vlad_tepes_big-x01Rachel Nuwer

The Smithsonian

Before Vlad the Impaler gained a reputation for his cruelty and might in battle—and long before he became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula—he was a young prince held captive in a fortress in Turkey. When Vlad was about 12 years old, he and his brother fell into the Ottoman’s hands. Some scholars credit that traumatic experience for Vlad’s later blood lust for the Ottomans and say that it perhaps triggered his sadistic tendencies—namely, impaling—later in life.