I was coming back from an errand in Burbank and was – well – kind of stunned to see a plaque depicting Vlad Tepes in the window of a local store.
I looked up to see that it was Transylvania Film & TV. The little statue of a Legosi-esque vampire helped to soften things a bit – but I’m still a bit flummuxed. So I went to Wikipedia and found this excerpt on his entry to be particularly enlightening:
It is somewhat ironic that Vlad’s name has often been thrown into the political and ethnic feuds between Hungarians and Romanians, because he was ultimately far from an enemy of Hungary. While he certainly had violent conflicts with some Hungarian nobles, he had just as many Hungarian friends and allies, and his successes in battle with the Turks largely benefited Hungary in the long term. Hungary later found itself under siege but was never entirely penetrated by Ottoman forces. Though neither the first nor the last powerful ruler to take on the Ottoman Empire, Vlad’s battle tactics were quite influential in damaging the impression of Turkish invincibility among Europeans and reversing the European aura of appeasement.
Romanian folklore and poetry, on the other hand, paints Vlad ?epe? as a hero. His favorite weapon being the stake, coupled with his reputation in his native country as a man who stood up to both foreign and domestic enemies, gives him the virtual opposite symbolism of Stoker’s vampire. In Romania, he is considered one of the greatest leaders in the country’s history, and was voted one of “100 Greatest Romanians” in the “Mari Români” television series aired in 2006.
So there ya have it – between the idiosyncratic streets of L.A. and Wikipedia, I learned something new today. I just wonder how often the plaque is acknowledged by the store’s customers.
