A biography of the 15th century Prince of Romania, Vlad Dracula, on whom Stoker based his fictional character. It covers his career as ruler of Wallachia, terrorizer of Transylvania and crusader against the Turks, and examines how closely he compares to his fictional counterpart. This biography shows "Vlad the Impaler" to be a man as extraordinary in his political and crusading abilities as he was in his evil. He was considered a hero by the Pope and by Romanians whom he liberated from the Turks, and generations of Russian Turks studied accounts of his political genius and used his regime as a model for their own. Yet Vlad is remembered first for his crimes, excessive in both nature and number. He kept a vastly superior Turkish force from attacking his capital by constructing an infamous "forest of the impaled". Only in the context of his times - times of plague, of the beginning of the Renaissance, of literally cut-throat politics and conflict between East and West - can one understand fully the many faces of Dracula. In this book the authors offer a view of Dracula and his influential era.