Vlad Tepes, the son of Vlad II, has become known to the world over as the legendary Dracula. Dracula literally means "son of Dracul." Vlad II, in reward for his bravery battling the Turks, was admitted to the Order of the Dragon. In latin, "dragon" is draco, and thus Vlad became known as Vlad Dracul; and his son, Vlad Dracula.
Born in 1432 as Vlad Tepes, Dracula was Prince of Wallachia, second to his father. In 1444, the Ottoman Sultan Murad II summoned Dracul across the Danube and forced him to leave his sons, Radu and Vlad, as prisoners.
In 1448, Dracula escaped from his Ottoman captors, and assumed his father's throne, who had been murdered a year previous to Vlad's escape. A few months later, fearing for his life, Vlad vacated the throne, and fled for Moldavia and Transylvania. In 1456, now 24, Dracula avenged his father's murder, and reassumed the throne of Wallachia. Vlad Tepes slaughtered 20,000 Turks along the Danube river in 1462, impaling them at various heights according to rank. Vlad the Impaler, as he came to be known, was also known for blinding, strangling, and boiling his victims alive. In the same year he was deposed by his pro-Turkish brother. In 1476, now married to the sister of Hungary's Matthias Corvinus, Vlad reclaimed his throne. He was ambused outside of Bucharest in 1477, and killed one year after returning to his throne.
According to legend, Vlad had denounced the God who he believed had betrayed him, and never actually died, but became a souless immortal of evil, forced to feed on human blood.
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