Historically, Dracula was officially married only once, and this happened towards the end of his life. He was about 45 years old when he married the cousin of Hungarian King Matthias, and her consent to the marriage saved Dracula from prison. Matthias had kept Dracula in captivity, and if the king’s cousin had not agreed to act as a guarantor of peace between Matthias and Dracula, the prisoner would have remained imprisoned.
In fact, her noble gesture was not motivated by sympathy for her future husband, but by a sense of duty. King Matthias’s cousin did not yet know that she would come to like her husband.
The Wedding That Never Happened 15 Years Ago
In the summer of 1462, the Wallachian (Romanian) prince Vlad Tepes, better known as Dracula, was fighting the Turks and waiting for the Hungarian king Matthias to come to his aid as agreed.
Matthias, when concluding the agreement, had also promised to create a family bond with Dracula. In a letter dated February 11, 1462, Dracula reminded the king of this:
“The Turks have sent us an embassy to reject the agreement between Your Highness (that is, the king) and us. And so that there would be no wedding and grand celebration, but rather an alliance with the Porte (that is, the Turkish state).”
Medieval chronicler Antonio Bonfini also reports Matthias’s promise to become related to Dracula. But looking at Matthias’s family tree, it turns out that in the early 1460s the king had no suitable relatives whom he could offer to Dracula as a wife. In other words, the king was bluffing, and Dracula was not familiar enough with the king’s relatives to understand this.
In the summer of 1462, Dracula did not receive Matthias’s help in the war against the Turks (so the king deceived him here as well!), and in the fall, Matthias ordered Dracula’s arrest, accused him of conspiring with the Turkish sultan, and imprisoned him.
On top of everything, Matthias decided to tarnish Dracula’s reputation. The famous German pamphlet “On the Villain Called Dracula” was written in the 1460s by royal order.
However, 15 years later, in the mid-1470s, the situation changed. Matthias decided that it was now more advantageous for him to remember his old promises to Dracula: both regarding the joint war against the Turks and regarding the family bond.
A Sacrifice for Dracula
By the mid-1470s, Matthias had a suitable relative whom he could offer to Dracula for marriage. This was the king’s cousin, his second cousin – Ilona Szilágyi (also known as Justina Szilágyi).
In the 1460s, she could not become Dracula’s wife because she had already married in 1458. However, by the mid-1470s, Ilona was widowed. She had no children from the marriage – she was apparently infertile, but Matthias considered this an advantageous circumstance for himself.
The king wanted to bond with Dracula only formally, to make him obedient, and did not want the appearance of relatives in whom the blood of Wallachian (Romanian) princes and the highest Hungarian aristocracy would mix.
The king explained to his cousin that Dracula was needed to organize a new crusade against the Turks – a noble cause. And for Ilona, this was an argument. In 1458, she did not just get married but helped to conclude a political alliance through her marriage. Now she was to do the same – help create a political alliance for the good of the Christian world.
By agreeing to marry Dracula, Ilona essentially saved him from prison. There was no other suitable relative for Matthias, and the king could not release his prisoner without a reason.
Matthias had kept Dracula imprisoned for many years without cause and had contributed to the amplification of his bad reputation. The king could only make Dracula forgive and forget all this by becoming related to him. Just feeding him promises, as was done in the 1460s, would not have worked.
Had Ilona had children, she would likely not have agreed to sacrifice herself and marry the “terrible Dracula,” but since she was childless and believed she would never have children, she saw the purpose of her life in serving others' interests.
Dracula, on the other hand, saw the marriage not only as a political transaction but also as a personal success. Due to his bad reputation, which began when he was still a prince, Dracula was never considered a desirable suitor. Who would want to marry a “bloodthirsty beast”? By the mid-1470s, the situation had worsened further – Dracula was elderly, deprived of power and princely income, and his bad reputation had only grown with time. Yet now, a woman had appeared who agreed to marry him. And not just any woman, but a beautiful one, not an old woman, from a good family, with a good dowry, and an impeccable reputation.
Under these conditions, Dracula was already pre-disposed to like his bride.
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