If you’re a vampire fiend and happen to be in Bucharest this summer, check out the exhibition “Dracula – Voivode and Vampire”–but not if you want to keep your darkest fantasies about the notorious Romanian prince Vlad Tepes. Turns out, at least according to the exhibit’ curator, Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, was just a regular Medieval prince who was no more brutal than any other powerful Medieval guy. Which, to be fair, is pretty brutal, but still.
So why was Tepes singled out as a monster? Bigotry, apparently: The Western European PR machine painted the Wallachian ruler in such a way that reinforced the notion that Eastern Europeans were evil.
Interesting, but don’t fret! If a quarter of the stories of Vlad’s atrocities are true, he was still pretty monstrous. And, no matter what, he’ll always be known as the guy who set off the original vampire craze.