Late last year, the nice people at Discovery TV were kind enough to fly me to Romania to appear in an episode of their excellent Bloody Tales of Europe series. Specifically the segment on Vlad the Impaler in the Tyrant episode, thanks to my 2010 book on Vlad, co-authored with true cime expert Paul Woods. When I first spoke to the Discovery researchers the one thing I recall saying when discussing possible locations was to avoid Castle Bran, as it has pretty much fuck all to do with either the historical Vlad or the fictional Count, but features in pretty much every documentary on the subject ever filmed. So, when they confirmed that they wanted to interview me on camera, where did they choose as the setting? You guessed it…

To be fair, their is a tenuous Castle Bran connection, but we’ll get onto that in a minute. This wasn’t my first visit to Romania. I’d gone in 1997, the centenary of the publication of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, and wrote several articles on the connections – or absence thereof – between the fictional ghoul and the fifteenth century warlord. Romania’s relationship with the association between the Impaler and the pop culture Gothic icon was, and remains, highly ambivalent. On the one hand the original Vlad is a national hero, revered for resisting the Ottoman Empire against terrible odds, and the Western tendency to associate him with a camp, bloodsucking fiend is seen as deeply offensive and ignorant. On the other, Romania badly needs tourist dollars, and the fictional Count’s probably their biggest draw.

This ambivalence is manifest in Castle Bran. The story I was told by locals when I first went was that the government had deliberately promoted Castle Bran as the original Castle Dracula because, while it looked the part, it had no connection to Vlad the Impaler. Hence tourists could be both kept happy and kept away from authentic sites associated with the Romanian hero. My research at the time also maintained that there was little to connect Bran with the fictional Dracula either, or, as a local tourism brochure put it, describing the fortress as ‘the trial and trap of Castle Bran, a fake Castle Dracula, set in the way to the genuine Castle, in order to stop the mobs from pestering the solitude of the Count.’ Of course things change. When I first went, the Communist regime had only been toppled by violent revolution a few years earlier, and the hangover of Ceausescu’s oppressive rule still felt stifling. There was surprisingly little Dracula tourist tat for sale in the Castle or Bran village below. The fortress was overrun with guides and curators, all trying to sell you endless tickets, permits and passes for opaque reasons in true, old school Communist style.

By the time I revisited Romania, Castle Bran had been reclaimed from the state by the Hapsburg aristocrats who had owned it before it was seized by the Communist government in 1948. These new owners – who now live in the USA I believe – had no qualms about associating Bran with both the Count and Vlad the Impaler. A market largely dedicated to tackly Dracula souvenirs had sprung up at the foot of the Castle. Not only were the new owners happy to have tourists associate their Castle with all things Dracula, they were distinctly unhappy about anyone suggesting otherwise. When I expressed scepticism about the numerous claims made in Castle Bran’s tourism literature, the Castle’s PR head honcho overheard and gave me a withering glare hissing something unfriendly sounding under his breath. The Discovery film crew ushered me to one side, as it became crystal clear that my presence was now a potential barrier to cordial relations between Castle staff and the film crew.

However, not wanting to leave too bad an impression, I later sent Bran the results of my research – or more accurately some research by another scholar which I had found – which showed that there just might be a link between Stoker’s vampire Count and Castle Bran, even if any link between Bran and the Impaler remains tenuous and elusive to say the least. In a 2008 article on ‘The Models for Castle Dracula in Stoker’s Sources on Transylvania’, Dr. Marius Mircea Crişan found that at least two of the books Bram Stoker consulted while researching his novel contain both pictures and descriptions of Bran that make it sound like the ideal lair for an undead aristocrat. ‘Anything more wild and romantic than the position of the castle cannot be conceived,’ reads one, ‘its accessories reminding the spectator of the nursery tales of his childhood – of Blue-beard and Giant Despair. Inside there are grim passages, trap-doors, and yawning depths, all bearing silent witness to the troublous times when these borders were invaded by the Tartar and the Turk.’

Of course we can’t know whether Castle Bran was truly the imaginative model for Castle Dracula – it seems plausible – though more likely there was no one single model, but that several places provided the inspiration for the Count’s fictional home. The same applies to the Count himself. I’ve been involved in more than one futile debate over how much the fictional Dracula owed to the historical original. Many, led by the formidable Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller, insist the connection is largely literally nominal. I think there’s more to it than that. But this isn’t a debate with a definitive answer. Even were we able to quiz Bram Stoker on the matter he probably couldn’t fully resolve matters, because as every writer can attest, we often don’t realise where our best ideas come from. Notions ferment in our skulls, and then emerge on the page, but often lack any kind of return address.

Meanwhile, somebody’s posted the Tyrants episode of Bloody Tales of Europe on Youtube, and I’ve included a link below. You’ll be relieved to hear I feature fairly briefly, and that the programme overall is both entertaining and elightening. So far as I’m aware, the series has finished airing on TV, and the box-set which I assume will become available in due course, has yet to be marketed. When it is, I plan on securing a copy as it covers numerous fascinating subjects dear to my black little heart. I hope some of you will do the same, as I can attest to the wit, dedication and professionalism put into this project by the production crew behind it.