Vampire Evolution

First of the famous vampires was, of course, the historical Vlad of Transylvania, Count Dracula of literature. Vlad the Impaler ruled Transylvania from 1456 to 1462 AD. His surname was Dracula.Vlad III and his brother Radu were taken to the Ottoman court, to serve as hostages to ensure his father's loyalty to the Sultan.
Vlad III was imprisoned and often whipped and beaten because of his insubordination. He developed lifelong hatred of the Ottoman Turks, the Janissary, his brother Radu for converting to Islam and the young Ottoman prince Mehmed II. Eventually, not without struggle, he ruled in his father's place. Vlad Dracula was actually a very able ruler who strengthened Wallachia, as the land was known at that time. However, through impalement and forced labor and other sorts of cruelties, he destroyed the Boyar nobility of Wallachia. His reputation became notorious in Western Europe. "The atrocities committed by Vlad in the German stories include impaling, torturing, burning, skinning, roasting, and boiling people, feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives, cutting off limbs, and drowning." "It was reported that an invading Ottoman army turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube." (1) Thus the legend of Count Dracula began.

For many of us, Count Dracula was Bela Lugosi. Born in Hungary Bela Lugosi began his stage career in 1901; when he made the Dracula movie he did not speak English well and had to learn his part phonetically. The movie "Dracula" was based on Bram Stokers novel published in 1897. It was through the Bram Stoker version of the story and the movie rendition of Bela Lugosi that the characteristic Vampire legends, as we know them, were most developed.As an interesting sidenote, when Lugosi died in 1956 he was buried in his Dracula costume.

The Vampire stories remained fairly consistent until the popular "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series began to subtly change the mythos. No longer were Vampires the feared undead, in "Angel", the misunderstood and tormented Vampire begins to make an appearance. The Vampire who fights for good and no longer preys on humans.

The meaning of Vampires in the communal consciousness is no longer of fears of bloodsucking life draining powers in the unseen world, now there is a subtle shift to the inner struggle of good and evil within the consciousness that is represented by the Vampire legend. Outward evil is internalized, and neutralized in its villainy. Count Dracula has his good side. And perhaps comes closer to the historically maligned Dracula - who had his psychological and time inflected reasons to become so horrible a torturer.

Mick, of Moonlight, took Vampires several steps closer to humanity in its inward struggle. The greatest desire for humanness, self loathing for his monstrosity, and a completely new set of characteristics. Now Vampires can walk in the daylight, and they have a set of mores... they even can change back to human... although not without difficulty. Shortlived as a series, we never saw the full development of what this was to mean.

But Twilight movies, and the TV series of The Vampire Diaries is taking the Vampire myths and legends most fully into the human experience and the new set of representations. The inner struggle of good and evil proclivities with no real set of definitions for what is evil or what is good most completely reflects modern ideas of relativity. A new subset of "Original vampires" must arise to give meaning to ideas of fears and the effects of evil in the world. Taking cues from Buffy's dessicated "original" vampire, modern minds understand that there is evil in the world,but they no longer have the vocabulary to express it... with the great fear that the evil is resident within. And that it will destroy the hopes of the world as we know it, with a much worse case scenario to replace it.

In the meantime, we are enthralled with the continuing stories, the near escape from death, the feuding of powerful superpowers, and the hope that humanity will win out in the end.

But will it? And why do we think so?

Vamp and Camp
It was brought to my attention that "Dark Shadows", a cult classic soap opera, previewed the later "Angel" and other tormented Vampires that changed the mold of how Vampires were meant to be understood.

Dark Shadow's Barnaby
""Dark Shadows" broke the stereotype of the evil vampire, by making Barnabas Collins a spiritual descendant of the Brontë sisters' mysterious, savage antiheroes. The 175-year-old Barnabas was originally supposed to be the bad guy. But classically trained Canadian actor Jonathan Frid played him as a sad, cursed being who yearned to be human again. Frid often looked mournfully lost in thought -- in truth, he was struggling to read the cue cards without his glasses -- and his sensitive mien elicited fans' sympathy for the devil. The writers obliged the burgeoning Barnabas cult with a back story recasting Barnabas as a victim of a vengeful witch, making him a lonely soul carrying a torch for his long-lost love." -Joyce Millman

Yes, we certainly see seeds of that in the present Vampire stories that are now so popular.

Vampire Diaries Elena's Signet Necklace