In 1442 Vlad and his younger brother were sent to the court of Ottoman Sultan Murad II as collateral to assure the sultan that their father, in a reversal of his previous position, would support Ottoman policies. Vlad moved to Târgoviște, Walachia, in 1436 when his father assumed leadership of the Walachian voivodate (principality). His sobriquet Dracula (meaning “son of Dracul”) was derived from the Latin draco (“dragon”) after his father’s induction into the Order of the Dragon, created by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund for the defense of Christian Europe against the Ottoman Empire. Vlad was the second of four brothers born into the noble family of Vlad II Dracul. Some in the scholarly community have suggested that Bram Stoker’s Dracula character was based on Vlad. Vlad the Impaler, in full Vlad III Dracula or Romanian Vlad III Drăculea, also called Vlad III or Romanian Vlad Țepeș, (born 1431, Sighișoara, Transylvania -died 1476, north of present-day Bucharest, Romania), voivode (military governor, or prince) of Walachia (1448 1456–1462 1476) whose cruel methods of punishing his enemies gained notoriety in 15th-century Europe. He was reportedly decapitated, and his head was sent to the sultan in Constantinople as a trophy. In 1476 Vlad was ambushed by an Ottoman patrol and killed.
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