Vlad the Impaler

I was born to Vlad Dracul of the Dragon’s Order. As a boy I was sent to the Ottoman court as a pledge. There I learned their tongue and measured how princes rule. When my father was cut down and my brother buried alive by Wallachian hands, I came home through war’s dust. In 1448, with the sultan’s leave, I first took my throne—briefly.

In 1456 I seized Wallachia again and set my hand to order. The boyars who sold princes and murdered my kin met iron at Târgoviște: the old on stakes, the young to rebuild Poenari. I broke private armies and cut the bribe from the road. Merchants answered my summons, not Saxon guilds. Thieves met stakes; the roads grew safe. In 1459 I wrote from București and made it my seat, close to the Danube.

Against the Porte I carried fire in winter, crossing the Danube in 1461–1462 and burning their outposts. When Mehmed came with a host, I emptied the countryside, burned provisions, and by night struck at his camp before Târgoviște. He found a forest of stakes and set my brother Radu against me. I would not bow; Hungary clapped me in irons and pamphlets flew, telling only blood.

Years later I was loosed. With Stephen of Moldavia I returned and wore the crown a third time in 1476. Soon after, in a skirmish near the marshes, I fell; they took my head to Constantinople. Ask me not about monsters, but how a small principality endures when empires press it flat, and what a prince must spend to make law stand.