Cursed with eternal life as one of the night-dwelling undead, Dracula claims the title of Lord of the Vampires through cunning, strategy, and acts of unrelenting evil.
Born to be Bad
Born in Wallachia in the 15th century, Vlad Dracula quickly acquires power and prestige as a prince in his small nation, as well as the reputation as a clever warrior and soldier. Following two marriages, one arranged and one for love, he turns his eye upon nearby Turkey for attack, but instead seals his fate for all eternity.
A Turkish warlord captures yet spares Vlad from execution and turns him over to a gypsy woman who proceeds to infect him with vampirism. The ancient vampire Varnae brings the young Dracula back from the dead and in doing so gifts him with the title of Lord of the Vampires by making him drink from his own blood. Dracula returns then to his home to reclaim his throne and sets about carving out a kingdom for his new status as a leader among his kind.
The Ultimate Undead
Dracula possesses far greater powers and abilities than most vampires. These abilities include superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, and reflexes. He’s immune to aging, conventional disease, and most forms of injury. With a rapid healing factor, he can ignore most assaults and regenerates damaged tissue without issue. He has razor-sharp fangs and claws, can control others with a glance or by drinking their blood and can command animals such as rats, bats, and wolves as well as other vampires. He’s also capable of transforming into a bat, wolf, or mist.
In addition, he masters the use of magic to make him one of the world’s most potent sorcerers, allowing him mastery over animals, other vampires, and the weather, able to summon thunderstorms.
Trained as a soldier, specializing in 15th century warfare, Dracula’s dominance over matters of strategy and tactics is unparalleled, and his swordsmanship has been honed to deadly precision. In sheer intelligence, he ranks in the upper levels of beings on Earth.
With all his power also comes vulnerabilities, such as the urge and necessity to consume blood to survive, the inability to be exposed to sunlight, the need to slumber in his own native soil, a great weakness in the face of holy symbols, and the possibility of destruction when a wooden stake is driven through his heart. He is also vulnerable to silver and garlic as well as magical items, such as the Bloodgem. Dracula does not cast reflections, and he usually cannot enter a house without being invited. His powers have sometimes been greatly amplified and his weaknesses circumvented by magical sources, such as spells of the Darkholders. Certain spells, such as the Montesi Formula, can destroy Dracula; however, in all circumstances of apparent destruction, he has been revived by some means.
Enemies Everywhere, Friends Few
Beyond the love of his life, his late wife Maria, and few allies, Dracula’s associations very prominently skew toward animosity and bitter enmity.
Owing to the vampire’s ruthless nature and desire to rule, he’s earned many opponents, but none so strong as those of his own flesh and blood—Lilith, his daughter whose own curse sets her against Dracula; and his sons Janus, Xarus, and Vlad Tepulus.
Dracula has encounters with Howard the Duck, the heroic Defenders, Rachel Van Helsing, Quincy Harker, and others before encountering some of his sworn enemies. Such foes include Frank Drake, vampire detective Hannibal King, Eric Brooks, AKA Blade, and Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, who work together against the Lord of Vampires and perform the Montesi Formula that destroys every vampire on Earth.
The Conquering Life
In the centuries following his turning and before modern times, Dracula entered into one campaign after another in his bloodthirsty drive to stake his claim as a world-class warrior and ruler, all the while slaughtering gypsies, taking brides, and killing all who stood in his way. During this time, his legend grew to the point of being co-opted by a relatively unknown Scottish writer for a lurid novel in the late 1800s.
In the 20th century, he opposed the Nazi regime in Germany and suffered destruction at the hands of Ewan Duff, but his spirit survived to reclaim his body when a descendant, Frank Drake, removed the stake from it when the young man inherited Dracula’s castle. However, Drake eventually joined a group of vampire hunters to become yet another hated foe. Not long after, Dracula learned of the Montesi Formula, designed to destroy all of his kind forever.
Following a union with the woman Domini and the birth of a son, Janus, Dracula lost his vampiric abilities to the demon Mephisto, regained them along with the Lord of Vampires title, and battled Quincy Harker to the death. Revived once more, he fought Gordski for the title, increased his powers through the work of the Darkholders, but faced utter destruction along with all his undead kin when Doctor Strange enacted the Montesi Formula. Time passed until Dracula found himself resurrected by the demon Asmodeus and once again at odds with Drake and his hunter associates.
An unusual and unique being was created from the Lord of the Vampire’s DNA in his absence, Bloodstorm, who merged with Frank Drake, and Hannibal King to form an even more monstrous version of Dracula. Blade separated the men finally only to have Dracula’s spirit gain the form and recreate his own original body. Later taken off to the alien Battleworld by the Stranger, he returned to Earth to combat a vampire-destroying virus brought about by a descendant of his old foe John Seward. Then, Dracula allied himself with monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone to block the spread of another virus, this one fostered by so-called Nosferati vampires.
Dracula ascended to become a much more powerful version of himself through an ancient ritual and clashed with the creator of the rite, a Sumerian sorceress named Aamshed. Though he won the battle, he was later consumed by the souls of all those murdered by his kind. When Dracula recovered from that ordeal, he sought an amulet of protection, but wound up staked by the Daywalker Blade. The offending piece of wood was then removed by members of a division of S.H.I.E.L.D. and attempted his revenge on Blade. In addition, he also manipulated his daughter Lilith into slaughtering all his vampire rivals and claimed dominance over all the clans in the aftermath.
In his next gambit, Dracula desired the conquering of all Britain and aligned himself with the demoness Lilith to do so. From a base on Earth’s moon, he sent waves of vampire subjects to fight against England’s protectors and was climactically slain by the sword Excalibur. Later he called for a summit of all vampire sects and was subsequently beheaded by his own sun Xarus. One of his other children, Janus, helped to restore Dracula and when he defeated Xarus, he laid claim to the vampire nation Xarus brought together.
When he decided to take the succubus Shiklah as his bride to possess her monstrous lackeys, Dracula hired the mercenary Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, to bring her to him. Instead, Deadpool ran off with Shiklah and married her in the Lord of Vampire’s place. Dracula warred against the mercenary until poisoned by his tainted blood and was forced to go into hiding. Later, Deadpool sought Dracula to stop Shiklah’s attempt to conquer New York City, a situation which led to the vampire finally marrying the succubus himself and deciding to retire from active undead life.
Recently, a seemingly aged Dracula orchestrated a vampire civil war with the mysterious Shadow Colonel—in actuality his son Xarus—to get himself exiled to the radiated Chernobyl area of Russia for his own nefarious purposes.
