Radu the Fair- popular in Ottoman harem

Dracula's brother
Promised allegiance and tribute to the Sultan
Captured Snagov monastary, where a number of boyar families resided.
Used the monastary as a hostage to get the boyars on his side.
Invested as prince by Sultan

Dracula- deserted by his forces, retreated to Transylvania (waiting for King

Mattius)
Black Army arrives to assist Dracula

Saxons of Brasov, who Dracula impaled years before, publish a forged letter and
gave it to King Mattius. "from Rothel, Dear Sultan Mehmed II, I write to you
begging pardon and promiing to help you conquer Transylvania and subdue all of
Hungary"

King Matthius captured Dracula and imprisoned him at Visegrad, a fortress on the
Danube where Dracula died, and Radu the Handsome ascended the throne of Wallachia

Vlad III grew up as a prisoner in Istanbul for his first 22 years. His father, the
warlord of Transylvania, was forced to surrender his eldest son to the Sultan's
Janissary corps, where he would be trained in the ways of the lash, the pike, and
the best manner in which to Christians. The child came of age in this degrading and
inhospitable environment and thrived where many weaker boys would have succumbed to
despair or lost themselves in the soulless pleasures of the harem.

Even in this, Dracula distinguished himself, and both the Sultan and the harem
women took to calling him "Vlad the Fair." When his father lost his life in a
senseless border dispute, the young prince Vlad was sent west to claim his
birthright as warlord of Translyvania. It was here that he came into conflict with
Matthius Corvinus, who had just repelled the Turk and almost killed the Sultan
himself, as I related in the Legend of Black Friday.

King Matthius had established an army that knew no equal in all the Balkans:
Dracula knew that he could not match him in the field. But the fiend also knew that
one does not need to break an army's back, if one can break it's spirit instead.
Dracula knew that King Matthius' support chiefly lay amoung the common people and
the boyars. If these abandoned him, the solidery would soon follow. He began to
hatch a plan.

First, he led an attack on the isolated and sparsely guarded Snagov monastary, on a
remote island 30 miles from Bucharest. As his men desecrated the sacred icons, they
took hostages amoung the monks and their families. Per the orders of Dracula, they
killed no one, but dug a vast prison under the grounds where the wealthy boyar
hostages would be held. For this was the true value of Snagov, not in it's relics
or it's strategic location, but in the residents themselves: all from prominent
boyar families. With their cousins, wives, and brothers held hostage in Dracula's
prisons, the boyars of Rumelia had no choice but to withdraw their support for King
Matthius Corvinus.

Secondly, Dracula made use of a recent technological breakthrough, the printing

press, to confound his enemies. He organized the Saxons of Brasov, against whom
King Corvinus had issued an edict three years prior, in a mass disinformation
campagin to discredit his rival. They circulated a pamphlet which included a forged
letter, supposedly sent from the King's castle in "Rothel" (a fictitious city) to
the Sultan himself, pledging loyalty to the Turk and abasing himself in the most
unmanly way as an Imperial servant. In those ignorant times, people believed
anything they'd seen in print, and the campagin was wildly successful.
Even those who knew the King to be an honorable man began to have their doubts, and
by the summer, the better part of his army had deserted to join Dracula, lured by
promises of gold and glory. Instead, Dracula turned the men against each other, and
crushed King Matthius at Smederevo using the King's own army. In a letter to the
Sultan, Dracula claimed that the battle had had 23,542 casulaties. When the Sultan
questioned how he could be sure it was exactly that amount, Dracula replied that
every casualty from both sides of the battle was impaled on pikes the next morning.

And so, Vlad III ascended the throne of Transylvania and Western Rumelia both, and
kept Matthius Corvinus as a prisoner in his fortress at Visegrad on the Danube.
There, for twelve long years, who knows what ordeals the deposed King endured? But,
eventually, Dracula had mercy on him, and sent his headless body to be buried in
Snagov monastary as a warning to all who would defy the Turk.

The following year, Sultan Mehmed II renewed his campagin in the Balkans. This
time... there was no army to stop him. And so, from the age of Columbus until the
age of Abraham Lincoln, the Balkan people toiled under the yoke of the Ottoman
Empire, servants in their own homes.

who knows what vile ordeals the deposed King

men had been impaled on pikes in the aftermath of the battle: the dead and the
living treated alike. He was able to tally such a precise number because every
casualty from both sides was implaed

But if the dungeons of Constantinople had taught him anything, they had taught him
how to break a man's spirit.

The historical Dracula grew up as a prisoner in Constantinople: his father was

forced to surrender his eldest son to the Sultan's Janissary corps, where the young
Dracula learned the ways of the lash and the pike.