In a previous incarnation of this website I posted my essay "What is Toreador?" on the very front page. In my description of the essence of Toreador, I pointed out that Dracula is a classic Toreador image. This one statement confused many people and generated a lot of email and guestbook commentary. So it's time to set the record straight.
Yes, in White Wolf's World of Darkness, Vlad Tepes is indeed a most foul and twisted Tzimisce. The historical person Vlad Tepes is reported to have been a very blood-thirsty warrior with a penchant for torture and decapitation, among other gruesome pursuits.
However, the fictional character of Count Dracula is a completely different figure (even has a different name, to give you a hint). As written by Bram Stoker in the Victorian horror novel Dracula, the Count is a mysterious, romantic, seductively dangerous figure. Women are drawn to him instinctively. The primal appeal of sex and death is irresistible.
The vampire of 20th century fiction and film is indebted to Bram Stoker's Count. It is this Dracula that most movie vampires -- from Bela Lugosi to Catherine Denuve to Tom Cruise -- have drawn their inspiration from. Anne Rice owes a great deal to this image of the undead, as do plenty of other modern horror writers.
This character, this Count Dracula, is undoubtably Toreador. Bram Stoker is assumed to have known something of Tepes and his bloody history and was probably influenced by this. However, Stoker changed many details for his novel and never intended to write a historical account. Dracula is a work of fiction.
The two characters are very different and are in no way interchangeable. Remember, Dracula is a fictional character, Vlad Tepes is a historical man!
-- By Trystan L. Bass
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