Count Dracula

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Character
Name: Count Dracula
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Fandom: Dracula
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Count Dracula, often known as simply Dracula, is a vampire from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel of the same name. He's become a pop culture icon over the years, having made many appearances in films, TV series, books, video games, comics etc, and his status as an icon of horror has influenced vampires in media for decades.

His character over the years has developed and changed somewhat from his original novel appearance, such that many readers during Dracula Daily were a little surprised at certain aspects of his character that hadn't been as frequently translated in subsequent adaptations, such as Dogula or his lizard-like way of climbing down the castle walls. Though mainstream media seems to focus on the Count, often emphasising the erotic subtextual nature of his feeding on Lucy and Mina, Dracula Daily fans were much more endeared by both his gradual menace and terror, and the comedy vibes of him as a host to Jonathan, with most of the sexual interpretations of his character being in regards to the homoeroticism between him and his guest.

Canon

Dracula (no first name is given) is a Transylvanian nobleman whose decision to move from Austria-Hungary to Britain kickstarts the plot of the Stoker's book. During the course of the novel he victimizes multiple characters, including Lucy Westenra, R.M. Renfield, Jonathan Harker and Mina Harker; the last two and their friends end up uncovering his vampiric nature and eventually kill him.

Dracula is the most famous character from the novel and one of the most famous fictional characters in existence. He appeared in multiple works of fiction, most of which aren't even adaptations of the novel but rather wholly new stories. Many works featuring Dracula are horror, but some belong to other genres like action, comedy, romance or children media. It's not uncommon for book adaptations to enlarge his role[1] or give him more attractive looks, or at least more conventional ones.

Portrayals of Dracula in fiction are often influenced by various movie incarnations of him. For example, he may be given the cape, hairstyle or accent of Lugosi's Dracula, burn in the sun like Nosferatu or Lee's Dracula, have a reincarnated lover like Oldman's Dracula. Lugosi's Dracula, in particular, is the one who codified the image of Dracula in pop culture, and most references and parodies of Dracula refer to him rather than to the Dracula from the novel.

Fandom

From Re:Dracula's bonus episode with Matt:

Matt: "I love every meme and every drawing that makes Dracula himself looked like an asshole. Because that's my favorite thing about the way people on Tumblr, especially, interpreted and read, Dracula together. Because Dracula, in a lot of culture, is this like suave, cool, sexy vampire. Yes, he's going to murder people, but he's going to do it in such a way that he's like the hero, right?

Hannah: A very romantic hero.

Matt: Yeah, yeah! Yeah, exactly. And Tumblr was having zero of this. This Dracula, the one in the actual text, is a jerk who is gaslighting, abusing, stalking, murdering and nobody was rooting for Dracula at all. So every meme that makes fun of Dracula warms my heart."

Dracula daily 2022 Tumblr: well known haters of count dracula[2]

watching dracula daily through fandom osmosis, all I can say is that it’s genuinely fascinating how the audience reaction manages to prove J. Jerome Cohen’s Monster Theory incredibly well, and more coherently than any academic paper or theory I’ve read in years. specifically, with the context that Dracula was an antisemitic and orientalist caricature of the racialised Other, in making the Other into a monster Stoker’s narrative choices makes him into an object of first fascination and then, in turn, repulsion. his monstrosity encapsulates the fear of immigrants and foreign invasion. the audience reaction to its hunting and death is a real-time demonstration of how a monstrous Other justifies its own slaying, thus making slaying of the Other celebratory. watching tumblr go from “hee hee hoo hoo he’s just a funny kreature" to "THIS BEAST MUST BE SLAIN FOUR TOUCHING OUR PURENESS” is worth, like, seven graduation papers alone in sociology, immigration politics, radicalisation theory, and horror literature. monster theory (seven thesis) speedrun but liveblogged.[3]

maybe part of the reason i’m disappointed with the discussions that came out of dracula daily last year (and the ones that are restarting this year) is bc a lot of them feel so... idk how to put it

early last year there were a lot of good posts about how dracula is this deeply queercoded character, using a cultural language that stoker and his contemporaries would have understood. about how stoker himself was writing dracula at least partially as a reaction to oscar wilde’s obscenity trials. about his personification of those dark and shameful secrets is a foreign monster threatening the Good And Wholesome british culture.

and it seems like most of the audience now has taken that portrayal at face value. they’ve accepted dracula as this one-dimensional threat, and they’ve accepted the protagonists as unilaterally good and moral victims and heroes.

it frustrates me, is all. i feel like yall are capable of more than this.[4]

Fan Theories and Interpretations

Vlad the Impaler Connection

In the 1970s there has been a large uprise of interest in Dracula, great deal of which was caused by the publication of the book by Florescu and Mcnally that suggested he was based on Vlad the Impaler. After that, there has been a lot of discussion among both scholars and fans on whether or not it was the case, and portraying the Count as Vlad has become common in derivative works. It also has influenced Dracula-related fan tourism, leading to fans and fannish groups like The Dracula Society visiting the sites related to Vlad the Impaler and not just the novel. Popular at first, this theory has increasingly come under criticism in later decades, which also left its influence on the fandom. While the fanfiction of the 2000s and 2010s used the life of Vlad III as Dracula's backstory quite often, it is less common for the works written in the 2020s, especially after Dracula Daily.

Pairings

Many fans object to any ships with Dracula, unless portrayed purely for horror. Nevertheless, AO3 statistics show that Dracula/Jonathan is the second most written pairing for the novel, and fics with the highest number of hits and kudos tend to have it.

Fanworks

Fanfiction

Novel

A lot of fic focusing on Dracula or set from his POV is darkfic about predations on his canonical victims. Such stories are often noncon or have noncon elements.

Some fics develop Dracula's backstory, often showing how he became a vampire. In these, he's usually portrayed as Vlad III.

  • Birth by g0ttak33p - a story about Dracula's death and rebirth
  • The Tenth Scholar and The Pact by Dr. Algae - stories combining the premise of Dracula as a student of Scholomance with the interpretation of him being Vlad the Impaler
  • Prism by Assimbya - "Dracula, from the perspectives of lovers over his vast lifetime."
  • The Dragon by TheGhostofStonewallJackson

Count Dracula often appears in crossovers of other canons with Dracula.

Other:

The most common pairing with the book!Dracula is Dracula/Jonathan.

Renfield

Majority of fics for the Renfield movie from 2023 is about Dracula/Renfield pairing.

2020 BBC Series

Most popular pairings appearing in most fanworks for the series are Dracula/Jonathan and Dracula/Agatha.

1992 Movie

Most fanfiction for the 1992 movie focuses on the Dracula/Mina pairing. Majority of it is written from Mina's POV, but some Dracula-centric works also exist.

Hammer Horror

Most fanworks for Hammer Horror movies are Dracula/Van Helsing.

1931 Movie

The fics for the Universal movie are often crossovers with Renfield 2023. They almost always center on the Dracula/Renfield pairing.

Other

Fanart

Count Dracula is usually depicted in illustrations of his scenes in the book or in solitary portraits. A lot of fanart with him is humorous, making fun of the perceived weirdness and stupidity of his actions. More serious fanart leans into horror, often showing him menacing his victims.

Dracula is described as tall in the novel, and the artists often take it further by drawing him as unusually or enormously tall. The book Dracula is almost always portrayed with long hair, though there is no mention of it in the novel. The novel readers are often surprised to discover that he has facial hair, which is rarely seen in movie adaptations and other depictions of him, and the fandom members take care to include it into their fanart. He is sometimes given the iconic Dracula cape or has his clothes shown as more ornate than implied in the novel.

Meta

References

  1. ^ This tendency started as early as 1901, when Swedish "translation" (actually a rewrite) Powers of Darkness expanded his character, increasing his page time, giving him new motivations and deeping his relationship with the blonde bride
  2. ^ the Tumblr post by stupidvampires
  3. ^ wondersmith-and-sons Tumblr blog, November 7, 2022
  4. ^ churchyardgrim Tumblr blog, May 16, 2023
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