You can easily guess from his nickname that Vlad the Impaler is not a very good person. It has been revealed before that Vlad Tepes, who inspired Dracula, probably had a medical condition that made him bleed for real. Now it has been revealed that the monarch, who was a horror for his time and much later, may have been a vegetarian.
Vlad ruled Wallachia and became infamous for the brutality he committed against his enemies. It is estimated that he may have been responsible for up to 80,000 deaths during his lifetime. He impaled many of them, perhaps even eating among them as they suffered and died.
However, according to chemical analysis of three letters written by Vlad in 1457 and 1475, it is possible that the animals were not harmed at this gruesome feast. Letters to Thomas Altemberger, ruler of the city of Sibiu, discussing issues such as tax collection were sampled using ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), a method that appears to have caused no damage or contamination.
“We characterized about 500 peptides, and about 100 of them were strictly of human origin,” the authors wrote in their study.
By analyzing them closely, they found some peptides related to proteins involved in ciliopathy, a genetic disorder. They also found signs of retinal diseases and inflammatory processes: “Although the proteomic data alone cannot be comprehensively evaluated, these descriptions may indicate that Dracula ‘shed tears of blood.’ So he suffered from hemolacria, as some stories have stated.”
Interestingly, when analyzing the letters, the team also found the absence of animal food proteins. “Food proteins are only found in plant foods,” Gleb Zilberstein, one of the study’s authors, told The Times. “Our prototype vampire could be a vegan.”
However, this was probably not an ethical decision. One can guess that Vlad, who impaled so many people, probably didn’t care about the deaths of animals. Meat was scarce at that time, the authors noted, and his eating may have been due to a lack of meat or his own poor health. However, it may also be possible that the figure behind the bloodthirsty Dracula is more fond of salad.
The study was published in the journal ACS Analytical Chemistry.
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