He is a fictional character, in a novel of the same name by the Irish writer Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1897), presented as a count from Transylvania who is actually a human vampire. The name is inspired by the nickname of a 15th-century historical character named Vlad III, "The Impaler", Prince of Wallachia (Romania), who while a cruel enemy of the Ottoman invaders and is said to have drunk their blood during meals, was not a vampire. The nickname "Impaler" earned it for the way he executes his prisoners; but that of "Dracula" is earlier, inherited from his father Vlad II, called Dracul (sometimes translated from Romanian as "the lucifer, the devil" ) or Draco ("dragon" in Latin, for being a prominent member of the Order of the Dragon), being then his diminutive Dracula : "the dragon" or "the son of the dragon". While Stoker's character was not the first literary vampire (see Carmilla) he became a model for other novels, films, series and video games to this day, as well as an adjective for any bloodsucker (exploiter).
