Mad Kings & Queens, Week VIII [Monday, Period 4]

[atreideslioness]

"Today we're working with someone many of you may be familiar with," Ghanima announced as the class assembled. "Especially if you have taken this particular class before."  Possibly because it was the first day after Spring Break, and Ghanima was feeling far too lazy to teach a brand new class.  "If, at any point, today's discussion becomes too much, please feel free to excuse yourselves." 

"The inspiration for Bram Stoker's famous vampire, Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler may not have actually drunk blood, but he was certainly one of the most bloodthirsty rulers to have ever stalked through the annals of history."

"Raised to be a conventional prince, Vlad III was an exceptional warrior, horseman, and scholar: he was fluent in several languages, as well as the art of etiquette. His father had sworn to uphold an allegiance to fight the Turks, and was honored with membership in a secret society known as the Order of the Dragon, or the Dracul. Thus, Vlad gained his famous title, Drăculea, or "son of the Dragon." At the age of eleven, Vlad and his younger brother, Radu, were taken hostage and held at the palace of a Turkish sultan. Vlad and Radu lived under a constant threat of death or torture, and were often beaten and abused by their captors. The experience marked him for the rest of his life."

"Following the death of his father, and years of exile, Vlad returned to his homeland of Walachia and seized control of the throne. Determined to assert his power, he invited all the noble families of Walachia - the Boyar - to a banquet. Vlad suspected that many of them hand betrayed his father and brother, and once the feast was over, the old and infirm were impaled on wooden stakes. The younger and sturdier members of the party were enslaved, and put to work building him a castle. A short time later, he reportedly gathered up the beggars of the region and boarded them up in a great hall before setting it alight and burning them to death. His reasoning was reportedly 'I did this so no one would be poor in my realm.'

"Keep in mind that since the death of Vlad's grandfather, Mircea the Elder, in 1418, Walachia had fallen into a somewhat anarchical situation. A constant state of war had led to rampant crime, falling agricultural production, and the virtual disappearance of trade. Vlad used severe methods to restore some order, as he needed an economically stable country if he was to have any chance against his external enemies."

"The early part of Vlad’s reign was dominated by the idea of eliminating all possible threats to his power, mainly the rival nobility groups. This was done mainly by physical elimination, but also by reducing the economic role of the nobility: the key positions in the Prince’s Council, traditionally belonging to the country’s greatest boyars, were handed to obscure individuals, some of them of foreign origin, but who manifested loyalty towards Vlad. For the less important functions, Vlad also ignored the old boyars, preferring to knight and appoint men from the free peasantry. A key element of the power of the Walachian nobility was their connections in the Saxon-populated autonomous towns of Transylvania, so Vlad acted against these cities by eliminating their trade privileges in relation with Walachia and by organizing raids against them. In 1459, he had 30,000 of the German settlers (Saxons) and officials of the Transylvanian city of Kronstad who were transgressing his authority impaled."

"Vlad controlled his subjects with an iron-fist, and any who opposed his rule or committed even minor crimes could be subject to a gruesome and agonizing death. Adulterous wives, cheating merchants, even one poor woman who had sewn her husband's shirt too short -- all were killed hideously," she said. "Vlad's preferred method of execution was, as I mentioned earlier, to impale his victims. He turned this torture into an art form, arranging the stakes and victims into complex patterns and puzzles." Ghanima's eyes swept the classroom, carefully noting how the students were reacting before she continued. "'The wooden stakes were typically plunged vertically, from the anus to the mouth, and were smoothed and oiled at the tip to ease the passage through the body and avoid damaging vital organs. This ensured an agonizingly slow, yet effective, death. Rumor says that victims of noble birth were given longer stakes, as to be higher from the ground, and were often first invited to dine with Vlad, surrounded by rotting staked corpses." "Of course, he did not limit himself to staking," she said calmly. "Vlad was reportedly partial to other forms of torture as well, and thought nothing of boiling people alive, skinning, scalping (also while living), and mutilating or roasting children and feeding them to their mothers. Reportedly, he managed to dispose of at least one-tenth of his citizenry during his reign."

"In 1462, when the Turks invaded Walachia, they were totally unprepared for the sight which met them on the outskirts of the capital city of Tirgoviste: rows upon rows of large stakes upon which the bodies of at least 20,000 men, women, and children hung. The horror was enough to make the invading army flee in terror."

"When the Turks invaded again, this time determined to destroy the Dracul, Vlad fled to his allies in Hungary where he was kept under house arrest for several years. His appetite for sadism did not diminish during his incarceration, and he turned to the only victims he could find - rats, mice, and birds. Vlad was reinstated as the King of Walachia upon his release from prison in 1468, and he reportedly died in 1476."

"There are several variants of Vlad the Impaler's death. Some sources say he was killed in battle against the Ottoman Empire near Bucharest in December of 1476. Others say he was assassinated by disloyal Boyars just as he was about to sweep the Turks from the field or during a hunt. Other accounts have Vlad falling in defeat, surrounded by the bodies of his loyal Moldavian bodyguards. Still other reports claim that Vlad, at the moment of victory, was struck down by one of his own men. There are accounts that Vlad's body was decapitated by the Turks and his head was sent to Istanbul and preserved in honey, where the sultan had it displayed on a stake as proof that Kazıklı Bey was finally dead. However, Romanian historian and Vlad biographer Matei Cazacu disputes this, since the Turks tended to remove the scalp of their victims' heads rather than behead them." Ghanima smiled viciously at the assembled students. "After all, Vlad learned picked up that particular torture habit during his time as a hostage in the Turkish court. Clearly, an argument can be made in this case regarding nature versus nurture."

[OOC: Wait for the OCD is up, go play please! NOTE: Today's class is behind the cut-tag for impalement, violence, and lots of people dying. NOT FLUFFY.]

Comments

Sign-In

[atreideslioness]

If you remembered to come back from Spring Break!

Re: Sign-In

[raspberryturk]

Reno

Re: Sign-In

[solo_sword]

Jaina Solo

During the Lecture

[atreideslioness]

Take notes, boggle, flee the classroom when it gets to be too much. Ghanima will not hold it against anyone who cannot stay for the full class today.

Re: During the Lecture

[solo_sword]

Jaina remembered this one, and thought it was probably a sign of what the worst mission ever could do to a person that it freaked her out this much less. Still affecting, but not nearly the same way.

Re: During the Lecture

[lordofthecats.livejournal.com]

Lion-o remembered this lecture all too well from last time. At least this time around, he didn't feel so sick.

Re: During the Lecture

[weetuskenraider]

After what Tahiri had just spent the past month -- week -- something -- doing, this didn't freak her out quite as badly as it might have otherwise.

Her face looked a little strange, though, like she was concentrating too fiercely on something.

Re: During the Lecture

[cataclysmicluck.livejournal.com]

Zayne was a teeny bit freaked out. For once, he was skipping certain parts in his notes. He'd remember some of the details, even if he didn't really want to.

Re: During the Lecture

[intraspective]

Ino put on an almost bored look as she wrote down notes.

It wasn't that she was bored, but that it was the best sort of face she was going to give beyond one of being kinda revolted.

Because, seriously. Ew.

Re: During the Lecture

[walks-two-paths.livejournal.com]

Savannah was trying to stick this through as she took careful notes about everything.

Yet, she was really horrified by it as her face probably gave away.

Re: During the Lecture

[momslilassassin]

Ben was there because Jaina was there. And Tahiri. And Aravis. And he wasn't going to leave the room like some little kid just because he could imagine exactly what it was that Vlad had been up to and make some really horrifying jumps to applying it to Jacen.

So he wasn't taking notes, and was spending a lot of time trying not to turn green. But he wasn't about to leave.

Re: During the Lecture

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Liir took notes, not particularly upset but somewhat curious as to how the man'd managed to keep in power long enough to do most of this nonsense. The Wizard had liked his spectacles (a brief wobble of the stomach came through him as he thought of Irji and the paraffin necklace) but nothing on this kind of scale.

Though, rather depressingly, he couldn't imagine anyone complaining about his killing the poor people.

Class Discussion: Ruthless Efficiency or Sadistic Insanity? Are they incompatible?

[atreideslioness]

On your desks are handouts regarding Vlad's various alleged pastimes and the the infamous 'Night Attack'," Ghanima said. "I'd like you to read them over, and decide if Vlad Ţepeş was indeed mad, or simply a man dedicated to ridding his country of invading forces by any means necessary."

"Keep in mind that history is written by the victors. As prince, Vlad maintained an independent policy in relation to the Ottoman Empire, and in Romania he is viewed by many as a prince with a deep sense of justice and a defender of Walachia against Ottoman expansionism. How might this play into the stories about him that you find in Germany and Russia?"

Re: Class Discussion: Ruthless Efficiency or Sadistic Insanity? Are they incompatible?

[intraspective]

She chewed on her lip. "I think he was mad," Ino said, "not because of the crap--uh, sorry Ghanima-sensei--he pulled, but because he did it to his own people. I mean, him getting rid of the old advisers, ones he couldn't trust, is bad but makes logical sense. And, in making a point, it'd make no sense to kill them painlessly."

"Him breaking and killing the people under him for stupid things like 'a woman not sewing a shirt long enough' is madness." Ino tugged at her hair. "Though I don't think madness means he couldn't have been a defender, or that he didn't have a deep sense of justice either. Just that we don't really know how he thought, so making judgments like that isn't really..." She wrinkled her nose. "Fair's the wrong word, I think. But it's not right to let the things he did be the whole of what he did and was, you know?"

Re: Class Discussion: Ruthless Efficiency or Sadistic Insanity? Are they incompatible?

[weetuskenraider]

Tahiri was looking down at her hands as she spoke up, and her voice was low and a little bit off. "Some cultures think that competition, even among themselves, breeds strength. What we might see as pointless or destructive infighting is, according to them, their way of improving themselves."

Re: Class Discussion: Ruthless Efficiency or Sadistic Insanity? Are they incompatible?

[walks-two-paths.livejournal.com]

Savannah was always horrified of atrocities that get committed against people no matter who or where or what or when. She had seen atrocities and always was disturbed by the whys of the ones doing them.

Re: Class Discussion: Ruthless Efficiency or Sadistic Insanity? Are they incompatible?

[momslilassassin]

"I think if you are that dedicated to protecting something, you're already tipping into somewhere unhealthy," Ben offered quietly. "There has to be balance. Trying to rid a kingdom, or a planet, or a galaxy, of all strife is setting yourself up to fail."

Re: Class Discussion: Ruthless Efficiency or Sadistic Insanity? Are they incompatible?

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Mad."

He shook his head firmly.

"You shouldn't do worse things than your enemy ever would to your own people to keep the enemy away. That's cutting your nose to spite your face."

Talk to the TAs

[atreideslioness]

If they are here, and not at the clinic for dehydration and sunburn.

Re: Talk to the TAs

[raspberryturk]

Reno was both sunburned and dehydrated, but he wasn't going to let little things like those keep him from the lecture on Vlad. Jeez.

... Actually, he was possibly bouncing a little. He liked the lecture on Vlad.

Re: Talk to the TAs

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

Still red, but not in pain, Merlin was there. And looking a bit antsy over what might be happening today.

Talk to Ghanima

[atreideslioness]

She's here, especially if you were disturbed by today's topic.

OOC

[atreideslioness]

Welcome to your second, and last, repeat class of the term. I am on Sooper-SP today, as the boss is back for the first time in two weeks, so kick me over email or gchat if you need me.

For our living-impaired students at this school: No vampires were harmed in the making of today's class. We promise.

Re: OOC

[funnyways.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think Mina has a few ideas about the 'inspiration' of Count Dracula...

Re: OOC

[weetuskenraider]

. . . hi, I love this class extra today. :D :D :D