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Elizabeth Bathory was A countess of transalvania and in her 40s and 50s tortured her prisoners and workers for ammusment and wipped them on the front to increase pain and watch the victims faces twist in pain. Once while wipping someone blood splatterd on her hand and she claimed it made her skin look more buetiful and younger. She asked her priests about it and they said that the blood of a virgian makes you younger. So Elizabeth began killing virgians with "witches" and bathing in there blood and drinking ther blod from a chalice and later on drink as the blood poured from the virgians cut thoat to stay young. In the end she was caught, her accomplises were burned and Elizabeth could not be punished because of her position in the goverment. Its said she killed over 600 people. This tale enspired The guy who made Dracula to make Dracula.

I only know Bathory's story because of the band Bathory =P

You should look up Vlad. Its another "real vampire" story. He killed alot more people though I think.

He drank their blood too 3nodding

Ah jeez. Clio's got a nosebleed.

Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), also known as Dracula, was crown prince of Wallachia in Hungary. He was the only person to answer the Pope's last call for a crusade, in this case against the invading Turks that were about to over run his (Dracula's) country.

With a very small army, he defeated the Turkish invasion, which outnumbered his own men something like 10 - to - 1. Because of this, and some other heroic deeds, he's something of a national hero. To this day. (Besides, in the Carpathians, vampires are just invisible spirits that live in corpses. It's the cats on floating boards you have to watch out for.)

However, Dracula was also a Greek Orthodox Christian and when the Pope said, "Good Job answering my call for a Crusade, convert to Roman Catholicism so that I can reward you" Vlad said "Up yours."

Literally in some cases. Vlad had a habit of impaling prisoners (including unfortunate Turkish prisoners of war, because he had grown up in a Turkish monastery, he probably didn't like the culture very much.) He put them butt-first high atop greased poles, alive - it was said - and let gravity slowly destroy his enemies... an agonizing death by reeming.

Now, most of the gory stories about ol' Vlad came from German broadsheets. The German press at that time (ala Gutenberg) was firmly in the thrall of the Papacy(because Germany WAS the Holy Roman Empire.) Vlad's refusal to convert was embarrassing, so horrible stories about his treatment of prisoners began to circulate.

"He impales prisoners and watches them slowly die!" The fledgling tabloids screamed. "He dips his bread in the blood of the innocent!" And lots of other juicy stuff.

In those days (and, looking at things like the Abu Ghraid scandal and what's probably going on at Guantanamo Bay, making a comeback here in the US) torture was routinely used by authorities. Vlad's treatment of prisoners was mild compared to some of the quaint inventions (Strappado, Pressing, etc.) used by the Papacy itself. That's not to excuse it, it's just that royalty tends to be a bloody business.

So, in a way, Vlad Tepes (Dracula) was really the first media icon - or at least, the first big media scandal.

Incidentally, Bathory was walled up inside her own castle wall - they couldn't convict her for the deaths of over 500 maidens, but there is such a thing as restraint, even among the aristocracy. Interesting form of "house arrest" huh?

La Comtesse Erzsebet Bathory-Nadasdy did not drink the blood of her victims. That is just a tale that was fabricated and thrown in with the actual historical facts to make the story more extravagant and marketable. stare

Heh heh pretty much xd

There are some historical speculations that say Bathory may have had some relation to Tepes, hence the bloodness and the killing and stuff. I've also heard Hitler may have been of the same lineage, but I personally think it's bupkis. I'd need to see the ancestry before I believed a word of it.

I also heard a story about Vlad which I could concieve being true. A fancy-to-do person from (I believe) Turkey met Tepes and refused to remove his turban in Vlad's presence. When that happened, Vlad kindly nailed it in place for him. As in to his skull.