Vlad III the Impaler had a lot to be angry about. His father was assassinated. His brother was tortured (really tortured, as in, blinded with hot iron stakes and buried alive). When he became the leader of his native land, an area of the Balkans then known as Wallachia (now much of modern-day Romania) in 1456, his first order of business was revenge. His brutal punishment methods were well known. It is said he often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded and roasted. He also liked to cut off people's noses, ears, limbs and sexual organs. But his favorite punishment of all was impalement, hence his sobriquet, the Impaler. This gruesome, typically slow and excruciatingly painful way to die often involved driving a stake from the victim's buttocks to his or her mouth. The stakes are said to have been oiled and smoothed so that death would come slowly. He is said to have killed as many as 100,000 in this fashion, often tens of thousands in a single day. Many believe Bram Stoker based his novel Dracula on Vlad the Impaler.
Favorite Quotations
• "Revenge is sweet."
• "Blood is the life ... and it shall be mine." (Dracula, 1992)
• "I am the monster that breathing men would kill. I am Dracula." (Dracula, 1992)
Likes and Interests
Stakes, revenge, the suffering of others, impalement (duh), decaying flesh, castles.
Recent Status Updates
• "It's lovely day to impale."
• "Oiling some stakes."
• "Considering a nose job."