Dracula (animated series)

Count Vlad "Dracula" Tepes is the main antagonist of the first and second season of the Netflix original series, Castlevania. He is the father of Alucard, as well as the widower of Lisa Tepes.

He is voiced by Graham McTavish in the English version of the show.

Early life
During the medieval period of Europe in Wallachia, there was a vampire named Dracula who had a dislike of humans, going so far as to kill his victims with impalement. He possessed vast knowledge of immortality and lived all by himself in a moving castle fortress called Castlevania.

Throughout the series
In 1455, he had an unexpected visitor: a woman named Lisa who was conducting research to improve medicine and wanted to become a doctor. She had come to Dracula to learn of the science that only he knew, but he threatened her with his distrust of the humans. To his surprise, Lisa was not afraid of him, and she encouraged him to explore the changing world. Finding himself attracted to her, Dracula welcomed Lisa into his home.

At some point later, Dracula married Lisa. Together they had a son they named Adrian, who would later be known as Alucard. They then lived in a cottage outside of Targoviste, Wallachia, where Lisa continued her research into medicine.

In 1475, Vlad’s happy days with Lisa came to an abrupt and tragic end. One night, while returning home from his travels, he discovered that the cottage was completely burned down. He then encountered an elderly woman who was treated by Lisa. While she was laying flowers, Vlad learned from her that Lisa was arrested on false charges of witchcraft, and she was sentenced to death. Enraged, Vlad abandoned his human identity and became Dracula once more. He then warned the old woman to take her family and leave Wallachia before teleporting away in a pillar of fire. Arriving at the site of Lisa’s execution, Dracula demanded to know what happened to his wife. When the Bishop proclaimed that she was a witch and that he himself was just a myth, the vampire was angered and gave the people of Targoviste one year to make their peace with God before his return to destroy them. Returning to his castle, Dracula prepared to summon an army from Hell within one year. But then his son Alucard appeared and begged him not to kill innocent people. Dracula shouted that there were no innocents left because no one acted to save Lisa. Alucard attacked Dracula but he swiftly defeated and left him severely injured, but allowed him to escape.

One year later, Dracula appeared in Targoviste, as promised, to a people celebrating Lisa’s death. He unleashed his army on them, resulting in a large scale massacre. The horde then descended upon the rest of Wallachia.

Personality
At this time, it is not clear how much traditional Dracula and Castlevania lore applies to this Dracula's background. Thus, Dracula's background is largely a mystery. What is clear is that by 1455, he had once killed humans but now avoided them and lived an isolated life in Castlevania. Given Dracula's extreme intelligence, physical superiority, and discussion with Lisa, it is strongly implied he sees humans as far inferior life forms. Where he was once involved in human affairs, by 1455 he didn't see the point in wasting his time with "peasants".

While intelligent and lordly in stature, Dracula lacks charm. He has a feral and threatening nature to him that is only accentuated after Lisa's death. While many would use weapons in combat, he is known to use his own claws like a lion or bear. Lisa herself noticed his lack of charm and suggested he could relearn manners from her. During his married years, he took this to heart and had a far more human bearing than usual.

When Dracula and Lisa met and she requested to learn from him, they quickly developed a strong mutual attraction. Neither had met anyone like the other before. Dracula was, of course, attracted to Lisa's beauty but even more so by her character. He described her as being "definitely different to most humans" he had met. Lisa's courage, civility, intelligence, and good-hearted nature impressed him and he allowed her to study under him. They soon married and had a son, Adrian Tepes.

Lisa saw the best in Dracula and immediately acknowledged he had the potential to improve the lives of humans everywhere with his knowledge. As per Lisa's wishes, he would spend much of his time traveling. It was her hope that he would also learn from his travels and humans as she did from him. Dracula himself seemed to appreciate her encouragement, although his later actions imply he never was able to see other humans the way Lisa wished he would. If anything, the light of his experiences only turned into more ashes after he returned to his home and was informed that his wife had been executed.

When Lisa was unjustly killed in 1475, Dracula grew to deeply resent humanity; no longer did he consider them peasants but he now considers them all animals he could no longer tolerate. He would later admit that she was the only true love he had ever known. Immediately after Lisa's bones burnt into ashes, Dracula rose from his wife's flames and demanded an explanation. He was enraged to learn that his wife had been killed out of unjust dogmatic stupidity and further enraged when the Bishop who ordered the execution denied Dracula's existence. In that moment, Dracula proclaimed he would take everything from the citizen's of Wallachia and leave no signs they ever existed. Although he surely knew his wife wouldn't want him to take vengeance, his heart was now so embittered that it is filled with nothing but absolute misanthropy. Dracula believes that every human is guilty for his wife's death as none did try to stop the unjust murder and hence when Alucard tried reasoning with his father to kill only those responsible, Dracula angrily refuted this. To Dracula, Lisa was the one good thing humanity had ever produced and humanity had killed it. He was even more than willing to severely injure his own son, Alucard, when he tried to reason with him and stop him from committing genocide. Despite all of this, Dracula does seems to retain fractions of what he became after marrying Lisa. For example, even though he had Alucard in his mercy, he did not pursue him any further after inflicting a severe injury on him, which seems to show that the only person who Dracula has any remaining attachment to was his son, as he could have killed him easily but let him escape, apparently meaning he simply wanted to incapacitate Alucard long enough for his massacre to be completed. He also notably uncharacteristically had a woman who still showed great adoration to Lisa live and even warned her to flee, showing he at least has a softer side for those who was not blinded by the accusations of the reasons of his wife's death enough to not want to kill them. It is worth noting that he also issued a one-year warning to humanity to make peace; Dracula was further disappointed in humanity that no humans heeded his warning or repented to him, saying to them before unleashing his army that "you had your chance".

One year later, Dracula began his war of extermination, unleashing an army of Hell on Targoviste, bidding his army to kill all humanity and accepting his future eternity of endless hatred. Despite being on a revenge quest to wipe out all of humanity, Dracula grows more and more despondent as time passes, largely isolating himself from the rest of his court and leaving command of his army in the hands of his forgemasters, Hector and Isaac. He doesn't care much for strategy, as long as all of humanity dies at the end, much to the discomfort of his generals. When Alucard assaults his castle with Trevor and Sypha, Dracula shows great care toward Issac by banishing him to the desert, not wanting his friend to be killed. He ruthlessly overwhelms and beats on Trevor and Sypha but never strikes the fatal blow on Alucard, mostly ignoring his son unless he attacks him, at which point he savagely strikes back but does not deal any truly decisive blow. Proof of his love for his son was when after arriving on the room where he and his wife raised Alucard, Dracula finally snaps out of his murderous rage and is driven to tears by the realization that he was killing the greatest treasure Lisa ever gave him. He allowed himself to be killed by his son afterward.

To put it simply, Dracula is a broken and bitter man who tries to kill all of humanity in revenge, but doesn't feel pleasure or joy on this, nor he cares about the fact he could potentially starve his own army to death in the process. He is so detached that Alucard believes that Dracula only waged war on humanity because he wanted to die, for he is figuratively dead without Lisa.

Powers and abilities

 * Immortality: Dracula is immortal and cannot die of old age. The specifics of his immortality are not yet clear.
 * Vampirism: Dracula is known for being the strongest vampire in the world. He possesses many of the usual features of vampirism: fangs, claws, pale skin, and drinks blood. He does not seem to be subject to regular weaknesses of vampires, as shown by how he wonders aloud if Lisa was armed with silver, crosses, and garlic; calling them superstitious, implying he is immune to them or at least they only have minimal effect on him. So far Dracula has not been seen in sunlight, although he traveled on foot around the world for many years.
 * Extreme physical superiority: Dracula is a towering man in his physical prime and has immense superhuman strength, speed, and reflexes beyond his appearance. He is able to easily smash hard objects like solid stone with his bare hands and overtook Alucard in an instant, his son being a masterful warrior in his own right. When the trio fought him in his castle Dracula mostly dominated the fight, he caught Alucard's sword between his fingers and didn't react to Trevor punching him in the face, and downed Belmont with a single fist to the gut. When fighting his son Alucard, Dracula was shown to be so strong that his blows made the castle break around him and sent Alucard crashing into rooms with high speed strikes. Dracula also has extreme endurance being resistant to the Morning Star Whip (which killed every vampire struck by it with one blow) and recovered from having his own massive fireball being blown back at him by Sypha.
 * Apex intellectual: Dracula is easily the most knowledgeable being in the world as of 1476. During his immortal life, he had become a brilliant scientist and the foremost expert in the world in the following fields: physics, astrology, chemistry, engineering, and other fields beyond. Many of his inventions and constructions are centuries beyond his time and some are even beyond the technology of the 21st Century. Additionally, he is well educated in the use of magic, which he has applied to his inventions. It is strongly implied that he designed and constructed Castlevania himself.
 * Connections in Hell: Dracula's exact relationship with Hell, and Heaven for that matter, are unknown, but he has clear influence over the demons of Hell. It is not clear if he is the supreme ruler of the demons, but when he calls, demons answer without disobedience. Two facts are clear: he has the power to command demons unquestionably and can raise an army of monsters if given enough time.
 * Pyrokinesis: Dracula has tremendous control over fire. He can transform his body into flames and project himself through fires in any location. He can manifest fire anywhere, even in the sky. He can teleport through flames as well. When fighting the trio at the end, Dracula manifested a huge burning ball of molten lava-like fire.
 * Levitation: Dracula has the ability to defy gravity and hover above ground. Like Alucard he can move high speeds though the air at high speed if he wishes.
 * Affiliation with bats and crows: Bats often flock around Castlevania. Dracula has been shown to project his own image and voice through flocks of crows.

Appearances
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Season 1

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Season 2

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Trivia

 * According to Sam Deats, Dracula's appearance is based on early sketches of the character designed by Ayami Kojima for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
 * He always addresses himself as "Vlad Tepes Dracula"; his past is never revealed or how he became a vampire. It is possible that this portrayal of the character is not based on Mathias Cronqvist from the main game series and that instead takes elements of the historical Vlad III Dracula, as he had a remarkable tendency to impale his enemies in the past.
 * It is worth to note that Dracula's connection with Chaos is nonexistent in the animated series, and that his castle is not driven by its force; rather, he uses science and magic to control it.
 * He cries tears of blood when feeling intense sadness. This may be a reference to the classic Hammer Dracula horror films, where actor Christopher Lee sometimes portrayed the character crying bloody tears.
 * This concept has been referenced in the past throughout the course of the Castlevania series (the theme "Bloody Tears" probably being one of its most notorious examples).
 * The way Dracula is killed at the end of the second season, by plunging a stake through his heart and being beheaded afterward, draws elements from the original 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, the already established lore in the Castlevania series, as well as the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the novel, Dracula is killed by Quincey Morris, one of Lucy's suitors, by plunging a knife through his heart. This was modified in the background story for Castlevania: Bloodlines, where Quincy Morris, John's father, stabs the vampire with a wooden stake instead. In the film, after being stabbed by Quincey, Mina Harker beheads Dracula to ensure his final death.