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| Erzsebet Bathory |
Any vampire fan is familiar with the name of the Hungarian Blood Countess Erzsebet Bathory.
Countess Bathory lived in 16th century Hungary, appropriately close (given the vampire associations) to the border with the Romanian region of Transylvania.
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| Bathory residence in Hungary Photo by Charmaine Tanti |
Elizabeth Bathory came from a family of Voivods of Transylvania, and her uncle Stephen was also King of Poland.
In 1610, she was accused of murdering over six hundred women and girls to bathe in their blood, believed to keep her skin youthful and translucent.
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| Bathory bathing in virgin blood - wax figures at Nyirbator Photo by Charmaine Tanti |
However, this accusation was most likely the fruit of a conspiracy against the Countess who refused to yield any of the estates that she had inherited from her deceased husband.
Bathory was tried and found guilty. She was walled up in a room where she died 4 years later, in 1614.
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| Bathory on trial - wax figures at Nyirbator Photo by Charmaine Tanti |
Bathory's legend grew and she is now considered the female version of Dracula. The Blood Countess and the Impaler share the same fate in popular culture as most people are more familiar with their legendary/fictional personas than with the real historical facts.
Bathory's legend inspired many stories in the 18th and 19th centuries, and still does so today. In 1729, her story was published by the Jesuit scholar Laszlo Turoczi in Tragica Historia.
The witness accounts were published in 1817, and first gave rise to suspicions that the bloodbaths were pure fiction. However, the vampire craze that raged during the nineteenth century firmly rooted her within the ranks of the sadistic and bloodthirsty undead.
Bathory's legend has inspired anything from literature to music, plays and films. Kim Newman mentions her in his superb Anno Dracula, and she is one of the villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayer Vol 1.
She also features in Riyoko Ikeda's Berusaiyu No Bara Gaiden where she meets Oscar Francois de Jarjayes.
Hammer Horror made one of the first feature films about Elisabeth Bathory in 1970: Countess Dracula starring Ingrid Pitt.
The most recent movies about the Blood Countess include Juraj Jakubisko's Bathory (2008) starring Anna Friel; The Countess (2009) directed by and starring Julie Delpy; and Ulrike Ottinger's Die Blutgraefin (2011), starring Tilda Swinton.
For more information about the Countess' palace in Nyirbator, go to my blog Mad About Travel
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