Within the novel Dracula Abraham van Helsingās backstory involves his wife being in an asylum and his son being dead. Given the amount of spin-off material made involving van Helsing and his family, Iām admittedly curious whether these details about his immediate family were ever expanded upon.
Like, did his son die in the van Helsingsā first, less successful encounter with the supernatural, thus colouring Abrahamās future involvement with the vampire invasion and providing context for why a doctor of unusual diseases would know so much about magic and the undead?
I mean, it was the 1800s, the younger van Helsing could easily have died of TB, syphilis, opium addiction, or getting trodden on by a horse or something, but there is material there for expanding the story if one felt so inclined.
But then, thereās the interesting thing about the novel. Within the story itās told from the perspective of the characters via their diary entries and letters*, then complied by Mina later in the story after Dracula burns the vampire huntersā notes in order to throw them off his track (effectively making Mina the in-universe writer of the novel).
We never get the story from Draculaās perspective, so we have no clear idea what his goal is, and there is the possiblity that those narrating the story are giving their own, individuallly slanted view of what was going on. Technically speaking, if someone was to write their own version of the charactersā backstories, as long as it fits the framework of the original plot it could still work within the lines of the original story.
Van Helsing wanting to immediately stake and decapitate Lucy Westernra when they hadnāt had actual confirmation that she was a vampire? Caution shaped by whatever happened to his son, perhaps? Lucy and Mina are bi? We never really get Lucyās interpretation of whatās going on, so maybe?
The only time, in my view at least, where this approach doesnāt quite work is in Mina/Dracula romance plots. Within the context of whatās in the book, any attempt to portray those two as starcrossed lovers is really, realy gross.
* Frankenstein follows a similar structure, with the story being told through a series of narrators to the reader (reader - Sister of Arctic explorer, bookend narrator - Arctic explorer, main narrator - Victor Frankenstein, sub-narrator - the Creature), with them even acknowledging in-story that Victor changed bits to make them more interesting or (implictly) to make himself look more cool.
