The Vampires in Castlevania
Vlad III Dracula Ţepeș (Impaler) was a real person. He was a Wallachian voivode who was born sometime between 1429 and 1431, and he died in 1476. The exact manner of his death has been lost to history, but the common belief is he was beheaded in battle and his head was sent to Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople as proof of his death.
As for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, some historians are starting to doubt the prince was the actual inspiration for the famous vampire. One of the reasons for this is Stoker was a very thorough note-taker, but none of his notes for writing Dracula mention Vlad III or any of his lifetime achievements/atrocities. So it’s possible Stoker only chose the name ‘Dracula’ because he knew it translated as ‘son of the Devil.’ Further reading - Dracula: Sense and Nonsense by Elizabeth Miller.
Carmilla is the name of a lady vampire in the novella Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu, a story that is actually older than Stoker’s novel. It features a lesbian relationship between Carmilla and the protagonist, Laura, and was written as a criticism of the Victorian view of women, specifically repressed sexuality.
Varney also comes from a book. Varney the Vampire or The Feast of Blood was a penny dreadful written by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. (I haven’t read this one all the way through, but there is a scene where Varney is struggling to get over a garden wall, and I think that’s hilarious. Not exactly apex predator material.)
Varney: You think you have me stymied, don’t you.
Trevor: No, I think a garden wall has you stymied.
Lenore is the name of a German poem written by Gottfried August Bürger. It’s about a woman named Lenore who curses God because her beloved did not come back from war, so Death kidnaps her to reunite them, effectively condemning her soul for eternity. It’s not about a vampire, but the poem has had a hand in influencing vampire literature.
Anyway, does anyone else really want to see Lenore cheering Trevor on in the last battle? Or stealing the knife and ending Death herself. Cause I do now.
The closest thing to a vampire in Viking folklore is the draugr, although this creature is more of a restless ghost than what we think of as a vampire. They haunt the graves of the dead and guard the treasures they acquired in life by driving humans insane, drinking their blood, eating their flesh, and other nasty things.
Side note: I’m really curious as to what led Godbrand to becoming a vampire. Immortality didn’t really play a huge factor in Old Norse culture since the Vikings believed a glorious death in battle was the one and only way to go to Valhalla. Other deaths that were deemed shameful or unworthy landed you in Helheim, which I really need to address further in a separate post.
Japan also doesn’t have an exact vampire equivalent, but they do have some yokai spirits that have vampire-like characteristics, including but not limited to:
Nukekubi: A flying head that detaches from its human body at night and attacks people to drink their blood.
Rokurokubi: A similar creature to nukekubi except the head doesn’t detach but rather travels from the body via an elongated neck.
Nure-Onna: The ‘drenched woman’ is a large serpent with the head of a woman that drinks blood.
Personally, I would have loved to see Cho’s head fly off to attack someone simply to see Sypha, Alucard, and Trevor briefly panic.
