An Alternative Name for Dracula

oshron

oshron

hey, all. this thought just occurred to me, related to a previous change i decided on for my ASB ATL. long story short, Bram Stoker's fictional character Count Dracula does not exist as we know him mainly because a "real-world" equivalent (based on the both original Stoker character and Mathias Cronqvist from Castlevania) exists in his place as part of a substory of the TL i plan to write. however, i've decided that Stoker himself still exists ITTL and i actually DO want to include vampires in popular culture as we know them to an extent.

basically, my thought is that Stoker still writes *Dracula, but it's different because Vlad the Impaler is actually better-received by later generations ITTL because he's successful in defending against the Turks, though anyone who actually knows anything about him ITTL still knows that he was one sadistic son of a bitch. with Vlad III out of the picture as *Dracula's inspiration, i figured i had to come up with a different name for the internally fictional character. i decided to take a page out of Alan Moore's book, so Dracula ITTL will have more of an association with Attila the Hun rather than Vlad the Impaler.

i'll work out his actual character later on--right now, i just wanted to get some input as to what this *Dracula's name could be, since the OTL character's name was based on the noble house to which Vlad III belonged, the House of Draculesti. i want to use as close a criteria as possible for renaming the character ITTL, but my quick research turns up nothing as to Attila's family name, and even his first name is of inconclusive etymology.

any help on this?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
You could use family members of Atilla (much less famous, they're not as "obvious" to our ears). Like Bleda, Rugilla or Mundzuk.

And backwards, they're "Adelb" (bit tricky), "Alligur" and "Kuzdnum" (also tricky). I think of these three, "Castle Rugilla" and an alias of "Alligur" would work best.
 
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Dathi THorfinnsson

Drac is dragon
dracul is the dragon
Dracula is the dragon's (or something like that)

Vlad's house was named after his nickname. He, as most people at the time, didnt HAVE a surname.

Attilla most assuredly didnt.

Besides, Attilla was a Hun, not a Romanian (or Hungarian).

So... pick a fierce adjective/noun in Romanian (as an epithet for your TTL guy), do the same process, et voila.

So, if Lup[-?] were a Rromanian word for wolf (I havent looked it up, but it should be something like that), then something like Lupula might be your vampire's name.
 
oshron

oshron

i more or less decided to use the earlier suggestion of Koschei, slightly reimagined in TTL's Dracula as "Lord Koschey the Deathless" (kind of accounting for the time period and Stoker being English, so -i is replaced by -y) and the novel itself being called Lord Koschey, with Stoker basing the character on Attila (or it being a complete coincidence in-universe with later authors noticing the similarities and cranking it up to eleven in their own versions, perhaps with Koschey actually being Attila, Bleda, or some other Hun) and relocating his home, "Castle Rugilla", to the Hungarian mountains. by "based on Attila" i mean his character will be rewritten a bit to reflect at least some of the Huns' history rather than Wallachia's, probably including the Sword of Mars being in Koschey's gallery or something. as for motifs, i'll be looking into ones associated more with Attila than OTL's Dracula, since the wolf motif will be given to the fictional Prince Matvei of Wallachia, since he's the closer analogy the OTL's Dracula, and will even encounter expys of the Harkers and Abraham Van Helsing (though Van Helsing himself still appears as a fictional character in Stoker's novel). other than that, Koschey is recognizable to OTL's Dracula partly because Prince Matevi the internally historical character is a bit more similar to Castlevania's Dracula except for the fact that he's a normal human being
 

Deimos

Banned
If you are going with the barbarian Attila, you are omitting a lot of classist subtext from Dracula.
IOTL Stoker found inspiration from Hungarian folk tales and it might be possible he would have heard of Elizabeth Báthory and her infamous crimes. Maybe modeling "your Dracula" after someone from her family would be adequate?
 
oshron

oshron

Deimos said:
If you are going with the barbarian Attila, you are omitting a lot of classist subtext from Dracula.
IOTL Stoker found inspiration from Hungarian folk tales and it might be possible he would have heard of Elizabeth Báthory and her infamous crimes. Maybe modeling "your Dracula" after someone from her family would be adequate?
Click to expand...

possibly. before starting this thread i HAD considered looking into Bathory, since she's the other really well-known "historical" vampire
 

twovultures

Donor
oshron said:
possibly. before starting this thread i HAD considered looking into Bathory, since she's the other really well-known "historical" vampire
Click to expand...

What about Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard? Okay, granted, he wasn't undead, but he is still a bloodthirsty aristocrat. Living over the border from Normandy, perhaps Stoker could link him to the Norse myth of the Draugr?
 
oshron

oshron

an idea actually occurred to me while i was working in the yard earlier. after some thought about Bathory being the basis of *Dracula ITTL, the idea of a cursed vampire who switches gender regularly occurred to me, eithe that or he/she can do so at will, posing as both *Dracula and his supposed wife. a decent example of what i'm talking about would probably be Angela/Ash from the anime adaptation of Black Butler, though decidedly more demonic

i hadn't thought of Gilles de Rais. he WOULD be better-known to the British even ITTL and considering all the other changes (the Hundred Years' War still took place and Joan of Arc still existed), so maybe i'll rewrite that as being more like Bluebeard, though i DO still rather like the idea of *Dracula being like Attila

Carmilla is one that i'd rather avoid as an influence on TTL's Dracula, since that's another fictional character that i'm rewriting as an internally historical character, though an equivalent based more directly on Bathory isn't out of the question (though it would butterfly the concept of lesbian vampires coming up as early as it did IOTL, even PREDATING Dracula :p)
 
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