In their reviews of Dracula, the critics compared it with Shelley's Frankenstein and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher.

Henry Irving, an actor and lifelong friend of Soker, was very probably the "physical" model for Dracula. The description of the vampire is very close to Irving's own appearance.

The real personnage who inspired Bram was Vlad III Dracula, prince of Wallachia, living in the fifteenth century in Romania, a time when the Ottomans had begin to conquer Central Europe - but the situation had not been settled definitively yet by the forthcoming Sultan Suleyman the Magnificient.

The Turk armies, using heavy cannons , carried all the way from Istanbul, were campaigning generally during the summer, avoiding to get bogged, and returning to Istanbul before the winter.

Upon leaving the Principalties they were conquering, the Osmanli Sultans were passing their reins to some "voivode" who had sworn allegiance.

As soon as the Turks had left, complots, assassinations and tortures were multiplying between rival clans.

Dracula the Impaler, a ruthless and despotic personage, was mastering expediently dual allegiance and terror, if not horror as a political way to re-conquer or keep the reins of the principalty during these fluctuating times.

Dracula's head ended up on a stake in Istanbul.