History Literature / CountAndCountess

* FangsAreEvil / ScaryTeeth: Vlad invokes this purposely, largely inspired by vampire folklore during his time period. Since the Turks guarding the Janissaries confiscate their weapons at night, leaving Vlad with no plausible means of escape, Vlad decides to make his teeth into a weapon by ritually sharpening them.

* IneffectualLoner: Elizabeth.

* TimeyWimeyBall: Caused by the plot device that lets Vlad and Elizabeth write letters to one another with a good hundred years between their eras. In some cases Vlad will write Elizabeth a letter and receive a reply only a few days later, but entire months have passed on Elizabeth's end. Vlad and Elizabeth are respectively fourteen and thirteen at the start of the story; by the time it's over, and Vlad and Elizabeth are both grown up, and Elizabeth is older than Vlad.

** More Vlad than Elizabeth. She's no saint, but at least she ''thinks'' she's behaving in a logical way, and feels no true satisfaction when she murders someone innocent. Vlad, on the other hand, proposes at one point lowering the age of conscription for his army. When the age of conscription is already twelve.

* FangsAreEvil/ScaryTeeth: Vlad invokes this purposely, largely inspired by vampire folklore during his time period. Since the Turks guarding the Janissaries confiscate their weapons at night, leaving Vlad with no plausible means of escape, Vlad decides to make his teeth into a weapon by ritually sharpening them.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Both Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory were pretty unsavory characters, by all historical accounts. The novel amps this UpToEleven, if anything, but suggests it was their childhood (Vlad as a ChildSoldier, Elizabeth as a [[DisabledMeansHelpless cripple]] and a disgrace to her family name) that made them so cruel.

* AlternateHistory: And how! Most notably, [[spoiler: the real-life Elizabeth Bathory never took the Kingdom of Hungary for her own, though she did pass many of the bills presented in the story]].

** Vlad also conscripts them later into his military career.

** Moreso Vlad than Elizabeth. She's no saint, but at least she ''thinks'' she's behaving in a logical way, and feels no true satisfaction when she murders someone innocent. Vlad, on the other hand, proposes at one point lowering the age of conscription for his army. When the age of conscription is already twelve.

The book starts InMediasRes. A very young but very well educated Vlad and his two brothers have just been sold by their cowardly father as war hostages to the Ottoman Empire. Vlad's older brother is killed from the get go while his younger brother is treated like a concubine. Vlad himself is expected to become a Janissary, one of many Christian boys kidnapped by the Sultan to [[ChildSoldiers fight on the frontlines of war]]. Vlad, despondent, writes a suicide note in the dirt of the campsite.

* FriendlessBackground: Both characters are pretty isolated from their peers as children, as well as hated by their families (Vlad's brothers mock and ostracize him for not physically resembling them; Elizabeth's brothers are slightly nicer but her parents treat her like a cross between a ticking time bomb and a festering plague). This is arguably the reason the kids latch onto one another so tightly once they've overcome their initial animosity.

* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: The name Elizabeth. Elizabeth reveals in one of her letters to Vlad that her name comes from the old Hungarian for "God is My Oath." When Darvulia betrays Elizabeth to the Holy Roman Emperor, she utters, "God is my oath." This is a major clue that Darvulia is really the Emperor Frederick's daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia, in disguise.]]

The book follows two of history's most notorious psychopaths: [[{{Dracula}} Count Vlad III Dracula]], the 15th century Christian zealot known best for impaling his Muslim enemies, and [[{{Bathory}} Countess Elizabeth Bathory]], the 16th century Hungarian princess rumored to have bathed in the blood of six hundred girls.

One hundred plus years later, a young and lonely Elizabeth discovers the note written in her flower garden and writes back. [[TimeTravel A correspondence begins.]]

* SmugBastard: Sultan Mehmed.

* TemporalMutability: Vlad contemplates trying to change Elizabeth's future by killing off the ancestors of [[spoiler: the man who raped and impregnated her on her impotent husband's command]]. This is also the entire reason he befriends her great-grandfather.
* TheDulcineaEffect
* TheSociopath: Both of them. Even as children, they write jokingly to one another of murdering their more annoying contemporaries. Elizabeth also enjoys making her mother think she s insane.

* LoveMakesYouEvil / LoveMakesYouCrazy: Vlad begins drinking the blood of his enemies hoping that it will make him immortal, such as the ''strigoi'' (i.e. vampires) in old Romanian myths.

The book follows two of history's most notorious psychopaths: {{Dracula Count Vlad III Dracula}}, the 15th century Christian zealot known best for impaling his Muslim enemies, and {{Bathory Countess Elizabeth Bathory}}, the 16th century Hungarian princess rumored to have bathed in the blood of six hundred girls.