Comments: Held as a hostage by the Turks during his childhood, this 15th century Romanian nobleman was released after his father Vlad Dracul was brutally murdered. After reclaiming his father's throne in the province of Wallachia by force in 1456, Vlad Dracula began a reign that was short but extremely bloody.
If you were one of his many enemies--or even just a beggar or common thief caught on his lands--you could almost certainly count on a lingering and painful death! Prince Dracula's favorite means of execution was to have live victims impaled through the chest on sharpened stakes set into the ground. On one occasion he actually created a terrifying "forest of the dead" when he had thousands of Turkish prisoners executed by this method. It is little wonder that the bloodthirsty "Impaler Prince" of Wallachia should provide the real life inspiration for the fictional vampire Dracula.