Talk:Vlad the Impaler/Archive 1

message: "Vlad was one mean, nasty-ruthless son-of-a-bitch that ever walked on this earth."
This is hardly NPOV, there are other less crude ways to express similar sentiments.
Removed.
How bout, "Radon is interesting because it's both noble and deadly, like Vlad the Impaler."? Eh, eh? 
Since the page was axed do to Copyright infringments, I figured I would add a bit of public domain information to the discussion page, as a kind of place-holder.
His name was Vlad Tepes, and was known as Vlad III of Wallachia; Vlad Dracula; and Vlad the Impaler. Dracula meaning son of the dragon, for his father earned the gentry right of the dragon (Dracul.) The Impaler monicker being earned by his propensity for execution by impaling, used against his political enemies, and most notably the bourgeoisie. He was known to be quite bloodthirsty (although mostly in the metaphorical way,) and is thought to be the character archetype used by Bram Stoker in his best known novel, Dracula, when combined with prevalent Vampire myths. During his reign, Wallachia was positioned between the Christians to the west an the Ottoman Muslim's to the East, both bent on destroying one-another. He allied (a very loose alliance,) with the Christians to the west, but was eventually incarcerated by them. He was later released, typically believed because although he was an unstable, blood thirsty tyrant, he was on their side and therefore would provide a buffer against the Muslims.
:You have your facts and opinions messed up buddy. Please get it straight, first off Dracul means devil not dragon (check in any Romanian Dictionary if still not satisfied do researchn on the word and you will see that I am correct). Second, Transylvania at that time was CHRISTIAN they did not make an alliance with "The christians to the West" they were Christians. He was incarcerated by your so called Christians also known as Hungrians because they feared he was getting too powerful. Vlad had no allies he was stuck inbetween to countries that were both set on getting Transylvania one way or another. Lasty you don't know what your talking about when you say that Vlad Tepes was a blood thirsty tyrant. This was how he was potrayed by the Turks because he did away with them by impaling them in steaks this was a way to make them back off not because he was bloodthirsty. Vlad simple had the moto an eye for an eye which is a very just way of handling things at that time. Finally I would like to say that the legend of Dracula was really inspired by a baroness in Hungry that lived around Vlad's time that killed more then 600 of her own servants in order to drink and bath in there blood because she thought this was the secret to immortality. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.201.61.182 (talk • contribs) 17 August 2006.
::Im afraid you have it messed up."Dracul" means Dragon and it would be severly ilogical if "Dracula" would mean Devil. New Babylon (22 Aug 2006)
Okay if you don't believe me look it up in a dictionary. I speak fluent romanian, english, french, and spanish. Romananian being my first language. I am 100% sure "dracul" or "drac" in Romanian is literally translated to english as devil —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.201.61.182 (talk • contribs) 23 August 2006.
: I don't think anyone (or at least anyone who knows Romanian) disputes that when a Romanian today says "Dracul" or Dracu' they mean "Devil". However, in the relevant period there really was an Order of the Dragon, and in Romanian the relevant word for "dragon" was Dracul. I believe it comes from the German Drahe, but I wouldn't stake too much on that, so to speak. - Jmabel | Talk 00:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I stand slightly corrected by Anittas. The order was of Serbian origin, but revived/refreshed by Sigismund. Dracul is apparently straight from the Latin Draco, not by way of the German Drahe. - Jmabel | Talk 15:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Early comments

message: I pasted some text from Michael Currie's essay "Vlad: Bad Lad or Mad Dad" with permission.  I emailed him with the question: "Text in Wikipedia is licensed under the GDFL [...] Would you be willing to release your text under these conditions?"  He replied: "Yes I allow the release.  Feel free to use it without crediting me." --Redquark 03:34, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyrighted text 

message: When foreign emissaries refused, out of custom, to remove their hats in his presence, he told them that he wished only to strengthen and honour their custom - then nailed their hats to their heads. When he imposed this cruel act upon several Turkish emissaries, the sultan went to war against him.
Conversely, just as Vlad responded harshly to insult, he responded favourably to flattery. When a messenger arrived with news from neighboring Hungary, Vlad grew very angry, and invited him to dinner. Seeing the dining room filled with dead and dying people impaled on stakes, and guards behind him holding a gold-plated stake, the messenger grew very anxious. When Vlad asked him if he knew why he was asked to dinner, the messenger thought quickly and responded, "I do not know, but I know you are a wise and great ruler, and no matter what you command, even if you were to command my death, it should be done." Impressed, Vlad waved the soldiers away, and said "Had you not answered so well, I would have impaled you on the spot." The messenger was showered with gifts, before being sent back to Hungary.
please, provide sources for these paragraphs. Try to quote sources as objective as possible. These paragraphs are defamatory. Unless suported by reference to sources sustaining such defamatory formulations, i'll reformulate these paragraphs in a non defamatory /neutral way. Criztu 01:24, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Defamatory paragraphs

message: Chapters
2 The reign of Vlad III
3 The Life of Vlad III Dracula
4 Reputation
are more or less duplicate, and the merging had not been finished yet. I added a  template because I can not find the template I was looking for Reply to David Latapie 20:09, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unfinished merging 

message: The article says " In the Battle of Belgrade Hunyadi was killed and his army defeated."
Completely wrong. Hunyadi died because of a plague after the siege but he was completely victorious.
"The victory stopped the Ottoman Turkish advance towards Catholic Europe for 70 years ... During the siege, Pope Callixtus III ordered the noon bell, to call believers to pray for the defenders - but as in many places the news of victory arrived later than the order, it transformed into the commemoration of the victory"
Consult article Siege_of_Belgrade.
: Quite correct. I corrected the article and also removed the (completely erroneous) conclusion in the article drawn from this. (Drawing conclusions about Hunyadi's defeat without him even being defeated.. Who writes this stuff?) --BluePlatypus 23:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hunyadi defeated? 

message: Vlad's second wife wasn't the sister of Matthius Corvinus. She was Jusztina Szilágyi de Horogszeg, who's aunt (father's sister) Erzsébet was married to János Hunyadi. They were the parents of Matthias Corvinus, who was thus her <I>cousin</I>. See the family trees:   --BluePlatypus 17:59, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  2nd wife 

message: Some history books say that Vlad III and Stephen the Great and Holy of Moldavia were cousins!
They were cousins. What's your point? --Anittas 09:17, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Vlad III and Stephen the Great

message: I don't know much about this, but there doesn't seem to be anything here about one of his sons that I read about. It may have been inaccurate information, but I believe his name was Adrian Fahrenheit or something. I believe he died young. Again, I'm just throwing it out there in case it's something we might want to look further into.
: After googling for "adrian fahrenheit", I suggest you go to the Castlevania III article for more on that. This page, however, is about the actual historical figure Vlad Tepes. Not his video-game fiction relatives. --BluePlatypus 12:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: His Son

message: You have added good things, but:
1.Inform yourselves about the diacritics in Romanian. Use them.
2.Link a person's name to an existing article, on its first mention. The same for localities.
3. Stop linking old names to modern ones - ie. Kingdom of Hungary to Hungary, or countries ti cities - Muscovy instead of Moscow. It shows ignorance, and you want to give a person who is not familiar with the topic an insught into the situation then (not now).
4. Link at least some years.Dahn 14:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NOTICE

message: Dracul definitely means devil. The title was given to him by peasants for his unsavory way of negotiating (impaling people).
I'm not sure calling the article "Vlad III Dracula" is appropriate. It should be changed to "Vlad III Tepes". Anyone have any objections? Dali 16:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do (I'm Romanian, by the way). I also think this back-and-forth about names is useless. Type Vlad Tepes (or the proper Vlad Ţepeş) and you get to this article. He is also cited as Ţepeş throughout the article. Dracul was not a name given to him by peasants, it was a reference to the dragon for sure. The main (since lost) meaning of the time was serpent. The peasants preferred the unofficial and grotesque Ţepeş - as the most parochial references to him show. Dracul (and this is in the article) was the name his father bore - which gives you Draculea/Dracula (archaism for "of the Drac"). Also, somebody would have to go an even longer way in Romania to be named "Dracul", if that is a reference to the devil: consider that they probably used "serpent" initially as an euphemism, so as not to mention the Fallen One out loud. Dahn 19:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Dracul"'s meaning

message: As this article is currently 50K (recommended size is 32K), any objections to moving the Anecdotal evidence subheader (or additional sections) to a new article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Olessi (talk • contribs) .
:No. Mihai -talk 01:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Dahn 23:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article length 

message: Just came back from România, where I learned some things about Vlad that I didn't knew before. According to a tour guide at the Bram Castle, Vlad got the infamy of being a bad man when he crossed the king of Hungary. It seems that the Rome gave the kind of Hungary a substantial ammount of cash to fight the Turks. But the Hungarian king was very vain and pompous, and he spent most of the money with parties and hunting.
When Vlad returned form a massive fight against the Turks, he went to ask the king of Hungary (who was supposed to be his ally against the Turks) about his whereabouts whilst Vlad was on the battlefront -- which would of course, raised the question of what happened with the money sent by Rome. The Hungarian king then decided to blame Vlad, and spread horror stories about Vlad.
Bear inmind, that I am just repeating what a tour guide (a very well educated one) told me in România. --Pinnecco 21:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not an expert on the matter, but I am Romanian. Not questioning the education of the guide, this sounds a bit biased, and like modern wishful thinking. I think the article covers everything about Vlad already, including all that could possibly be said about his love-hate relationship with Matthias. The info you got has a whiff of anti-Catholicism. The guide is certainly not uneducated, but he/she could've been overeducated in the classical Romanian version. Plus, Bran stikes me as the wrong place to learn about Vlad (no disrespect intended): the Romanians have learned to exploit a cliche (with all the grotesque kitsch involved), and Vlad spent some days of his entire life in the castle. Dahn 23:34, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It’s interesting to know, that one of the greatest Romanian national heroes was in fact a vassal of the king of Hungary. The other national hero, Mircea the Elder, Dracula's grandfather was also a vassal of the king of Hungary. I quote:
"Io, Mircea voievod, mare domn şi stăpânitor a toată Ţara Ungro-Vlahiei..."
The word "Ungro" is a clear and undeniable evidence for that.
The story told by the tour guide is a pure fantasy.Zmiklos 22:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  His Infamy 

message: About the diacritic, I am well aware of it - simply didn't use it because it wasn't used elsewhere in the article.  I'm interested in the uncertainty about his place of birth, but couldn't find it under early life.  Maybe something needs to be added? - Adam Mathias 05:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry. You were right, it's not mentioned (although all diacritics are in place). It used to be when I last reviewed the article, but they started editing it like mad ever since, writing down all sorts of bits of info that were repeated thrice - and without giving you a chance to see what they were erasing in the process (I mean, the task would have made one go insane). Somehow, it got lost. Also, I suspect that parts of the article are plagiarism. Dahn 06:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, the diacritic was there.  I was flipping around the article in different languages.  Adam Mathias 06:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Place of birth

message: The article presently states this:
:Wishing to assert his status, Vlad II displayed the symbol of the Order (a dragon) in all public appearances (on flags, clothing, etc.). Taking the dragon for a representation of the devil (drac in Romanian), the people of Wallachia gave Vlad II the surname Dracu (Dracul being the grammatically correct form), which he seems to have accepted and used.
Elsewhere I read that dracu meant both "devil" and "dragon" in Romanian; that's what I'd expect since dracu closely resembles Latin draco, and the correspondence between devil and dragon occurs several places in the Bible.
This idea that, so this idea that the people took the dragon to represent a devil is inconsistent with that, and sounds fishy anyway.  I hardly think some noble would like his people going around calling him "The Devil". --Saforrest 16:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You are almost 100% right, IMO. See what you think of the new version. Dahn 16:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Keep informing yourself, anonymous IP. Dahn 22:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romanian for dragon? 

message: The article links Stephen I Báthory to another Bathory that reigned in Transylvania in 16th century. It seems that there is no article about the Bathory that reigned Transylvania in the 15th century and who helped Dracula against Laiota. --Candide, or Optimism 21:37, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong Báthory  

message: Guys, do we have a map that shows what exact lands Vlad ruled over and in what periods? His capital was in Wallachia but did he have control over Transylvania and Moldova as well, or at least parts of them and when? -- Kaloyan* 09:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wallachia had two enclaves in Transylvania: Fagaras and Amlas. He also ruled over the Moldavian Chilia, but Stephen regained it in 1465, after Vlad escaped. --Candide, or Optimism 13:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A map of the lands that Vlad ruled over