There was a ruler in Romania in the 1400s named Dracula. He was best known for impaling thousands of people on sticks. There was no connection to blood sucking bats.

Vlad Dracula's family was one of the ruling families in Romania, in a section called Wallachia, just south of Transylvania. They also had influence in Transylvania.

Romania is in the southeast of Europe, in between Turkey and central Europe. In the 1400s the Turks were a very powerful threat to Europe. It was conceivable that the Turks could conquer Romania, and go on to conquer all of Europe. If that happened, it's possible that Christianity would have been completely wiped out, eventually, in favor of Islam.

Dracula was sent to Turkey when he was a teenager. In a sense, he may have been considered a hostage. But he was royalty. He wasn't enslaved in Turkey. Later in life he ruled Wallachia, sometimes with the support of the Turks, sometimes in opposition to the Turks. Sometimes he was considered the bulwark of Europe against the rising tide of Turks. Sometimes not.

Dracula was a sadist. He enjoyed impaling thousands of people he considered his enemies. Often, those enemies were Wallachian citizens of the upper class, the boyars. He even had a dinner in the middle of all the thousands of impaled people. He really enjoyed it.

There were various ways of impaling people, that Dracula enjoyed. One was to simply shove a dull-pointed stake through the person's torso and out the back. Another was to shove a stake through the person's anus and out his mouth. Another was to nail someone's hat to his head. This is connected with the way to kill a vampire, by shoving a stake through his heart. But you see the twist there. It wasn't Dracula being killed by impalement. Dracula was doing the impaling.

Impalement was a horrible way to die. It maximized pain, and also maximized the slowness of death. It prolonged the maximum amount of pain.

Dracula would sometimes impale as many as 30,000 people at the same time, in a geometric pattern of concentric circles. Drac means dragon. Ula means son of. Dracula means son of the dragon. The dragon was Dracula's father, called a dragon because he was in the order of the dragon, defenders of the Christian faith against Turkey.

Drac also means devil.

Dracula liked to impale thieves and unfaithful wives. He liked to mutilate the genitals of women, if he had an excuse, like that they did something bad. He liked to skin women alive too, while he was mutilating their genitals.

He had a very moralistic streak to him. He played "gotcha". A merchant once reported a robbery in Wallachia, and Dracula returned to him every golden ducat he was robbed, plus one more. The merchant, fortunately, admitted to Dracula that he had been given one extra ducat. Dracula said that if the merchant had not reported that, Dracula would have impaled him as a thief. Dracula did manage to catch the thief, and of course impaled him.

Dracula basically liked to be a devil with an excuse. There are always people like that. You might say there's at least some small correlation to him compared to someone who bombs an abortion clinic. You are bad, so I will kill you. His definition of bad included thieves and promiscuous women. It also included lazy people.

He once invited all the poor and homeless people of Wallachia to a feast, and after feeding them royally, he burned them all to death.

He once saw a man with a short shirt on. He blamed the man's wife for making him such a short shirt, not standard length. He impaled her, despite the fact that her husband begged for her life and said she wasn't lazy. Imagine that. Dracula was an unspeakable bastard, so much so that we are tempted to label him insane. How can it be "sane" to do that? There's a disconnect there.