Dracula, Prince Of Many Faces

Dracula, that archetypal vampire made infamous in Stoker's 19th century Gothic romance cum horror story, is not entirely a myth. His prototype, Prince Vlad III of Wallachia (now Romania), alias Dracula (not of the devil but of the dragon, after the Order bestowed on his father by Luxemburg's King Sigismond in 1431), sobriquet "The Impaler," was a Byzantine/Balkan 15th-century condottiere who by adroit diplomatic realpolitik kept his principality independent of both Turk and Magyar. Internally he stayed in power by decimating the feudal boyar aristocracy, by centralizing the state administration and building up a peasant army. Dracula is known, however, not for his nation-building but for the means he used - "he blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, boiled, skinned, roasted, hacked. . . nailed, burned alive and had his victims stabbed." Considered a folk hero in Romania, his reputation as a legendary monster is based on tales originally spread by German refugees from Transylvania. The authors, astoundingly multilingual, have sifted through a plethora of surviving documents and artifacts to produce this portrait of the man - "stem, unyielding" and sexually disturbed - his times and his society, including tidbits from their earlier In Search of Dracula. They do not claim that this is a "definitive biography" (because "too many pieces of the puzzle are still missing") but it's a sturdy enough reconstruction. (Kirkus Reviews)