Also known as Vlad III, Vlad Dracula (son of the Dragon), and—most famously—Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes in Romanian), he was a brutal, sadistic leader famous for torturing his foes.

Voivode Vlad III - also known by his patronymic name Dracula derived from the Slavonic word for dragon - once ruled over Wallachia, a Romanian-speaking vassal state of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Vlad the Impaler, the fearsome Romanian ruler that inspired the story of Dracula, may have cried actual tears of blood, a new study suggests. Traces of proteins found on letters he wrote in 1457 ...