Vlad Dracula: Wallachia's Cotribution to World Culture??

"Vlad Dracula"

This is a pretty good biography of the Wallachian prince who provided the name of Bram Stoker's famous vampire.

Unlike the comparatively civilized Bram Stoker Dracula, Vlad Dracula was in the habit of committing offenses against humanity of the sort which should draw attention from human rights groups today.

Vlad's favored means of execution was impalement, which explains his nickname, "Vlad the Impaler." This page goes into a bit more detail than I actually needed. It didn't help that I'd just finished eating, when I read it.

Despite Vlad's odd notion of combining pleasure with capital punishment, his old stomping grounds remember him "as a great patriot and a key person in the development of the Romanian nation".