History Headscratchers / Dracula

* Also, some of this is just a meta-acknowledgement of the fact that ''Dracula'' is basically the TropeCodifier for most of the modern approach to the vampire mythos. Dracula is "King" of the vampires because he's basically become regarded as ''the'' archetypal vampire in modern popular culture, much as Franchise/SherlockHolmes is the Great Detective, Superman is ''the'' superhero of the DC universe, and so on. They're basically the characters in their genres that all the other characters who followed them owe a debt of some kind to.

*** A similar dynamic exists in the earlier television show ''DarkShadows'', created by Dan Curtis -- the director of the 1973 adaptation.

* I think it's something of a riff on the Fisher King. Dracula is old and decayed because the land around him is old and decayed. Then he rejuvenated by moving to a "younger" country.

** Well the line about wanting to marry several men at once is because she sincerely loves all three of her suitors and doesn't want to reject any of them. She attracts so many because she's kind and charismatic. It seems less a commentary on sexuality and more on the aristocracy who defined a woman's importance by who she married - Mina representing the modern woman who's more proactive and intelligent.

*** Well yes, but the point being made is that, given as he starts in Transylvania, Dracula basically has ''two'' options to get to and communicate with England -- he can go ''entirely'' by sea via the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, ''or'' he go overland ''through Europe'' (you know, that big chunk of land he's on that's between him and England) before crossing the English Channel -- which, FWIW, is the way Jonathan Harker gets to him. If he were to chose the latter he'd likely enter England via the Calais-Dover route, which would take him closer to London; the fact that he goes entirely by sea suggests that his communications with England may have ''also'' gone via the all-sea route rather than by land across Europe.

** Though it's perhaps worth noting that while London would certainly be the more logical choice to start your business on the surface, if you're travelling or sending something from Transylvania to England via ''sea'' the first major port or harbour you would arrive at is Plymouth, which is in the same county as and only a few hours away from Exeter. This might have had something to do with it; the Count's first outreaches to England may have come and gone via sea and entered / exited the country via Plymouth, meaning that while the agency at Exeter was furthest from where the Count ended up it was technically closest for his initial purposes and resources.

** Though it's perhaps worth noting that while London would certainly be the more logical choice to start your business on the surface, if you're travelling or sending something from Transylvania to England via ''sea'' the first major port or harbour you would arrive at is Plymouth, which is in the same county as and only a few hours away from Exeter. This might have had something to do with it; the Count's first outreaches to England may have come and gone via sea and entered / exited the country via Plymouth, meaning that while it was furthest from where the Count ended up it was technically closest for his initial purposes and resources.

** Though it's perhaps worth noting that while London would certainly be the more logical choice to start your business on the surface, if you're travelling or sending something from Transylvania to England via ''sea'' the first major port or harbour you would arrive at is Plymouth, which is only a few hours away from Exeter. This might have had something to do with it; the Count's first outreaches to England may have come and gone via sea and entered / exited the country via Plymouth.

We are told that Mr Swales has to be at his daughter's house for teatime every day, and that his habit is to spend much of the day up on the High Seat bossing his coterie of former sailors around. Why on earth was he up there at night/early in the morning? And if, as the story implies, he fell and broke his neck because Dracula appeared from the grave he was sitting over, that would mean he was there at dawn on the 10th. Pretty early for a man pushing 100.

The Doylist answer is obviously because Stoker wanted to show the Count getting younger and more dangerous as he fed, while the role of the Sisters was always to be sexy and seductive, but the Watsonian answer could be either that Dracula was already an old man when he became a vampire (though Vlad Tepes was 45 when he was killed) while the Sisters were in the ripeness of youth, or their ability to remain young while he seemed old was something to do with either their propensity to stay confined within the castle/their tombs unless there was something happening to wake them up (like Harker arriving) while Dracula himself was pushing his limitations to see what he could get away with (travelling away from the castle, seeing how much he could do during daylight, experimenting with sleeping somewhere other than in his tomb), or with their diet being confined to babies, or both.
[[WMG: Given Van Helsing's claim that Lucy only looks beautiful in un-death because she was turned while sleepwalking and thus her 'sleeping form' doesn't bear the ugliness of other vampires, why would the Sisters be so incredibly beautiful at rest that Van Helsing almost goes into a worshipful coma of lust?]]
Could be any number of answers. Van Helsing was completely wrong to believe that bit of folklore. Van Helsing was right, but the Sisters were also innocents who were turned while in their sleep so have the same exemption from ugliness as Lucy. Van Helsing was right, but the Sisters are so old and powerful that they can cast a glamour even when asleep that makes them nigh irresistible to potential foes.

It’s noticeable that Dracula doesn’t use his fearsome shapeshifting abilities until he reaches English soil, when he emerges from the bloodbath on The Demeter as a wolf and goes on to feed on Lucy in bat-form. Surely it would have been easier for him to fly out of his castle window than to crawl out. Now, on one occasion at least he’s dressed in Harker’s clothes and carrying a bag, so we’ll mark that one down as explained, but the other times? Maybe it takes a lot of blood-fuelled energy to shapeshift, energy he just can’t usually spare on his sparse Carpathian diet, but once he’s got access to all the blood he can guzzle it’s a whole new ball-game.

It's certainly very random. All of the other legal firms and portering companies Dracula hires are locally based to the properties they're dealing with, it's only the purchase of Carfax that goes through a firm that is based just about as far away from London as you can get in England while still having running water and the telegram. It's also odd that Jonathan Harker is the one to handle the surveying of Carfax and the trip to Transylvania. Yes, Mr Hawkins certainly seems to think the world of him (enough to will his entire company and fortune to Harker the day before he dies) but the firm is said to have a London agent (he attends Mr Hawkins' funeral) who could just as easily do the job. There's really no rational explanation other than Stoker wanted Exeter included in the novel in some manner.

Could be any number of answers. Van Helsing was completely wrong to believe that bit of folklore. Van Helsing was right, but the Sisters were also innocents who were turned while in their sleep so have the same exemption from ugliness as Lucy. Van Helsing was partially wrong, because vampires don't appear ugly in their tombs until they've been Un-dead longer than their natural span and/or killed their first victim. Van Helsing was right, but the Sisters are so old and powerful that they can cast a glamour even when asleep that makes them nigh irresistible to potential foes.

* Why does Dracula flee Britain after the confrontation in Piccadilly? As Van Helsing himself suggests, he has no real reason to. Sure, he’s had setbacks. The heroes have somehow made all but one of his Earth boxes inhospitable to him, exposed his lairs and generally put him on the back foot, but he has one Earth box left, and with something as simple as a horse and cart (which he rapidly gets hold of) he can go anywhere he likes in London and hole up while he gets a grip on the situation. He could bury it somewhere, then slip in and out as mist. He could take it down into the capital’s sewers. Hell, he could take it outside London and bury it in a field, returning to the capital to rest in the graves of suicides if need be. But instead he takes it to the docks and books it as cargo on the first ship he can find heading to Rumania, which is basically the worst thing he could do. Remember, this is a creature that memorises train timetables for fun, and who has spent much of the day angrily pondering how a team of men including a rich English Lord and a property lawyer had managed to find out where his houses other than Carfax were. Taking a slow boat to Transylvania when trains travelled quicker was just asking for trouble. He’d have been far better served just going underground for a bit and recruiting a small army of vampires to join him in stalking and killing his pursuers.

* Given their youth (Seward is referred to as being 29 at the time of the novel) it's quite possible that all three are University friends. Arthur would have been sent there to achieve the classic Gentleman's degree, Seward could have won a scholarship for a medical degree before going on to study under Van Helsing in London, while Quincey obviously comes from a wealthy Texan family, and at the time American 'new money' were prone to sending their sons to Oxford or Cambridge to have the rough edges buffed off them, which Lucy notes is definitely true of the well-spoken and very 'gentlemanly' Quincey, when he's not putting on folksy American stylings to amuse her.

* Also, some of this is just a meta-acknowledgement of the fact that ''Dracula'' is basically the TropeCodifier for most of the modern approach to the vampire mythos. Dracula is "King" of the vampires because he's basically become regarded as ''the'' archetypal vampire in modern popular culture, much as Franchise/SherlockHolmes is the Great Detective, Superman is ''the'' superhero, and so on.