the person who hates Frankenberries, and fucking no one hates Frankenberries, more than Count Chocula. You find me, the person who hates Frankenberries more than Count Chocula. And I'll fucking, I don't know,

believe that H.H. Holmes was Jack the River. Yeah, Frankenberries really chapped his ass. What about Count Ducula? Do you remember him? He's not, he wasn't as popular, weird little dude who lived in a castle, castle Ducula. The rare vegetarian vampire. The super rare vegetarian vampire duck.

Oh shit. Huh? Oh Shit Hey, count, ducula. Yeah, count, ducula. I forgot he played the harmonica. Tount, tell it to a little count duck. Man, there's all kinds of cartoon vampires. Shown up in Scooby Doo, Hotel Transylvania, Blade, Blood, The Last Vampire, Buffy, The Animated Series, you know, on and on and on.

How strange is that that all these silly characters can be traced back to a real dude who is anything but kid friendly? Unlike Frankenstein or the Werewolf of vampires, as we know them today, can be traced back largely to Bram Stoker's Dracula. And that character was largely based on a real dude, Vlad Dracula, Vlad the Impaler.

Think about how truly well known the monster of Dracula has become. Like, how many books have been written about vampires? How many comics? How many films, TV shows? How many millions have it made off of kids' vampire Halloween costumes alone? It's been from dust till dawn, the lost boys,

let the right one in, 30 days and night hundreds of other movies. Vampire movies have been permeated our cinematic consciousness since 1922 silent film, Nuspharatu, there's true blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Vampire Diaries, the originals, the strain, vampires have been a regular fixture of TV viewing since before the monsters hit screens in 1964. Remember that show? I used to watch that after school for some reason, right? If you leave it to be, leave it to be, or if that was a fucking weirdo, I guess.

Maybe because we only had four channels in Riggins, Idaho. He has his grandpa monster. He was Vladimir Dracula, obviously, and inspired by the real Vladimir Dracula, because he was also the Count of Transylvania. A little Eddie monster, his widow's peak. I used to get compared to him with my widow's peak hairline. Lily Monster, remember her?

Remember that actress, Yvonne De Carlo? She actually did some pin-up photo shoots when I googled her. I was pleasantly surprised to find some of her pinup work. Anyone else have an early puberty crush on her? Cat, she was stunning. She was stunning. In character on the monster show, she was still stunning. Or what about El Vira?

El Vira may have gotten me into the whole pinup look single handedly actually. Hot vampire women, love it. Anyways, it's been a lot of books. I've been Stephen King, Salem's lot, and Rice's interview with a vampire. Goodreads.com lists over 1500 adult vampire books going back to Bram Stoker's Dracula. And while Bram Stoker's Dracula version of the vampire is the one most associated with both

the modern vampire and Vlad the Impaler, stories and folklore have told of blood sucking monsters all over the world for centuries. The Persians of ancient Mesopotamia, one of the first civilizations thought to have tales of blood-sucking monsters, creatures attempting to drink blood for men are depicted on old excavated pottery shards. The Bet Silio, people of Madagascar, tell of the Ramanga, a living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the toenail clippings of nobles, of nobles, seriously.

Wait, what? Nail clippings? Nail clippings of nobles. Of nobles, seriously. Wait, what? Nail clippings? Nail clippings, that's an odd touch. Not sure why that detail is included in their mythology and how that is supposed to add to the tear. That seems really, really dumb actually. Just be careful, not to awaken the great Ramanga. If you dare disturb his tomb,

he will surely drink your blood. And if you have also recently clipped your toenails and still, you know, have yet to throw away those clippings of the said toenails, he will eat those toenail clippings too. Also that. He will eat those toenail clippings too. Also that. But mostly the blood, please don't focus too hard on the toenail part. Mostly focus on the blood parts. It's ridiculous.

Northern India, there's the Brahmurak Shasa, a vampire light creature with a head encircled by intestines and a skull of carries from which it drinks blood way scarier than toenail clippings dude. Head and circled by intestines, that's fucking, that's a good scary shit. That's some good monster detail there.

So is that skull cup kept around for blood? That's gonna keep the kids from misbehaving. Do you want to go to your bed? Or do you want a old skull cup to get your ass? That's why I thought. Legends of female vampire-like beings who can detach parts of their upper body, odd detail, current in the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia.

There is the Asmen vampire, a ZE, a vampire from Suriname in South America, North Brazil, not to be confused with the Asmen of Brazil, totally different group of dudes, interested more in booty than blood. The Asmen can transform into a bat, and according to some myths, the Asmen can actually shape shift into many creatures. The Asmen vampires transform into a bat, and according to some myths, the Asman can actually shape shift into many creatures. The Asman Vampires, a living vampire that is most often described as a woman vampire. She can walk during the day and is not distinguishable from humans at night. She becomes a blood-sucking creature.

And then there's this Trague. You've heard that term. If you've watched the strain on effects, as I have, or if you've read the trilogy of the strain books, which I have, or have read the graphic the trilogy of the Australian books, which I have, or have read the graphic novels, which I also did, Guillermo Diltoro, and oh my god, I didn't write it down, I'm blanking now, I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to reference them, I think Chuck Hogan's other dude, who wrote them, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I got into, got into the show real hard for a while.

But anyway, the Sturgoi are the vampires of Romanian folklore. No one knows for sure, it's just legend predates the life of Vlad, the impaler Dracula or not, because the Romanian people didn't develop a written language until the 16th century. So they were a little late to the written language party. The Romanian people, i.e. gypsies, believed that this trigoy were troubled spirits of the dead rising from the grave. Stums trigoy can be living people with certain magical properties. Some of the properties of the stogo, include the ability to transform into an animal and visibility,

the propensity to drain the fatality of victims via blood loss. There you go, your vampiric traits there. Obviously, some of these traits help form the vampire of today. And according to their folklore, this is how you kill one of these demonic blood suckers. You can exume the stogo, and then remove its heart and cut it into or drive a nail in its forehead.

You can place a clove of garlic under its tongue, smear its body with a fat of a pig killed on St. Ignatius Day. That's a weird one to add there. I feel like if you have options, if you can just like either place a clove of garlic under its tongue or put a nail in its forehead or cut its heart out or get a fat from a pig killed only on one day and then smear its whole body with that. Who's choosing that instead of any of the other options? You can also turn his body face down so that the stagoy were to ever wake up.

It would be headed to the wrong spot in the afterlife. So there's that. Or you can show up a ripe turn-up up a task. Okay. I made that last one up. I made the turn-up one up, but didn't really seem that much weird than the rest.

I don't think so. You can see with the garlic and the driving of a nail, which became a steak, a steak that moved from head to heart, that clearly Bram Stoker was familiar with this legend when he wrote his book, especially considering the fact that he set the home of Dracula in his novel in Transylvania, which lies in Romania, where this legend originates. And then there's another Romanian monstervol, Nosferatu, Nosferatu, the title of the first vampire movie, and also in 1861, in a book titled

Romanian Superstitions, Nosferatu is attributed just like this Tragoy to Romanian folklore. One possible explanation of the origin of this legend, or at least the origin of the word Nosferatu, which has been accepted by many historians, is that Nosferatu is derived from an old Slavonic word, Nosferatu, which was apparently itself derived from the Greek Nosoforis, Nosoforis, yeah, meaning plague carrier or disease bearing.

Well it turns out like many vampire like tales and legends were associated with animals, such as rats and bats, animals that were either blood suckers or animals that transmitted deadly diseases in ancient times are both. There is a strong historical correlation with tales of vampires and the spread of horrible diseases like the plague because they didn't understand viruses and bacteria is back then, and stuff like that. So, you know, this just blamed a boogie man, or a monster for what scares you, or kills you.

19th century British author and speaker, Emily Gerard, introduced the word no sfaratu to Western Europe in 1885 magazine, article, Transylvanian superstitions, and in her travelogue, the land beyond the forest. She merely refers to it as the Romanian word for vampire, saying, more decidedly evil, however, is the vampire or noes for atu, in which every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell. There are two sorts of vampires living in dead. The living vampire is in general the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons,

but even a flawless pedigree will not ensure anyone against the intrusion of a vampire into his family vault. Since every person killed by a Nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent people till the spirit has been exercised, either by opening the grave of the person suspected and driving a stake to the corpse, or firing a pistol shot into the coffin. In very obstinate cases, it is further recommended to cut the head and off and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic or to extract the heart and burn it, screwing the ashes over the grave.

Again, some simple options there and then some real complicated options. Look at that stakes, garlic, one vampire creating, other vampires, all kinds of modern vampire shit coming out of old Romania. Now whether or not this knows for ought to truly is a legend of ancient Romania or some other place or even Emily Gerard's imagination has since been kind of debated and disputed. What isn't disputed in this description is that this description, excuse me, combined with the legend of the Stregoy, combined with the real Vlad the Impaler Dracula or what formed the basis for Bram Stoker's imagining

of his incredibly famous and influential mythic monster. And so before we talk about the man behind the monster, let's talk about the creature Bram created, because that's Bram Stoker's Dracula is like, you know, that put Dracula on the fucking map worldwide. And when we think of Dracula now, we think of some version generally of his Dracula. Stoker's Dracula is an undead,

centuries old vampire and a Transylvania nobleman, living in a Transylvania castle. Unlike the vampires of Eastern European folklore, creatures that tended to be repulsive, kind of corpse-like creatures. Dracula has an aristocratic charm and speaks of Boyar heritage. He was a soldier in life, a statesman. Dracula has an aristocratic charm and speaks of Boyar heritage.

He was a soldier in life, a statesman, Vlad Dracula, the real Dracula, was also a soldier and a statesman. He was also a nobleman, a prince in fact, who did have Boyar heritage. He also lived from time to time in Transylvania and Castle. So again, a lot of basis in the real dude there for this character. And then because after all, he is writing fiction, Stoker amps up the paranormal, revealing that the count studied the black arts at the Academy of School of Mance

in the Caught Pathion Mountains. And he has a deep knowledge of alchemy and magic. Stoker's Dracula led men into battle against the Turks, just like the real Vlad the Impaler did. Stoker also describes the count as a man who is a cunning, or a man who is a very cunning and clever military leader. And as you'll find out today, Vlad the Impaler was also known for being exceedingly clever and cunning. Sony parallels.

Sony similarities. And then Stoker adds more supernatural elements to his mythical creature, giving his creation the strength of 20 men. He does not cast a shadow. He'll have a reflection from mirrors. He's immune to conventional means of attack. He can defy gravity, disappear and reappear at will. He has limited command over animals such as rats, owls, bats, moths, foxes, and wolves. He can manipulate the weather, creating

fog, for instance. He can disappear into. He can shape shift and become a bat to wolf, a large dog, and a fog, or mist. His penis is 17 inches long, but only half an inch around and is this black hard and sharp as obsidian itself. Okay, you know, hopefully, I made up that penis thing, but how much scarier would that make him if they added that detail? What if I can fun, strange detail to add to the Dracula lore? Let's start adding that. From now on, from now on, when you tell people about vampires, please throw in all the normal stuff and see if you can slide in the weird obsidian penis detail.

Right? From now on vampires have very long, very hard, very thin, and very sharp black as midnight penises. True needle dicks. You know, somehow the needle kind of vision fits with the blood sucking, I think, somehow. Anywho,

Stokers Dracula, I always to call him fucking Stoker. Every time I see Bram Stoker, I have to fight not saying Stoker. Mr. Stoker! Stoke into the east, and the Stoke into the west. Oh man, that song's always in my head on some level. Uh, from some, Clarence, Clarence, what is that? Clarence Booker, Clarence Carter, whoever fucking wrote stroking. Why is that on my head right now? I heard that song a bunch of times in college

and it's just stuck, it's like embedded in some part of my brain that was damaged and it was unable to release the memory. And whenever I see Stoker or Stoker, that Clarence, whatever his name is song, just starts playing in the back of my mind, stroking to the east. Anyway, okay.

So Bram Stoker, for some reason, had most of his traditionally vampiric of powers, he can create other vampires by biting them. And once he's created a new vampire, he's a type of hypnotic or telepathic control he has over them. These new vampires are now his minions. But not like the fun minions at today. Not to cute little yellow ones. We think of, you know, from the cartoons they say, be do, be do. Not those guys. Uh-uh. Other vampires. He also has the power of necromancy. He can raise the dead. I love that word necromancy. The dead shall rise, one dead person, ah, ah, ah, two dead person, three corpses rising from the grave children.

Stoker's Dracula's powers are also limited. He loses almost all his powers during the day. Sun doesn't actually kill Stoker's Dracula. That feature of vampirism is amped up later, kind of in different versions of vampires, but it does hurt him and it leaves him again vulnerable to kind of being killed. He's also repulsed by garlic just like the Romanians, Trigoy, as well as sacred items and symbols such as crucifixes, sacramental bread, foreign stokers telling Dracula is rumored to have received his powers from the devil himself. You know, the Satanic association comes largely from the real Vlad Dracula, because Dracula can mean either dragon or devil in Romanian. The name came from Vlad's father, the original

Vlad Dracula, receiving that name, Dracula, for joining an order of knights on the round table. This kind of group of crusaders known as the order of the dragon. He became Vlad Dracula, and the sun became Vlad Dracula, or Dracula, meaning son of the dragon, or son of the dragon. He became Vlad Dracula and the sun became Vlad Dracula or Dracula meaning Sun of the Dragon or Sun of the Devil and Dracula's satanic association also came from Medieval Christians associated pretty much anything bad and you know evil or monsters you know just with the devil you know all bad people bad habits all came from the devil kind of envious actually how simplistic that would have been make life so much simpler if just you know you didn't have to have any deep questions or concerns about anything about like what somebody's motives are,

why someone's doing something or being manipulated, what's psychological, you know, phenomena is going on inside their mind. It's just, it's a devil. It's just always a devil. Damn, damn that devil. Making me lust after the neighbor head neighbor lady. Damn devil tricking me into stealing the other neighbor's goat.

Damn devil guiding my palm around the base and my penis shaft at night, making me think about the demonic voluptuous tavern wench, damn enough devil, enough. You can also trap Stoker's Dracula in a coffin, which it sleeps by placing a branch of wild rose upon its tomb, not sure where that comes from. You can kill it with a sacred bullet in other ways.

And in the book, Count Dracula is killed by a knife to the heart. There's the metal one. It's not sacred or anything. After he's attacked during the day when his powers are useless, his head is also cut off. And Vlad the Impaler was killed. There's another parallel. His head was also cut off.

His head was cut off and brought to the Sultan that he was kind of fighting at the time, this Mehmed. We'll talk about later. Quincidence? Probably not. Probably not. The Old Wooden stake mythology wasn't included in the Stoker's version of the tale, but Romanian legends did speak of killing vampires, the Stregoy and Nosferato, with a wooden steak from time to time.

Does the steak come from Vlad Dracula's much preferred method of execution? Because no one loved killing people with a wooden steak more than Vlad Dracula. Dude, he never came across a sharp piece of wood, but he didn't love so much. He wanted to stick it in somebody. Seems likely to me that there's some kind of association between the wooden stake. Now used to kill a vampire and the wooden stakes Vlad the impaler impaled people on. You know, I don't know. By the way, a source I rely on heavily for this episode is Dracula. Prince of many faces his life in times. Radu, are Florescu and Raymond T. McNally. It's one of the better books I've read

on the episode so far. So much information, they really like painstaking research. These are like the best experts on Vlad Dracula in the world. And so let's talk about the man behind the monster. Let's suck up on the impaler himself. Hail Nimrod, please give us some sweet 15th century suckage. Pearsist with the wisdom of the great impaler. Oh no, we Nimrod got of the suck.

Soon, soon, it'll happen soon. But before we dig into Vlad Dracula's life and the horrific atrocities associated with him, let's give us light some context. Because when you talk about these dudes without giving us some context, it's like, if you just start talking about some crazy medieval shit going on, but don't relate that, you know, that it was fairly common for the day, it makes these people seem way crazier

than they may have actually been. Like, like, flag would be off the fucking charts. Like, like, if you think about like, what goes on in the news, just in general, if flag, flag to your paler was just impaling people, willy nilly and dorking people left and right Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir, had yet to reject the Roman Catholic Church and form Lutherism, which would then splinter into all the various denominations of today's Protestant Christianity. That wouldn't happen until 1517. The Anglican Church of England wouldn't break off from Rome in the Vatican until 1534.

In Eastern Europe, you did now have the Eastern Orthodox Church, which had officially broken off from Rome during the great schism of 1054, but really had been run outside of Rome for centuries already. From the fourth to the 11th century, Rome had been linked with the Holy Roman Empire of Western Europe and was its religious capital, while Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire, a rival empire to the east, and church leaders were there were more linked with the culture and people of Eastern Europe than Western Europe and the Vatican. And then in 1054, they dished officially split into two distinct church hierarchies.

You also had the Ottoman Turks living in present-day Turkey, Muslims who wanted to advance their territories and culture into Western Europe, Central and Western Europe. Everyone wanted to spread their faith and by faith, I mean, personal wealth and power and influence. There was also a few Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe during the life of Lad, but they mainly lived to the north of Valkia and Transylvania and the Kingdom of Hungary. And they didn't have the numbers or influence at that time to hold any kind of political or military pull whatsoever,

not significant at all or really mentioned at all in this story. So essentially, there were three major powers. The countries, provinces and towns aligned with the Holy Roman Empire, religiously headquartered in Rome, but politically and militarily kind of centered in present-day Germany. And then the second one, you have the countries aligned with the Eastern Orthodox Church, primarily headquartered in Constantinople, the Romanian people of Lachia and Transylvania, many Hungarians, and others were aligned with them. And then finally you have the Islamic Turks to the southeast. And present day Romania was pretty much right fucking smack in the middle of all these three major powers.

And so a lot of diplomacy had to go on in Vlad's day in Valkia, especially in Valkia. Situated in present day Romania, just south of Translvania, also in present day Romania, was Translvania. And Vlad was a prince of Valkia. His father and grandfather also ruled this land, and he had more ancestors that were rulers. They all had to deal with a lot of different factions in addition to being a butcher.

Vlad was also an amazing diplomat, schooled in a variety of cultures, speaking numerous languages. Yeah, cause again, Valkyrie, but it right up against the Ottoman Empire, like literally bordered it. So whenever the Turks wanted to push into Europe, they pushed into Valkyrie first, you know,

lucky Valkyries. And the kingdom of Hungary, a nation sometimes aligned with the Eastern Church and sometimes aligned with Rome, wanted to fight back, they would push back, right back through Valkyries. So basically, if fucking sucked, to be a peasant from Valkyrie in the 15th century, like, you know, again, present-day Romania,

you were always getting sacked by someone. Someone was always either trying to take you over or pushing through your fucking town where you know they weren't being like super friendly, trying to go kick somebody else's ass. And there was very little stability there, very little political stability. Within Velocchio, there were also, you know,

different communities, there were sacks and settlers from the north who tended to align with the Roman Catholic Church, and then there were the local Romanian followers of the Eastern Church. And so they would fight amongst each other so much turmoil. You know, a lot of little towns making a deal with the Kingdom of Hungary one day, and then the Turks the next deals made with Rome, deals made with the Kingdom of Poland.

There were several other countries and principalities most ran by various warlords who held various titles, and they were always making deals with somebody, always trying to fucking align with somebody. And leaders themselves were also constantly getting killed or ran out of town. Territories constantly trading back and forth the boundaries of territories, constantly in flux. And this is important to understand in today's story, you know, because in general leading through benevolence didn't really work. To leave this part of Europe at this time, you had to make

your enemies afraid to fuck with you if you wanted to stay in power for any length of time at all. You had to make your followers kind of afraid to challenge you as well. And Vlad wasn't the only scary ruler not by any means at this time. There was like the king of Naples in Vlad's time, Ferdinand, the first, not only had his enemies killed, like every ruler did back then he had them essentially Stuffed he had a mummified He had a fun thing about that. He has fucking enemies mummified And then their bodies dressed up as they had dressed in

In life, you know at the time they were killed and then he would place them in the Royal Museum like to be on display Like just fucking standing there some dude. He had killed and he had a whole hall of these people he had killed. And these former political rivals, and then he would meet with current political rivals. And he'd meet with them in the museum grounds. So they'd literally be surrounded by previous opponents he had killed. Not a very subtle message of,

you know, you can do it the way I want, or you can fucking end up part of this little display I got going on here. I mean, that's pretty sick Also medieval torture devices like the rack and the wheel are routinely being used by various rulers The Turks were fond of like sawing the occasional dude in half people are being beheaded on the reg Leaders are constantly being killed by someone else who wants to take their shot on the throne I kept thinking of Game of Thrones while researching this episode, very games of Thronish.

I always thought games of Game of Thrones was pretty like, you know, out there, pretty outlandish, and it is with some of the paranormal aspects, but as far as the intrigue and the fighting and the people challenging each other for the throne all the time, oh man, it was totally like that. Absolutely like that at this time. And these are the times that Dracula lived in.

So now that the stage has somewhat been set, let's dig into greater detail as we examine the life of Vlad Teppis, Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula, with the bloodiest time-suck timeline done so far. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. All right, we start off from 1431. Vlad was born sometime between 1428 and 1431, most likely in 1431. Dracula was born in Zika Showa.

Zika Showa, a city founded in the 12th century, when German craftsmen and merchants known as the Transylvania and Saxons were invited to Transylvania by the King of Hungary to settle and defend the frontier of his realm, from the Turks, one of the safest cities in Transylvania in the 15th century, was surrounded by a giant thick stone wall with giant defensive towers up to 10 feet thick. Towers called bastions with aerosolids and openings to poor hot oil on attackers.

One of the richest cities in the area, they manufactured jewelry, you know, made jewelry and other fine goods there, traded it around Europe. And Ziggaswarra sat in Velakia which laid directly as I said south of Transylvania a province of modern-day Romania that in Vlad's day was somewhat sovereign I say somewhat because back then it was always you know for the most part aligned with somebody It was always aligned to certain degree with someone You know usually with like the Kingdom of Hungary. It's the Northwest occasionally with the Kingdom of Poland North of Hungary, it's the Northwest, occasionally with the Kingdom of Poland, north of Hungary, most of the time through Hungary or through separate means aligned with the Holy Roman Empire to the west of Hungary, and sometimes they'd have multiple places that would

be allied with, and occasionally also with the Ottoman Empire to the southwest and Turkey, the Ottomans would allow it to them to govern themselves, but there was always some kind of condition. So I'm kind of trippy to have to be paid or something, some sort of treaty that was formed. Vlad was born the son of Vlad Tudrakuil, Prince of Alakia, not not exactly who his mom was, record keeping was not tip-top at this time in this land. Again, the Romanian people didn't develop a written language until a little while later, and they didn't have like, you know, court historians, like some other places in Europe

did. So they just didn't keep the records that some other places in Europe kept around this time. So a lot of it's lost to history. And in addition, several, you know, to having several wives over his lifetime, Vlad Drakul had numerous mistresses. So it's a little confusing who Vlad the impeler's mom was. Because for a claim to the throne, it didn't actually matter who the mom was in this area

at this time. You just needed to claim descent from male royalty to lay claim to the throne. Vlad had an older brother, Prince Marcia, and a younger brother, Radu. He also had numerous other half siblings, including another Prince Marcia and another Vlad, Vlad the Monk. First names associated with male ancestors of renown were common. You could just have numerous siblings of the same first name in the same family.

How fucking confusing would that be? Just, Vlad, Vlad, come here. Vlad, no, no, no, no, not you. Vlad, no, not you either. Vlad, goddamn it, I already said not you, you fucking half way, Vlad, hey Vlad, hey, ah shit, god damn I forgot what I was gonna tell you. Oh, oh wait, Vlad, I Vlad. Hey, ah shit. God damn, I forgot I was gonna tell you. Oh, oh wait, Vlad, I said not you. Well Vlad came from a long line of rulers

who had ruled various areas of present day Romania, starting at least as far back as Bizarre of the Great who ruled in Veloccia in the mid 14th century. His grandpa, Mercy of the Great, ruled uninterrupted in Veloccia, rare at that time, from 1386 to 1418. However, while he was technically the head of Velocchio, Mercy also signed a truce with the Ottoman Turks in 1393, submitting both a tribute, a large amount of money to be given yearly, and he would hand over also many of Velocchio's young men to the Turks each year,

to be raised by the Ottomans and conscripted into their army. Another means of keeping Valkyrie subservient to Islamic rule. How fucked up is that for peasants? You know, you're later, your print signs a deal to hand your sons over to a foreign ruler. But it's not like you get a lot of alternatives, you know. The main alternative was to be fucking destroyed. Do you want to hand over your sons or do you want to all die? There's a lot of deals like that being made at that time. And also part of this deal, it kept the Turks from being allowed to settle on Valkyne's

soils. Overall, he got a better deal than most. Mercy also formed an alliance a short time later with Sigismund of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman Emperor at that time, participated in crusades against the Turks to avoid total subjugation. And this is a weird thing that happened a lot in the history of Valkyne that I read about. Using the book again, that Dracula of many faces life and times. These guys, especially in the lot yet, they'd make a deal with some Christian ally one year

and then decide to launch like a mini crusade against the Muslim invaders to the south. And then when that didn't work, they'd make a deal the next year with like the Islamic Sultan rather than just be totally wiped out and trying to like, oh man, it was not no, no, it wasn't our idea. It was not as yard troops. It was their troops. We were actually trying to stop them. man, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,-Fi, cell phones, interstates, airplanes. Took a long fucking time to move your giant army that you have to feed. You have to drag all these cannons. You know, and you've got to move it from one group of assholes. You've been slapping around, you know, down in Asia Minor or somewhere.

And then you've got some other group of assholes up in Greece giving you problems. You've got to fucking move them all over there. You know, a lot of times it would just be easier to give the second group of assholes, you know, just demand some money from them. Maybe some men for your army, and it just kind of works out for both places, and then they don't have to all fucking die, fighting. You don't have to move your army. It's just more beneficial to your overall plans long term for world domination than trying to kind of like take over everybody at the same time. So there's always these deals being made. Vlad's father, Vlad Drakul, also ruled,

and as I said, was the one-time Prince of Valkyria. He also fought for both the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, in various battles against church, and this was something that happened. They kind of aligned themselves, which with whatever half of the church made the most sense at the time,

the two halves of the church, sometimes it actually come together in the occasional crusade against the Muslims. And the blending of Roman and Eastern Christianity is how the name actually, how the name Dracool became associated with the devil. Because the Holy Roman Emperor had founded in order of knights, you know, like I said,

the order of a round table pizza that exists to this day. No, the order of the dragon. And because the Holy Roman Emperor founded this group, it was a Catholic order of nights. And when Dracool returned to Valkyrie, the local saw the new dragon insignia on his shield and on the coins he mined. Because you know, Catholics were, they didn't, they liked statues and fucking images and things. But the Eastern Orthodox did not. They kind of found that to be a form of idolatry. They didn't like it as much.

And they started calling him Dracool, which is Roman for dragon, you know, the Order of the Dragon, but Romanian for both dragon and the devil, primarily the devil. And so those not fond of him, you know, would just take the devil connotation because again, it could mean devil and Romanian. So ironically, the name Dracula, which is son of the devil, Dracula being devil, Dracula being son of the devil originated from hisool being devil, Dracula being son of the devil, originated from his dad being an honored member of a small band of Christian warriors. So it's so funny to me how meanings can bend over time and bend because of silly coincidences.

Well, because of their noble heritage, the young Vlad Dracula and his brothers were given the best for lock-in education. One could get at that time. They were all taught how to count two seven without getting help or using their fingers even so that's pretty cool No, they were taught from age of five how to ride an unsettled horse at full gallop Seriously to rule and Valkyrie had to fight and to fight you had to fight on a fucking horse

So they were also taught archery swimming fencing court customs history manners They were also raised Catholic because their father's deal with the dragon order But also probably raised, that was probably like in secret because it wasn't cool in Veloccia to be Catholic at that time. So maybe publicly, they also went to some Eastern Orthodox masses, trying to play both sides, again, with diplomacy.

Young Dracula also watched his father try and earn and then keep his title of Prince of Veloccia by constantly negotiating with other rulers, saw his father switch allegiances continually from the Holy Roman Empire to the Emperor to the Islamic Sultan. How to do that in 1437 when Sigisman died. In 1442, his dad tried to please local leaders and tent on Wajid war against the Turks and also tried to appease the Turks enough from kind of dethroning him. It wasn't easy. In 1442, he double crossed the Sultan Mirad, the second ruler of the Ottoman Empire,

by allowing Turkish soldiers to be slaughtered by Crusaders on Valkyne Sook. Because he had a enormous pressure at home to help the Crusades. And because he was part of this order of the dragon and made this oath to fight the Muslims. But again, he's also made a deal with the Muslims to not fucking kill him and give him a tribute

and blah, blah, blah. You know, a lot of shit always going on. And the Sultan punishes him by putting him in prison, putting him in prison for about a year. And by, which in during that time he let his oldest son, Prince Marcia, kind of run the empire in his place. And then he also took his two younger sons, Vlad Dracula and Radu took him hostage.

So that's, yeah, again, like this, one of those things that the Muslims would do, not an uncommon tactic of the Turks, they would take children of a subject, really on their behalf to ensure their loyalty. And for the next six years, Dracula and Radu were raised by Turkish royalty, living in the Sultans court,

away from their family, unable to even contact their family. They were raised by members of living in the Sultan's court away from their family, unable to even contact their family. They were raised by members of an entirely foreign culture and religion. They didn't speak the foreign tongue. Dracula did learn to speak fluent Arabic, learned the ways of the Turks, knowledge that would serve him very well later when he would fight against him. And overall, it is believed that Dracula and Radu were treated well by the Turks. They were educated in the ways of Islamic royalty, as if they had been royalty themselves.

But they had to be fucking nervous, you know, all the time, because if they tried to return home, or if their dad pissed off the Sultan at any time, they could easily be killed. You never know, you could wake up any day, find out that your dad just double crossed the Sultan and you're the fucking person that gets killed for it. And they also like had to like, you know,

follow some very strict rules. They couldn't reach out to anybody from home as they did. They were fucking toast and they learned about that first hand. They witnessed somebody else who did that and was punished severely. The sons of a Serbian ruler who were also kind of held captive along with them. There was these two kids who chose to send a letter to their dad in 1441 and then the Sultan found out and he punished them. Holy fuck that he punished them. He burned their eyes out with red hot irons Of all the ways you could get your eyes Fucking taken out. I Don't know. I feel like I feel like red hot irons has to be up at the top of the worst ways and

Yeah, permanently blinded obviously permanently just figured these these And after that, I'm guessing if they weren't before, you know, Radu and Dracula were fucking following, following commands just to the letter. I mean, can you imagine how well you would have paid attention in school if on the first day of school, your teacher would have burned the eyes out of a fellow student for passing a note. You're going to be fucking a student from that point going forward. On 1444, called to fulfill his oath to the order of the dragon, Vlad Dracula allows his eldest son, Prince Marcia, lead a small group of troops into battle against the Turks supporting a larger contingent of other regional crusaders.

You hear what I'm saying? He's his fucking kids are held by the Sultan and he's trying to sneak some troops to fulfill his oath to the order of the dragon, even though by doing that, he could get his kids killed. Well, word gets back to the Sultan and they don't kill Vlad or Radu, but how betrayed young Dracula most have felt. Like his life just tossed aside by his dad. Radu ended up becoming the boy toy of the Sultan's son, Mehmed, after that, to survive. They were not treated as well after that. So now Dracula is hearing about, if not actually hearing, his younger brother getting raped. He's still in Turkish captivity. He's not being treated as well now because

his dad hung him out to try. 1447, meanwhile, while flat or Dracula is still being in prison, things are not going well for him. Things are not going well for his dad or older brother back home either. Political rival and staunch enemy of the Turks. John Hanyadi, I always want to say Hondai, like the car when I see his name. A man always a kind of leery of Vlad Drakul because of his dealings with the Ottomans, a guy who never made deals with the Turks really. He launched a smear campaign against Vlad Drakul and Prince Mercy, his son,

eager to to throne the family. And he leads a revolt against them and Vlad Drakul is killed by a mob featuring some of the boyers, the aristocrats of that area and the marches near Bucharest. And then Prince Marcia is captured tortured and then buried alive in Turkovista. Well, when news of his father's death

reaches Vlad Drakula, he is set free by the Turks now. But he remains with them, at least initially, and has made an officer in the Turkish army. He'd been with them for all his adolescence. And it's also made clear to him that it's in his benefit to kind of stay with them, because he's in line for his dad's throne, and he can get his dad's throne a little easier with Turkish military support. So the next year, 1448, young Dracula uses his Turkish connections to take power back. He's going to take the power back.

I don't know why that popped in my head, little Chuck D, I think. Take power back in Vlakia. His father and brother's killer, John Hunyadi, had recently lost a few battles in a separate power struggle with some Serbians, and Dracula was able to push the current prince Vladislav II. Another kind of co-conspirator in Vlad Drakul and Prince Mercias' murders, off of the throne. But because the Turkish army he came with into Velakia did not pursue Vladislav's army towards Hungary

and instead just kind of like, we're like, oh, we got him and then just return home to Turkey and they didn't leave him enough soldiers to properly defend the throne. Vladislav retook it just two months later. So initially, he only led Velakia for two months and then he had to flee Northeast to Moldavia retook it just two months later. So initially, he only led Velocchio for two months and then he had to flee Northeast to Moldavia

where the reigning prince was his uncle. This is something else I noticed happen all the time, kind of like Game of Thrones. European royalty were constantly marrying other European royalty to spread their bloodlines into as many positions of power as possible and to strengthen legences with allies and also to keep potential enemies at bay. You know, It's kind of like a nice insurance policy against outright defeat.

Your king grids taking over, but you're able personally to escape. You fucking sneak over some other kingdom where you're maybe your sister or half brother. You know, is a queen or prince. You build up a little support there, right? Yeah, you marry someone else in that court. And then you get them to come with you and take your kingdom back with the new blood tie to the place you were just at and then now they're tied to your new kingdom as well. It was kind of like I like all scratch your back of you scratch mine except it

was more of a all-knock your sister up a few fuck my aunt to kind of deal. Well 1449 1451, Dracula lived in the Moldavian capital of Suschava for two years in his uncle's court, those two years, and then his uncle and ally is assassinated by his brother. That kind of shit happened all the time too, right? Cause dudes back then they had, a lot of kids, a lot of mistresses, a lot of kids, and like I mentioned earlier,

it didn't matter who your mom was. Any male heir would have a legitimate claim with a throne if his dad had royal blood. It was the king. So these guys like having, you might have 10 fucking kids, and I have 10 boys, and all 10 of those boys have some kind of a claim for the throne.

So brothers were constantly killing each other back then. You'd have three brothers, seven half brothers, all wanted to have your spot. And a lot of times it didn't really, it wasn't like they were raised together either, so they didn't have that emotional connection. You know, they were raised by their separate mom, so really it was even though your blood related, it was kind of some stranger who just wanted to fucking kill you. And again, super games that Thronese. Well Dracula, Escape Moldavia, only to make

it to Transylvania, whereas Father and Brothers Killer, John Hunyadi, the founder of Hyundai, not the founder of Hyundai, still had political power. He hid in various Romanian villages for the better part of a year, hiding from John Hunyadi, Hunyadi, but then eventually forming a truce of some sort with him. And then they must have worked things out, and the details of this are lost in history, but they worked things out enough where Dracula was enlisted by Hunyadi in defending Transylvania from the Turkish advance because he was a very good military leader. On February 3rd, 1451, the Sultan Mirad II died of a stroke and his son, Prince Mehmed, took the throne

and then wanted to make a name for himself by kicking some Christian ass. And he stormed into Velocchio with tens of thousands of men and big castle wall knocking down cannons. This is a coolest shit I think. This is in 1453. Momet had a cannon specifically built for him nicknamed the Basilica that was 27 feet long, had a 48-inch bore and was capable of firing 600 pound cannonballs, each propelled by 150 pounds of gunpowder. Took 700 men, 30 oxen to move this fucking thing. And it can only be fired seven times a day, seven times every 24 hours to prevent overheat. And they took that motherfucker to Constantinople in 1453.

The Sultan did. You know, it's currently that city was currently under the control of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine, leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the last Byzantine Emperor, by the way, his death would mark the end of the Roman Empire, which had continued in the east after it collapsed in the west for 977 years. The Byzantine Empire had controlled nearly all the land that boarded the Mediterranean, and it's high of its power in 555 AD, and now after a med brought 2,000 soldiers, 2,000, and the biggest cannon the world had ever seen to siege it, it was gonna be in Turkish hands.

Can you imagine that? It kind of reminds me of the fucking the 300 movie. When the Islamic forces in that movie come against the Spartans and there was just that fucking wall of dudes, just that gigantic army and then they got some big like, I mean, they had supernatural stuff in that movie

but they got like big machines, you know, that can and must have been like that. I mean, they had supernatural stuff in that movie, but they got like big machines, that Canon must have been like that. I mean, can you imagine? You defend in this city and then 200,000 soldiers are fucking headed towards you. And amongst other things, they have this fucking monstrous Canon, unlike anything you have ever seen

that shoots 600 pound Canon balls. And you know that thing, that's the thing you could see fly through the air. Like you would watch that fucker. It's not like a bullet that you can't see. You would just watch this giant 600 pound ball headed towards the wall of your city or headed towards you and just like,

oh shit, man. And that thing, yeah, was very good at just smashing the walls and it smashed the walls of Constantinople. And by the way, with the walls and the siege technology, that's because these people had fortifications everywhere back then. There was castles, walled cities, fortress, all over the fucking place. And the walls would be up to like 14 feet thick. And then these walls would have the occasional turret or tower with archers shooting through arrow slots.

They have moats, draw bridges, they have black magicians making chimeras, all that stuff except for the magicians and the Cameras. And then there'd be like a little suburb of sorts around these castles, around these cities, these walled cities. And when the bad guys would come, everyone would just retreat behind the wall and just kind of hope for the best. And then the siege army would come with our cannons and all their dudes and their ladders trying to if I can get in and then defenders would be

poiling boiling oil from holes and deterrents to advance and soldiers trying to scale the walls, arrows, spears flying all over the fucking place. You got the cavalry, chain mail, swords, axes, mace, like all that shit. Like, can you imagine watching any one of those battles are participating in one? You know, oh my God.

Any one of the many, many, many medieval battles of Europe would make the best UFC fight in history. Look like some silly, little kid playground shit. Like you think Connor McGregor is tough? Is he as tough as one of the thousands of soldiers in these wars who marched to almost certain, horrific death? Holy shit life was brutal back then. Well, when news reached John Hunyadi in Dracula in Transylvania,

the Constantinople had fallen to the Turks. They knew they were in trouble. They knew Mamed, who had now declared himself Caesar in addition to Sultan, was not gonna stop there. He was gonna plow on through, and he wanted to take, you know, ideally, all of Europe, and they were gonna be next, you know. This is a dude who would go on to become known

as Mamed the conqueror. He was very ambitious. Well, 1456 Hun Hayadi, who is one of the greatest military commanders of his lifetime, Andraakula, over a series of battles culminating in heroic defense of Belgrade, where the Sultan himself was wounded in battle. They sent the Turks back out of Transylvania. These guys were good at being generals. And then in 1456, Vlad Stormback into Velakia and assumed the throne, he'd held only once before for two months, again defeating Vladislav. This time killing him in hand-to-hand combat killed one of his data and brothers, conspirators, and then their murders.

Because there can be only one Highlander. Well, Dracula quickly made a deal with Assultan, remember, he knew this family well from his years of youthful captivity, and he agreed to pay him an annual tribute of 2000 duckets and allow them access to Valkia to go, you know, fuck with other places. And then he got to build and forchers. He almost immediately began repairing old castles and strongholds that had fallen into ruin, building new ones, preparing to defend his land from the Turks. He'd soon stop bowing down to it. In 1457, Vlad solidified his control over Valkia by building a powerful castle fortress in Turgovisa and then by inviting all the boyars to his newly rebuilt Great Hall. Let's take a second to have a note on the boyars because I hadn't heard that term before.

Who were the boyars? The boyars of Valkia were the noble class of landowners. They were the local aristocracy. And the title boyar was a title either inherited or granted by the hospodar or Lord Slash Prince, often together with an administrative kind of, you know, function this title was given. And the boyars held much of the political power in the principalities before, during, and after Dracula's time.

They actually did until the 19th century. The political system in this area would oscillate back and forth between oligarchy and in autocracy, with the power concentrated in the hospitars' hands and then distributed out from there to the boyars. And the boyars, it was like a feudal system. It was an Eastern European feudal system.

Essentially, they were given land by the hospitar for some kind of political or military reason. And then that land was handed down from one generation to the next, and then the peasant class, the large peasant class, worked this land. They worked for the hospitals, they worked for the boyars, and who could not only farm, but like they could own entire villages. So that big system, which has been around forever,

of the haves and the have-nots. So essentially the boyars, they were like local warlords. And previously in Veloccia before this system here with Vlad taking power, they really kind of got to decide who was the prince. Like to be the prince, you had to kind of get the boyars to approve of you to have this leadership position. And because of his education,

because his father, grandfather, great grandfather had all dealt with the boyars, Dracula knew how important it would be to his reign to change this power balance, to reduce their power. Because they were, again, constantly ousting rulers when they thought they could be replaced by someone else who might increase their wealth instead of further. And it was the boyars who went along with John Hunyadi in Vladislav earlier to kill Vlad's father and brother, plotted against him and Vlad had watched his father try to appease them for

years, you know, the constant diplomacy kissing this guy's ass kissing that guy's ass making this treaty with this dude making this treaty with that guy. And Vlad was fucking done. He was done kissing ass. He invited hundreds of these boyards to a big dinner and his newly constructed fortress, ask them how many lords they'd had over a 50 year period. And when they couldn't remember because there have been so many, so many, so many room from power by these dudes,

he had them all impaled. All of them. Yep. He impaled roughly 500 of them. Well, how does impaling work? Well, listen to this little excerpt from a British documentary on Vlad called Lost Worlds, The Real Dracula.

Now, the common way would be to put your enemy on the end, the sharpened end of this steak, pierce them through the navel, through the heart and hoist them up and leave them to die, a relatively quick death. That was from the unfortunate, because if you really wanted to make an example of you, you take this rounded end and you grease it and then you'd pull your legs apart and insert it into your rectum. So through your bottom and gradually the steak would work its way through your body.

This might take a couple of days, okay, so you'd be literally dying for hours. I like that she says bottom. I like that she says through your bottom, like rectum and bottom instead of ass. That's very funny to me. When you're talking about something like so horrific, but then you kind of use a little kid term, you know, and then he would take this steak and he would stick it. He would rupture your body. He would stick it in your bottom and it would tear apart your organs, initially going in

your poopy pants. It would go up to your poopy pants, through your bottom and rip apart your vital organs and you would bleed out and you would say mommy Please I don't like this and please take it out of my bottom, please But anyway, it sounds horrible. What a fucking message that sent holy shit Listen up everybody fuck what you heard before there's a new sheriff in town things are gonna be run a little different around here now Well after the maskery rounded up some more boyars from the area, shackled them all together, marched them two days away, forced them to build a new castle form. He took more nobles and made them build castle Dracula. All snow is a Pinaria castle built

near the border of Alachian, Transylvania, built upon the ruins of a previous fortress, and castle Pinaria is badass. It was perched high on a steep precipice of rock, access to the Citadel ruins. Today is made by climbing 1,480 concrete stairs. The castle took up the entire top of a large steep hill. No easy way to get up to it. And the walls were built nine feet thick to help withstand Turkish cannon fire. I mean, the Basilica, then it's going to fuck up anything. But you know, it's probably not going to be able to drag that all the way over there. Brick and the stone held together with lime mortar, which is interesting.

I watched this one video about how the lime mortar kind of, it doesn't solidify the way the other mortar does. And so it allows for a little wiggle room. So like this area was prone to earthquakes and the walls could kind of move with the earthquake and not just crumble down into the valley. And seagull is castle, it would have been a motherfucker because you'd have to drag the cannons up a very steep hill. Again, the Basilica is probably too big to even try

and get anywhere near this castle. And yeah, because they were just so heavy, it would have been literally almost impossible to get them up the steep slope. And can you imagine being some peasant soldier, some fucking cannon fodder trying to attack this mountain top castle? Do you even entertain the possibility

of living through a castle assault? I just, I wonder, you know, when they're getting the order, just wait a minute. Just to be clear, you want us to march up that steep hill where they're shooting fire arrows currently upon us, where they are dumping burning oil, where they can shoot at us with cannons from behind very, very thick stone walls, where they're almost impossible to hit because of the little slots they're hiding behind. And you want us to just, you know, just kind of scamper about the steep hill,

completely exposed out in the open. And then I guess just try to what kind of spider man are way up the walls, up the thick, steep, heavily guarded walls, and just kind of push our way in. That's what you want. Okay, all right, I just, I want to be clear. And if we say no, you'll kill us yourself. Okay, well, hell.

Well, you know what, if you didn't just offer to wash down a big old shit sandwich with a mouthful of sand. Well, hell, fuck it. You know, what's our average life expense? Anyway, 17, 17 years? Well, not fair enough. Come on, boys. Yeah, I guess it's a good time

as any to die violent death today. Okay, so after his castle is done, now many of the former Boyar class have been either impaled or worked to death, Vlad rebuilds the Boyar class for members of the peasant class, a move, which was a new thing, and made him very popular with a poor Romanian.

Because many actually poor Romanian peasants see Vlad Dracula as kind of a robinhood type figure to this day. But was he really doing this to help the poor? Doubtful. He was doing it to build a new noble class who would be extremely loyal to him, served his ends. Dracula also created some new social positions.

One was called the Armas, who were essentially his henchmen. The duty of the Armas was to administer the princess new style of justice to impose decisions voted upon by the council to execute those guilty of crimes against the state. And they too were built out of the peasant class, many not even from Blocke, but instead were hired foreign mercenaries.

He also constructed a personal secret service of sorts, the Sluji and various other military and paramilitary factions. All built out of the peasant class, all loyal to Vlad, all willing to impale a motherfucker at a moment's notice. And he also instituted a new form of diplomacy with foreigners. There's a story about some Italian diplomats, religious men, who sought an audience with

Vlad and did not remove their hats in his presence as a sign of respect, which was custom. They asked them why not, or I'm sorry, Vlad asked them why not, and they told him that their skull caps always remained on, even if they were to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor or the Sultan himself. It just wasn't their custom to ever remove their skullcaps. And then Dracula told them he would be happy to strengthen that custom because he had a very, very dark sense of humor. He sent a guard to go grab some big iron nails and then nailed their fucking skullcaps

to their actual skulls, nailed it to their heads. There was another incident involving two monks who came to visit his palace in Turkobica and Dracula casually showed him This view of this courtyard where numerous people were currently being impaled and Vlad asked them what they kind of thought of it all and One of the monks told him that it was totally cool I didn't say that exactly. Yeah, fuck totally cool, bro No, but he said you know it's cool because he appointed. Vlad was appointed by God to punish evil doers and what he did must be just. And that monk got to walk away.

Well, the other monk told him that God was gonna punish him. He was going to hell for his heinous crimes. And then that monk joined the impaled. Just put him out there on a stake. 1459, now he's feeling firmly in command of his kingdom and he's won more respect from the locals by refusing to pay the annual tribute to the Turks.

He's not going to give him money anymore, and he's not going to allow the Turks to take any of the Lockheed and youth anymore and force him to the Turkish military service. You know, so the peasant class, they fucking love him for stuff like this, especially early in his reign when he's primarily just impaling the wealthy. But his sadistic thirst was not able to be quenched by just impaling the rich. No sir, not when 90% of the population belongs to the peasant class, and that's so many more butts to put sticks in. That's so many more tookaces to throw some sticks in.

So many more, you know, poopy pants to get to Shishko Bobbin. And check out these ridiculous tales of the horrific stuff that Vlad did to the peasant and the boy our class with today's super scary stuff. Apparently, to get a kind of better feel for his land, sometimes Dracula would disguise himself as like a peasant and just kind of wander the countryside, you know, just kind of see what people are up to. Well one day he's doing this and he meets his peasant and he notices the peasant to, and just kind of wander the countryside, you know, and just kind of see what people are up to. Well, one day he's doing this, and he meets his peasant, and he notices the peasant is wearing two short of a shirt.

That's all. This shirt is a little high, like a crop top. It's supposed to be a full shirt. So he orders this dude, brought to the court, and wants to question him. And he finds out that the man's wife has not been, you know, tailoring his clothes properly, hasn't been repairing them in a timely fashion.

So he has her brought to the court, and for for being lazy has her and paled in front of the husband. And but like as a favorite him a favorite that he didn't want because this guy pleaded with him not to do that. But then he gives this dude a new wife who's going to do a better job tailoring and actually has her come in and see the old wife stuck on the stick and is like, you don't want to fucking end up like that to you. Well, do a little better job with these crop tops.

And he did more than just impale people for the littlest of social infractions. He'd also burn them, he'd burn them alive. There's a story where he invited local poor, the lame, the ill, beggars, the blind, others he didn't feel contributed much to the block in society. He invited them all to a big feast in this big hall. It gives them all kinds of food, lots of meat and wine. And then he has while they're eating and getting drunk, he has the doors to the big hall. It gives them all kinds of food, lots of meat and wine. Then he has

while they're eating and getting drunk, he has the doors to the big hall, locked from the outside, and he burns the entire fucking building down with all of them inside. Now in the Romanian oral tradition, because again, remember, they didn't write all this stuff down. It would just be passed along early from generation to generation. He supposedly said, regarding his reasoning for doing this particular atrocity, he said, these men live off the sweat of others, so they are useless to humanity. It is a form of thievery. In fact, the masked robber in the forest demands your purse, but if you are quicker with your hand and more vigorous than he, you can escape from him. However, these vagabonds

take your belonging gradually by begging, but they still take it. They are worse than the robbers. May these men be eradicated from my land. Can you imagine if Vlad was a politician today? What do we do about the homeless problem? I don't know. It's fucking let's burn him. It's Burn him alive. Simple. Just Burn him alive. Next, next question. Next problem. Apparently Dracula was real hard on vagabonds, not a big fan of petty thieves and free loaders. There is an insane tale about a gypsy leader. He had condemned to die for general kind of vagabondry. And then the man protested that being impaled or burned were illegal. Those were legal punishments with black in law. So Dracula, he's like, okay, that's fine. I don't have to impale you. I don't have to burn you. And instead, but this sounds so much worse to me,

he boils him alive. And then his legend has it forces members of this dude's tribe, these dudes gypsy friends to fucking eat him, to eat his flesh. Now, if that actually did happen, again, we don't know for sure about all the details of these things, because some of the things, you know, were written by kind of like other're written by other historians from other lands who would document what Vlad was up to,

maybe when visiting and things or what they heard, and then a lot of it was like oral traditions, but if that actually did happen, I mean, what a weird walk home for the members of that guy's tribe, that would be. Like, what do you do in that situation? It has to be like so quiet, or what do you talk about? I mean, do you talk about having just eaten your leader? I mean, did any of those guys at least think even if it was just for like a flickering moment of

it's like, fuck, man. Wow. Glad is love was he was fucking delicious. I gotta say he was fucking delicious. I mean, tender, surprisingly Tinder for an old fella, juicy. I mean, a lot of flavor, a lot of flavor. Did not expect that. I kind of wish I would have asked for seconds, but it just seemed weird at the time. Well, think of boiling someone alive and feeding them to their relatives,

or friends is the most appraved act of Vlad Dracula committed. And you would be wrong. Apparently, he hated adultery a lot, hated it very much, hated it more than laziness, and any wife found guilty of committing adultery, had her sexual organs cut off, like literally would have like their tits cut off. And then would be skin to life, and then left in a public square, skinless for all to see, the skin hanging from a separate pole next to the body. How is that for some sight seen when you're out with the kids walking around town? Mommy, what is that? Oh, that's

nothing, sweetie. That's just some skinless other mommy. That's all sweetie. You don't want to stray. You don't want to stray. Ah, ah, not from Daddy. Nope, no little girl. That's why I singing that Lola by at night. You don't want to give your vagina away, because you might end up with that skin some day. You don't want to give your vagina away cause you might end up with that skin someday. You don't wanna give your vagina away cause it might get the skin of your tits cut off and flayed. Something like that. I don't feel like I didn't have the melody quite right

but it's something in that ballpark. He also once had a red hot iron steak shoved into an adulterer's vagina, pushing the steak up through her organs and eventually out of her fucking mouth. Like just made her like a shishkbop, which I guess all the impaling did. He then had the woman tied to a pole naked and then just left her in the courtyard until

she just rotted to be coming to skeleton. What the fuck? That is like a scene straight out of hell. Guessing cheating was extremely rare in towns with rotting adulterers staked in the courtyard. Dracula also had people decapitated, had their noses, ears, genitalia, limbs cut off. He blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, boiled, roasted, hacked, fed people to wild animals, made use of the wheel, hot coals,

other forms of medieval torture. But his favorite method always was impalement. He had stakes permanently prepared in the courtyard of the palace of Turgovica, that place where he watched the monks watching him impalement earlier. Dracula was often present at the time of punishment. He liked to watch them slowly die, to stretch out how long it took to kill him. Dracula had the stakes carefully rounded at the end, bathed in oils, that the entrails

of the victims should not be pierced by a wound to quickly fatal. Sometimes to lower them onto the steak, this was a weird thing I came across. A victim's legs would be spread apart, like they'd be tied to horses, so you'd have one leg tied to one leg tied to another horse, then you'd walk the horse to part and kind of like a turkey wish, when I guess kind of popped the person's pelvis so their legs are going in that, what that, that splits position, not like the front splits, but the side splits. And then, then you just have like the rectum, which is fully exposed now, carefully just sat down upon a stake.

And it wasn't just men being appaled. Women, even fucking babies, even fucking babies were impaled. Sometimes the stakes were placed through other parts of the body, like the victims, chest, next heads, the craziest stake thing. Oh my God, he was accused of putting stakes through both of mother's breasts and then she had two babies and he fucking staked the babies on the breasts, like one baby, each breast stake. What the fuck? Jesus. Dracula had entire villages of those he

considered unworthy, burned and hacked to pieces. There was some description, somebody wrote of like hacking them, like there was like, like there were cabbage. There was some description, somebody wrote it like, hacking them like they were cabbage. It's fucking, oh, he allegedly once murdered a group of 600 sacks and merchants and paling many, putting others into a giant cauldron, adapted so their heads could peek out and then it had the boiling water poured upon them, like so it slowly kind of raised up.

So you could just, you know, you could hear their screams and see their faces as they're getting boiled alive. He was alleged to set out a table sometimes and just dine amongst the bodies of the impaled. You know, seven nice meal, you know, while some peasants blood out and ride around him and they're dine agony. How much without fucking, how weird would that be to be like the waiter to be the assistant? Would you like another biscuit? Meanwhile, there's just something dude behind you. Please, please, I heard so much.

I'm sorry, what do you say? Do you say strawberry jam or strawberry rhubarb? If that, oh God, that's sorry, the guy just, the impaled guy behind me, one of the many guys dying right behind me is just being so loud right now. In times of battle, Dracula was alleged to check the wounds of his own men when the day's fighting was done.

And if someone was wounded from behind, he would impale them his own dudes for being cowards. But the craziest thing he done, and if someone was moving from behind, he would impale them, his own dudes, for being cowards. But the craziest thing he did, the thing that seemed to stand out the most to me is an image of just unimaginable horror because of the sheer number of victims in this one event, is a massacre that has been since referred to as the forest of the impaled.

And this in the summer of 1462, Vlad Dracula is battling the Turks in Valkia. It recently requested aid from the Kingdom of Hungary, sent messages to Rome to gather support there for a great Christian crusade, again Sultan Mehmed in the Turks. He knew he didn't have the men to fight off the Ottomans alone. And he didn't seem to really believe this is a weird thing too, in the ideals of the Crusade. As Barbaric and sadistic as he was, and obviously he was, what I just told you, he was also very concerned about his soul and his salvation. And he was, and obviously he was, what I just told you, he was also very concerned

about his soul and his salvation. And he was constantly building monasteries and churches in Velocca and Transylvania to kind of like make up for what the other things he did. And he was going back and forth between each and orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism for his entire adult life for political and diplomatic reasons, but he was always Christian,

he was always committed to the crusade, more committed actually than anybody else in that area. And he just seemed to believe that if he did enough good for Christianity, he would still go to heaven despite these atrocities. Well, in this case, genuine military support never did come from Hungary, Rome or anyone else, and now it was common during Vlad's life.

He usually was fighting alone, fighting the Turks alone, and he was greatly outnumbered, but he was a very cunning military strategist, and he devised various creative ways to compensate for his numerical disadvantage. Like he'd attacked the Turks at night when they were the least prepared for battle, and also knowing that he knew the lay of his homeland far better than they did. He'd lure them into assaults against his very heavily fortified mountain castles. He'd pay people, this is crazy, afflicted with like the plague or leprosy or some other horrible fatal disease to pretend to be Turkish, dress them up in Turkish kind of garb and

pay them to infiltrate the Turkish camps and just basically spread their disease amongst the Ottomans. Well-versed at Arabic and their customs, he himself would also sometimes sneak into the camps with a number of other soldiers, also in disguise, and surprise attack them from within their own encampments. But he was despite all this, he was still losing, still retreating through Velakia up in a Transylvania, and once he had retreated to this headquarters, he had in Tercovista, his palace where he had all the people in pale all the time, he engaged in an act of psychological warfare, again, like just like unimaginable horror, to try and scare the Turks out of his homeland,

and it worked. In Advanced Guard, reached a forest, Advanced Guard of Turks, about 60 miles from the walls of Turkavitsa, where flat in his army had prepared to defend the town against the siege. They got their cannons ready, they're all there inside their forts,

but then again, like 60 miles away, along the route of where the Turks were coming to fight them, he had these soldiers wander into this, again, what became known as the forest of the impaled. Strong along, roughly a mile in a wide semicircle blocking the Turks' path, arranged in a picket fence fashion where the impaled bodies of 20,000 previously captured Turkish soldiers, 20,000 corpses in various states of decay, in various methods of impalement and pailed on pikes, basically in this dense forest, as far as the eye could see, you're just

seeing literally thousands and thousands of dead bodies. Up on fucking sticks in the air. The area just reaped with a stench of human death. Birds of prey and other carrying animals are picking at the remains. I mean what a what a sight like out of fucking hell itself that would be to see. That's how you become the legend of Dracula. Just that I just fucking preposterous level of darkness. Well, the Sultan was so disgusted by this site that he actually went home. He ordered his army to return home.

He just felt that the country was no longer worth the price of victory at that moment. And then to add insult to injury, the plague had really taken hold in his ranks at this time. So, his military strategy from earlier was working. And then he began to also kind of feel that there was some sort of curse that Dracula had laid upon him. Man, 20,000 impaled men. Man, life was good for the stake makers in Vlad's regime,

huh? They had some serious job security. Stake makers had more job security working for Vlad Dracula than they had ever had at any other point in human history before, since. So say, hey, Dad, you're not gonna believe this, but we, oh, man, we just got another order in for stakes. We got an order in for 20,000 more stakes.

20,000 more stakes. Well, I hope no one needs them soon. We just finished last week's order of 5,000 stakes. Okay. Well, Vlad needs them by, he needs them by today. He needs them by now by today them by today. He needs them by now. By today, by now, that's impossible. He needs them by now or we get impaled.

Oh, well, you know what, we can make this work. We can make this, we'll just stop standing there and get to fucking Whittlin. All in all, Dracula was alleged to have killed anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 people viciously during his reign. Again, many by the barbaric methods I've just talked about. And that, my god, is some super scary stuff.

Well, despite beating the larger army of the Turks in battle, Vlad Dracula would still fall from power in late 1462. Sultan Mehmed had grown up with Vlad when Vlad was held hostage by Mehmed's father, we know, when they were kids. But he'd also grown up with Vlad's younger brother, Radu, and the dude he reportedly raped and made his boy toy. We talked about before. And Radu, once he became an adult, unlike Vlad, he never left the Turks.

And so now the Sultan supported Radu's claim to the Vlokian throne, because again, he's a male heir, so he has as much claim to the throne as a fucking Dracula does. And Radu is far more diplomatic than Vlad. And what he does, instead of his like his brother, just trying to rule through terror and just fucking kill his way to the throne, he appeals diplomatically to the remaining boyards who Vlad hadn't impaled and to the

Romanian people and was just basically like, look, you know, eventually the Turks are just gonna take this land. They have vast more numbers. So, you know, you can just keep fighting them and see how that works out and eventually probably I'll die. Or why don't we just work with them like we used to, like my dad used to. You know, Vlad Drakul, pay a small tribute, let them have access to our land, maybe take a couple of boys here and there, but then we could be done with the fighting and most of all, we could be done with all this fucking crazy and paley

weird torture shit that's been going on. And Radu's plea worked. Men began to defect in mass from Vlad's army and started to join Reddo's new army. They saw the right on the wall. The boyards, even some that Vlad had placed in power, also defected to Radu. Remember, he'd stopped impaling just the old guard of wealthy boyards, and basically started impaling fucking everybody. He pushed up a philosophy of it's better to be feared than respected way too far, and in the end, it bit him in the ass. He was just too fucking brutal. He was too sadistic to retain the loyalty of his people. So at the end of 1462, despite having defeated the Turks and battle numerous times, he was re-screeding once again. And this time he made his way back to the castle, Dracula's castle, that Pinarri castle built on the mountaintop, built it over the Arches River,

and Prince Redu sent a contingent of Turks to capture him there, and they trapped him and the few remaining men he had and family members with him inside the castle. And it didn't look good. Looks so bad that one of his mistresses, fearing what the Turks would do to her when she was captured, chose to throw herself from the castle to her death in the river below. To this day, that stretch of river is known as the Princess's River. Well, Dracula himself, legend, has it snuck out into the surrounding forest at night, escaped through a tunnel from the castle that went out into the forest he had built years ago for this very exact purpose, and then he eventually found refuge in the court of that old Christian ally of his King Matthias of Hungary. He appealed to Matthias to help him oust his brother Redu and the Turks off of the Lockhewns' soil and return the land to Christian rule, you know, tried to appeal to his Christian sense of crusader duty, but Matthias, like Radu, was more interested in working with the Turks than he was in fighting them. And he arrested Vlad, and I got to say, pretty tricky way, pretty tricky way.

On December 5th, 1462, Dracula led to believe he and his small band of remaining soldiers and mercenaries would be supported by a large contingent of Matthias' men to fight Redu and the Turks. He's led to believe this and his men are being lowered from the Kunikshin or it's a Kunikshin castle, another majestic mountaintop castle, where they use pulleys to raise lower horses, cannons, et cetera, to and from the castle to the valley below. How fucking cool is that?

Like, and they lowered all of Vlad's men's first. And then when it was his turn to go up to go down, and all his men were already down in the valley below, they just grabbed him and just shackled him. And his men could do nothing because they were down in the valley and they couldn't just like climb their way up. So just had to listen to him scream and watch and watch him be taken. But rather than take him and hand him over to Radu and the Turks, Matthias kept Vlad alive. It would have been politically unwise for his relationships with the West, with the Roman Catholic Church, and various other Christian nations to kill Dracula,

or hand him over to be killed, because despite his sadistic nature, he was still seen as a dude who successfully battle the Turks on behalf of Christianity, and that's a great protector of the Christian faith. So he remained jailed. He remained jailed for roughly 12 years, but it wasn't like jailed jailed. He just wasn't allowed to leave the King's Court. Basically, it was like when he was held captive as a child by the Turks.

The hungaring just kept him as a royal pet of sorts. And then in 1475, Vlad's brother Radoo died of syphilis and the Valkyrie throne was available again. And now for various military reasons, Matthias was open to attacking the Turks and pushing them out of a Lockhe in a crusade on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. So he made Dracula a deal. Convert openly to Catholicism, marry into my family, and all fight to restore you once again as a Prince of Lockheia. Dracula accepts, of course he does. His alternative is to remain, you know, a prisoner. And they march back down to Velakia and Vlad in classic Vlad fashion gets right back to him paling. Oh yeah, he marched through various Romanian and Serbian villages, torturing and paling the shit out of the Turks he found there. In one village, he impaled a bunch of Turkish prisoners in a particularly disgusting fashion. He had their limbs and also their

dicken balls cut off, hacked off, and then had their various parts put up on various stakes, like each part impaled separately. God the dude loves psychological warfare and clearly loved staking the shit out of people. I wonder if any of his minions who had to like do this took pride in their stake arrangements, you know? Just hey, hey, sell, hey, sell, sell. Can you move that leg over to the left a bit? Just just put it no, no, just back by the by the dick. No, no, no, no, by the by the other dick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's the one. That's the one. No, okay, a little higher, little higher. Okay, no, no, just back by the, by the dick. No, no, no, no, by the, by the other dick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's the one, that's the one. No, okay, a little higher, a little higher, okay, okay, stop.

Now, now move the foot a little bit to the left. Little more, little, okay, stop. Now, push that first dick a little bit higher on that stake. No, no, not too much, just a smidge. Oh, god, okay, that's perfect. That's, oh, that's good. God, that is real good, Sal. Kill, come over here, come over here and look at this.

Wow, we have outdone ourselves. I mean, that's a fucking masterpiece. That is majestic. If only someone had already invented, you know, cameras and selfie sticks, we'd fucking, we'd throw that on Instagram, whatever that is. Well, March 1476 Dracula has now fought his way deep into Transylvania and, energy note, he fights alongside a close relative of a future time-suck topic.

He fights along with Stephen Bathory, the Hungarian military commander, and great uncle of upcoming suck Elizabeth Bathory, the blood countess, and possibly the most prolific female serial killer of all time. Alright, well, in November, by November 1476, Dracula, he's kicking and impaling Terkazash, Turkish-ass, once again, one of his favorite things to do. And by November of 1476, he made his way into Velakia, where he had a sudden change of heart, relinquishes claim to the throne,

settle down with a young Romanian peasant girl, opened up a flower shop, they'd live happily married for more than 30 years, have six kids together, Vlad would grow up to be a doding grandfather, especially fond of whittling, small stakes for the kids to make, smores with. Of course, that never happened. No, Steven and Vlad kick a lot of ass

and by November 26, 1476, Vlad is principal Nokia for the third time in his life. And he proceeds to impale literally fucking everyone. And he goes around licking their corpses, slowly morphing into the world's first vampire. No, actually, he rules only for about two months again. Uh, rules for about two months and then he's killed by a Turkish assassin pretending to be a servant. His head is cut from his body, taken to the sultan, taken him a meds so he can look into Vlad's dead eyes and know for certain this Turkish nightmare was gone for good. His headless

corpse is rumored to be entombed underneath the monastery in Snagove, about 40 kilometers north of Bucharest. All the historians still debate all of this. His tomb was never definitively found. And some don't think his head was ever truly delivered to the Sultan. They just didn't keep good records in Romania back in this time again. Again, with no written language. Well, many Romanian locals do believe the Dracula was buried as to go to this monastery

there. And the land there is now cursed. Gypsy's love curses, they love a good curse story. Strange things have happened there over the years, most notably in a event that occurred during the 19th century, when the Abbeyets Tagav was converted into a prison and a bridge was built to the monastery, this would suck so much.

Located, because it was located on an island on Stagav or Snugov, however the fuck it is, Lake, I couldn't find a video for this one. And while chained prisoners are being marched over the bridge over the lake to the prison, the bridge collapses. And they're all like linked together. And so the whole line like all of the prisoners drown together in the water below. How terrible would that be?

Man, how long in for two weeks? And then it's just fucking the bridge. Claps or a death sentence. So did Dracula's curse claim the lives of those men? Maybe or maybe they should have just hired a much better bridge builder. Good job, soldier. You've made it back.

Barely. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! So Dracula's real life ends in 1476, but his legend just beginning.

The first written accounts of Dracula's evil deeds, being passed around, were written and copied by German monks in 1462, 14 years before his death, when Vlad was on a temporary mission to impale some Catholics and send the sections fleeing from Balochine, Transylvania. And the monks wrote up terrible accounts of a sadistic impaler, and the monks' writings, some reasoning for Vlads' barbarism is revealed. While answering questions from a monk about why he kills not only men but women and children, in this story Dracula says, when a farmer clears the land, he must not only clear the weeds and have grown, but also the roots that lie deep beneath the soil. For should he admit cutting the roots after one year he

has to start a new in order that they not in order that the obnoxious plants not grow again? In the same manner, the babes and arm who are here will someday grow into manhood. I wish to destroy and uproot them. Should I do otherwise the young heirs were otherwise easily avenge their fathers on this earth. Man, so fucked up, but so logical. Want to ensure your place of power? Don't just kill your enemies, kill their entire fucking families. So there's no one left to avenge their death. Will Michael Beam, a wandering bard,

popular with German royalty in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, also wrote and performed tales of Lad, making him a famous villain while he was still alive, a living legend of sorts. He wrote a poem called The Story of a Bloodthirsty Mad Man called Dracula of Alachia, and he performed it all around Europe, and even for Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1463. And then the late 15th century, with the new invention of the printing press in Germany, Dracula tales become the first non-Veligis bestsellers of their day.

I thought that was kind of cool. In the late 15th and early 16th century books, we're printed with titles like The Frightening and Truly Extraordinary Story of a Wicked Blood Drinking Tyrant Prince Dracula, loved a long title back then. So far historians have discovered no less than 13, 15th and 16th century Vlad Dracula tales all written in German.

And then beginning in the late 16th century, tales of the real Dracula fade and don't become popular again until years after Bram Stoker's Dracula was published. When scholars and historians rediscovered Dracula tales when researching the monster's origins. What's interesting is how differently the legend of the real Dracula had been portrayed in various cultures. Like in some cultures like Germany in the Middle East, he was nothing more than a sadistic monster. But in the Russian narratives, he was seen as cruel but just. Brutal times kind of requiring a brutal leader type of thing.

His deeds were taught to and studied by numerous zars as an example of how to control an army and how to control a population through fear and intimidation. Ivan the terrible would actually study the dealings of Vlad Dracula in the 16th century when he was a kid and then later end up doing a fair amount of impaling himself. In Roman folklore, Dracula came to be seen as a hero, a defender of the poor against the tyranny of the rich, a punisher of the wicked and protector of the just. He only impaled those who deserved it. When Romania fought for independence in the late 19th century, tales of Dracula the liberator and defender of Romania would be told for inspiration. To date, Vlad is seen as such a hero, such a hero in some parts of Romania,

that bram stoker's Dracula has yet to be translated into Romanian and Bella Legosi style vampire films are not shown in Bucharest. So what do we really think about Vlad after all this? Well, before I share what I think, let's check it with the virtual think tank known as the idiots of the internet. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in to clip from earlier, Lost World's The Real Dracula, an obvious Romanian going by the username Cornelio Zilio uh, cod Renew, I don't know, I fucking say this nonsense, uh, was obviously not happy with the documentary's portrayal of Vlad as a sadist. He commented two months ago, he said, these filthy kikes have ruined our history. Vlad was a hero that became a legend, not because of the impalement, but due to his bravery and skill,

he was an honest man. Wow, not a big because of the impalement, but due to his bravery and skill. He was an honest man. Wow, not a big fan of the Germans this guy. Throwing out some racial hate right out of the gate. And I love how he speaks as if he knew Vlad personally. Like, look, Assholes, he was a good dude, okay? Misunderstood, sure, but an honest man nonetheless. Sure, he impaled 10,000 to the people. But, you know what, he had his reasons.

Sure, he impaled 10,000 of the people, but hey, you know what? He had his reasons. Another Romanian user, Andrei, andrei, Manu. Again, there's no pronunciation videos for this fucking nonsense. Echoed Cornelios sentiment, about also two months ago, saying flat tepis, and tepuses Romanian for impaler, was a hero and a leader. He did what he had to do to save Romania from the invasion of the Turks and other invaders. Okay, really, did what he had to do to save Romania from the invasion of the Turks and other invaders. Okay, really, did what he had to do? Did he go a little overboard? And that's one line of thought. Here's an entirely different one. This is one thing to get really fun. Farther down on the thread or in the comments section on the same video, I find three months ago, user Brown Witch said, or, you know, wrote, Vlad the Impaler is my savior.

Vlad can impale me with his dick. Huh, what an entirely different take on things, that is, I clicked on Brown Witch's user profile and there's a one sentence description of who she feels she is. She writes, I'm not a bitch, I'm honest. Are you though Brown Witch? Do you really wanna be impaled by a sadist dick? Are you really a witch? Are you honest about that. Are you though Brown Witch? Do you really want to be impaled by a sadist dick?

Are you, are you really a witch? Are you honest about that? Are you even Brown? Or are you just fucking super cray cray? Well, user Andrew Goring doesn't agree with Brown Witch's sentiment and replies with, sorry, that worthless piece of filth is just as dead as all the people he so cruelly tortured and killed. Brown Witch responds immediately.

She says, he did what he did because the mother fuckers tried to take his country. I would have done the same thing. Really brown witch? Would you have done the fucking same thing? You would have impaled boiled burned to capitated and butchered entire families because that's the only way to defend your country. Interesting. I'm worried about you brown witch. Well, user Sheldon Faust is not worried about brown witch. No, not at all. She agrees wholeheartedly with Brown Witch, commenting, me too, sweetie, me too. And Blessed Be, sister Brown Witch. Does anyone else find it fucking disturbing

that she's backing up a woman who was just claimed she would like to be impaled by Vlad's dick and who is also claimed that she would impale families and torture thousands of death, but then also uses words like, sweetie and blessed be. It's kind of like the bottom thing we were talking about earlier.

She held a fowlst maybe even crazier than Brown Witch. Well neither one of them were done. And then user Mary Hinn joins in after over two months of radio silence on this thread. And she throws in some extremely dark reasoning into the conversation, commenting, Vlad's dick decomposed long ago. If you can find his grave, you could try shoving his femur between your piss flaps. Shoving his femur between your piss flaps. Aren't you quite the grotesque words, Myth, they're Mary? I gotta say, a little bit disturbed.

A little bit of admiration coming your way. That was quite the sentence. Well, Sheldon Fowles responds immediately now going all caps because she's fired up. And she says, or I could cast a very strong spell and bring him back to life. And then I could just have him. Haha. Yeah, Mary, what do you think of that? No need to bother with a nasty old femur dildo.

Uh-uh. She'll just bring him back to life. You silly old goose. Just cast a spell, you goofball. You know, just a la peanut butter sandwich is one bring him back to life. You still, you'll goose. Just cast a spell, you goofball. You know, just ala, peanut, pata, san, which is one count brought back to life with one penis and two balls. Ha, ha, ha. I do realize I just combined two sesame tree characters there.

I mixed old month for the magician with account. Well, Mary doesn't think anything of that. She dropped her piss flaps bomb into this thread and then she left to spread her clever merriment somewhere else. Brown Witch does here, she'll just claim though, and initially is not pleased. Commonly right away with no, he's mine. To which she'll to continue to her manic all caps die tribe with, we can share him. You and I can both have him three nights each and on the seventh day he can rest his strength

for handling both of us and she ends with a smiley face. And all is right between Brown, Witch and Sheldra. They don't even bother replying to the last comments on the thread made by user Carrie Hunt who points out that Vlad's dick is spiked and barbed. And then he comments again because he didn't get all of his points out across in that first post. He needed to add, and he has barved wire for pubic hair. Well, Sheldah and Brownweights don't give a fuck about his pubic hair. They just want some of that impaler dick. What is going on in your life? And in your mind, when you sexually fantasize about being fucked by a sadistic murderous psychopath. I think these women were

just kidding, just trolling, but then I'm reminded of the women who marry convicted murderers while the murderers are on death row and apply for congegal visits so they can try and impregnate themselves with some monster seat. Well as a father, I wonder what the hell do you have to do to your daughter to create that kind of moron? I get the bad boy appeal on some level and attraction to a rule breaker, but Vlad the impaler what in the actual fuck? I think I'm gonna take a quick break.

And I'm gonna go hug my daughter and tell her how cool she is to reduce the odds that Sunday she becomes one of these idiots of the internet. So there we have it, Vlad the Impaler. That was an exciting ride. Was it not? The guy was clearly a military genius in his way. He continually bested the Turks with much smaller fighting forces. He fought numerous battles, and Vlokian leaders were expected to fight alongside their armies

and was never killed in battle. Killed by a sneaky assassin, he was a shrewd diplomat, able to stay alive during numerous imprisonments, making numerous alliances. But I don't think he was some Robin Hood, like some Romanians claim. I think he was a ruthless tyrant. I think he was a true sociopath who had zero regard for human life and that helped him be a great military leader. Right? Because he could just do what suited him logically. He didn't have to worry about any fucking morality.

You know, he was very quick to kill and clearly from any accounts he liked to toy with his victims, making him a true sadist. You know, a lot of accounts on how he liked to watch people be impaled and impaled in all manner of ways. You know, through the ass, through the mouth, through the gut, heart, neck, et cetera, hacked into pieces, had their pieces impaled, so much impaling. Was that just to protect an image, or just to project, excuse me, an image to be feared for some psychological advantage against enemies?

I don't think so. I think he seemed to truly enjoy it, seemed to relish it. I think it was a fucking monster. And some of the speculated, he may have been impotent for a long period of his early adulthood, which could have led to some kind of fetishism within paleing. Like basically like the steak is a horror substitute

for his limp dick. That the power of killing is the substitute for his lack of power in the bedroom. Maybe, maybe not. I don't think so. I think that's wild speculation. I think you just like to watch people die. And I think in paleing was his favorite way to watch people die.

It's kind of like some people like pizza, right? All kinds of pizza, you know? I'm one of these people. I like all kinds of pizza. But you always have a go-to, you have a favorite. For me, it's meat lovers. I love a meat lover's pizza the best. But I'm still gonna eat a chicken and pesto.

I'll still enjoy that. I'll still have a Hawaiian, little Canadian bacon, little pineapple on that bad boy. I think Vlad was like that, you know, with torture and murder. He liked all kinds. He liked all kinds of torture and murder. But his fave, his comfort food, that was impalement. And now let's go recap this Valkyrie in son of a bitch with some top five takeaways.

Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one, Vlad once had 20,000 Turks impaled in one place. The infamous scene of the forest of the impaled, and then just a few months later, still to throne by his kid brother Redu who didn't impale anybody. I guess sometimes diplomacy does work a little better than just outright brutality. Number two, in 1453, the Sultan Mehmed had a cannon specifically built for the sacking of Constantinople. Nicknamed the Basilica that was 27 feet long,

had a 48 inch bore, that's four feet. Was capable of firing 600 pound cannonballs, each propelled by 150 pounds of gunpowder took 700 men and 30 oxen to move the fucking thing anywhere and it could only be fired seven times every 24 hours to prevent overheating. It's initial test shot, left a crater, six feet deep in the earth.

Imagine seeing that thing fire feet deep in the earth. Imagine seeing that thing fire at you in the days when most people fought with swords and axes. Holy shit. Number three, the word Dracula, name of arguably the most well known monster of our time, means in Romanians son of the devil. But the name came from the Latin word for dragon and was given to Dracula's father for serving in an important Christian order of crusaders, the order of the dragon.

How weird that the name ended up becoming the exact opposite of what initially represented. 4. Ironically, no one fought harder for the cause of Christianity in the mid-15th century than Vlad Dracula. When he wasn't sticking stakes through humans, he was fighting Muslims on behalf of Jesus. What a weird fucking world we live in. Number five, new information. One last Dracula atrocity. It was rumored that Vlad had a mistress that lived in the backstreet of the city of Turgovista. Dracula was often moody and depressed,

and the woman would make every effort to bring him out of his gloominess. And then once, when Dracula was in a particularly sorrowful state, she attempted to cheer him up by telling a lie, and proclaiming that she was pregnant with his child. I thought that would make him happy. He wasn't happy. Dracula warned her not to lie about such a thing, but she persisted to insist that she was with child. Well, then Dracula had the woman examined by a bath matron. I guess someone who could determine pregnancy at that time. When she wasn't pregnant, he was furious that she had lied to him, and he proceeded to draw at his knife and then cut her open from groin to chest. From vagina to breast, Wal-Pro claiming his desire for all the world to see where he had been, and then he left her to die in agony.

Still want to date this dude, Sheldon Faust, and Brown Witch, you fucking lunatics. Time suck, tough five takeaway. Well, thank you time suckers for getting today's bonus suck stuck in your mind hole. Please keep telling others about the show. Please keep spreading the suck, and I'll keep doing the best job I can to improve it. Also, to those of you who have written about web development and app design,

I wanna get a time suck app in the future. I have started work with a few time suckers. And if I haven't gotten back to you, I do apologize, and I'm extremely grateful for you taking the time suck app in the future. I have started work with a few time suckers. And if I haven't gotten back to you, I do apologize and I'm extremely grateful for you taking the time to write in the first place and offer that, you suck. And also, be sure to hit the first ever time suck trivia night at Maxline Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado. If you live in the area this Tuesday, just a couple days July 18th at 7pm. They're giving away tons of cool time suck prizes. It's a great way to meet other time suckers. The brewery is located at 2724 McClillin Drive Fort Collins, Colorado,

maxlinebrewing.com for more details. Some of the topics that are going to be covered, Bonnie and Clyde, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pablo Escobar, JFK, Al Capone and more, all trivia from episodes of the suck. Love that so much. And if you want to run a time suck trivia night of your own in your town, hit me up. You can hit me up at Dan at time suck podcast.com for some discounted time suck merch to give away. Also, if you haven't already, you can watch my last special don't wake the bear. It's now on Amazon Prime where it streams for free for prime members. So check it out, rated if you'd be so kind. I just heard from the distributor that apparently has been getting some good plays,

so that makes me feel good. People seem to enjoy it. And also you can follow the suck on social media. It's at TimeSuck podcast on Instagram, Twitter, slash time suck podcast on Facebook gonna be doing some cool stuff on social media this summer. And listen this Monday. Listen this Monday to a very important episode

of TimeSuck about the national transgender debate. I've been talking to a very cool time sucker who happens to be transgender and educating myself on this very relevant issue so I can educate and entertain you. Here firsthand from America about life in the US as someone who identifies as being transgender. Here how fucking normal she is. Here how she likes playing video games, reading a good book, hates traffic, works with fucking idiots, you know, at her job, just like you, so many ways. Very important edition of Time Suck to Listen to.

And one on something I knew very, very little about before first chatting with Erica. So that's Monday, please listen that episode. I'm still figuring out what the next bonus episode is gonna be, we're already like, I think like 30 reviews towards 800 episode. I've narrowed it down to a couple topics.

I'm not even going to throw them out because I don't want people to get pissed if it's not the one they want. But I'm figuring that out and I'll announce soon what the next bonus episode is going to be about. And until then, have a great weekend. Please don't impale anyone. God damn it. Keep on sucking.