Representations of Vlad Tepes in Western Media: Dark Prince the "True" history of Dracula

Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula (2000)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240793/?ref_=nv_sr_2

In this film Vlad the Impaler is presented more as a historical figure rather than his supernatural one. The latter being more of a presence hanging over the fate of Tepes despite the imagery evoked by the movie poster.

The film does a good enough job of following Vlad Tepes’ life, from an early age when he and his brother, Radu, are prisoners of the Turkish sultan Mehmed to the point when Tepes is betrayed and slain by the Romanian nobles and the Orthodox Church. Historical discrepancies appear regarding the identity of his wife, Lidia in the movie, who is the daughter of a nobleman by the name of Aron, while in reality Vlad was married three times: once to Cneajna Bathory, then to Jusztina Szilagyi and finally to Ilona Nelipic, the cousin of Matei Corvin.

Lidia, however, serves the role of offering the romantic side to the story of Dracula which has become inseparable from it ever since the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) in which the vampire is depicted trying to re-win the heart of his long lost love now reincarnated in Mina. This explains the ending scene where Tepes/Dracula is walking hand in hand with his dead wife, Lidia thus becoming the first of his immortal brides.

Although this romantic side of Dracula is not present in Bram Stoker’s actual novel, it has become an asset of the story which all other retellings have capitalized on. This may have even reinforced the idea that all Romanians, and Balkan peoples, are strongly ruled by their passions, and love may be their greatest one.

The movie initially presents Vlad the Impaler as being either a messiah or the antichrist, however upon finishing it one may realize that he is both: a messiah to the Romanian peasants who were oppressed by the Turks, and the antichrist for the Romanian nobles who were colluding with the Ottoman invaders.

This double role of messiah and antichrist is the main drive of the movie and this is made self evident through the ways in which Tepes is depicted. First he witnesses the oppression of his people under the traitorous nobles, and upon asking for a reason for their violent treatment all he gets as a reply from his future second in command is: “this is how we do things in the Balkans”. A remembrance to the age old belief that the Balkans is filled with savages who would rather do things through violence rather than diplomacy and the movie seems to support this theory.

After Tepes removes the traitorous nobles and Turks from his land, there is a scene in which Lidia visits the same marketplace as Tepes when he first arrived in Romania, however instead of the filth and violence he witnessed, Lidia now sees the people going happily about their daily lives in a fantasy like setting, but to her horror she finds that in that same market behind all its joy and laughter, the bodies of the nobles were set on pikes, thus showing that behind its peaceful appearances, the land is still a place of great violence, a fact which confirmed the rumors about her husband’s savagery.

The ending of the movie mixes fact and myth in order to justify its fantastic ending, despite its more realistic depiction of Vlad the Impaler’s life. As such it shows Tepes finally becoming undead, a vampire after his death, reinforced by the fact that the location of his bodily remains are a mystery to this day, thus fulfilling his second role as the antichrist, creating a realm for the supernatural and reinforcing the superstitious nature of the inhabiting people.

All in all, the movie does a good job of portraying the life of Vlad Tepes and the history of the period despite its historical discrepancies, as for the violence and superstitions depicted in the movie, one can rule them out as a part of the nature of their time of war and bloodshed