The historian sheds only a drop of blood“The worst impulses of humanity can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single life” (Kostova 136). This line appears in one of Rossi's personal letters talking about Vlad the Impaler and his desire to find him. The legend of Vlad Tepes has continued to mystify people for centuries. Many feared him, literary works portrayed him as a voracious, bloodsucking villain, which is exactly what he was. Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian is for the most part an accurate depiction of the life and works of Vlad the Impaler, or the one they call Dracula. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Historian is a novel narrated by an anonymous young woman in 1972 Amsterdam. It all starts when she finds an old book on her father's bookshelf. The narrator's father, Paul, begins to verbally recount what happened after acquiring this book when he was younger, in front of his teacher. But when she finds letters from her father's former professor addressed to "my dear and unfortunate successor", she is linked to her father's past, to her late mother's past, and discovers what seems to be one of the darkest and best kept secrets in the world, of Vlad the Impaler. His father tells him how his teacher, Rossi, mysteriously disappeared in the 1950s, after giving his notes to Paul and informs him that he believes Dracula is still alive. After Rossi's mysterious disappearance, Paul decides to research Vlad Dracula, only to encounter Rossi's unknown daughter, named Helen, at the library reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula." Hearing Paul tell the story of his father, Helen becomes interested in the subject and begins traveling with Paul to discover the secret hidden since the 15th century. The narrator becomes interested in her father's story and begins researching Dracula herself while traveling through Europe in the 1970s. Not wanting to get her in trouble, her father decides to send her home, she doesn't stay there. A letter from his father indicates that he is looking for his mother, previously believed to be dead. The letters Paul sent reveal the rest of her story, and it begins to become clear to her that Helen is her mother. Through the letters, Paul writes that he and Helen travel to Istanbul only to discover that another professor has discovered the same book that he and Rossi had found. From there, he and Helen travel to Hungary to try to find Dracula's tomb and meet Helen's mother to learn about her mother's past and discover that her mother, Helen, and the narrator are descendants of Vlad Tepes, Dracula himself. As her journey continues towards Hungary, they come to an abrupt halt when she finds her father, and realizes that the legend is true, and that Dracula is indeed still alive. In The Historian, we talk a lot about the country of Wallachia, commonly called Romania. It was founded by a man named Radu Negru. Wallachia was dominated by Hungary until its independence in 1330. The fledgling country's first ruler reigned as Prince Basarab the Great. Vlad Tepes III was born in the winter of 1431. Although little is known about his childhood, it is known that he had an older and a younger brother. Vlad Tepes III was educated by his mother, a young Transylvanian. As he grew up, his life became a struggle. He was imprisoned by the Ottomans, and it was there that he was first impaled. His father was expelled from the country and had his crown taken away, then killed in the swampsnear Balteni, Wallachia, in 1447. Vlad's older brother Mircea was brutally tortured, blinded, and then burned alive. It is unknown whether these events caused Vlad "Dracula" to transform into a ruthless killer. What is known is that once he was freed from Ottoman captivity after his death, his reign of terror began. In 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, Vlad led his troops to defend Wallachia against invasion. His battle was victorious in 1456, where he beheaded his opponent, Vladislav II. To honor his victory, but to punish those who opposed him, he invited hundreds of guests to a banquet, only to have each of them stabbed and then impaled (Vlad). When Vlad Tepes impaled his victims, a large rounded rod passed through the rectum and up the inside of the body, exiting near the shoulders or mouth. A blunt stick would be used to prevent damage to internal organs, thus making death a longer and more excruciating process (About). It would seem that Vlad Dracula had absolutely no empathy, but this is disputed when he wrote to an ally saying: "I killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived in Oblucitza and Novoselo, there where the Danube flows into the sea. … We killed 23,884 Turks, not counting those we burned in the houses or the Turks whose heads were cut off by our soldiers… So, Your Highness, you should know that I 'broke the peace' (Cooper). Vlad Tepes is known to have killed over 80,000 people, of whom almost 20,000 were impaled and displayed outside the town of Targoviste, so that travelers, mainly from Constantinople, would see the decomposing bodies pecked at by the crows and leave. . What makes the situation even more worrying is that Vlad Dracula is said to have dipped his bread in the blood of his victims, creating the legend of vampirism. Vlad Tepes died in battle, being beheaded himself. He was buried without his head, which was displayed in Constantinople, and buried in a torture chamber (Miller). While Paul speaks to his daughter, the anonymous narrator tells us of a battle between the Vlachs and the Turks, “His (Dracula) audacity was such that in 1462 he crossed the Danube and carried out a night raid on horseback… In this raid, he killed thousands of Turkish soldiers, and the sultan barely escaped” (Kostova 54). This event is true and it is infamously known as "The Night Raid". Vlad Tepes and his army attacked the Sultan and the Turks outside Wallachia. They massacred thousands of Turks by cutting their throats. But the Vlach army numbered only about 50,000 soldiers, they knew they could not take on the remaining large army of the Turks, so they resorted to a sharp, but bloody, scorched earth tactic. The Turkish army entered Wallachia, but they faced a very hot summer, and with little food and water, thousands of Turks fell to disease alone and marched into the heart of Wallachia , thus allowing the little Vlachs to win the battle (Sparks). At various points in the book he shows small snippets of random facts about Vlad Tepes, reciting special events that may or may not have had an impact on the way of life, as in a series of letters from Rossi he explains: "...Dracula was pursued by the Turks, and he did not return when he reigned over Wallachia again in 1476, just before he was killed” (Kostova 391). It is indeed proven that Vlad Tepes, Dracula, was chased from his country Wallachia by the Turks, but he then returned. It was only then, in December 1476, that he was killed (History). Vlad the Impaler was truly as morbid as many films portray him, loving to watch the bloodshed of his.