#Targoviste

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| Metropolitan Church of Targoviste | ⛪️🔔

The timeless beauty of the Metropolitan Church of Targoviste, in the Orthodox Eastern Day. 🌟 Let's celebrate this sacred moment together!

[officialromaniantranslatiuni]

[witekspicsoldpostcards]

TARGOVISTE - ROMANIA

[autumnmobile12]

Was Once A Princess

My concept art of Zamfir before Dracula’s attack on Târgoviște. (A little bit more Germanic clothing than it should be and it's the wrong time period...) I used Anne of Cleves as inspiration for the top left one.

Awhile back, I made a post about Zamfir, specifically speculating on Sypha’s line of asking if she was the ‘last person of noble birth left alive’ when everything went to hell. Due to her...devotion, I guess, to the royals, I like to play with the idea she was the daughter of the dead Prince. This would explain how she found herself at the head of the capital's guerilla resistance force.

What I imagine happened was after Dracula's castle landed in the heart of the city and the place became overrun with demons, the court fractured into at least two groups: Zamfir's underground faction and a faction that gave up Târgoviște as lost, fled south, and established a new court in Bucharest. (Historically, Wallachia's capital did move from Târgoviște to Bucharest around this time.) For a little bit of context, the Wallachian throne had been contested by the Dănești and Drăculești branches of the ruling family since 1420, some 56 years before Castlevania takes place. So if the reigning monarch were to die, the boyar lords would not have hesitated to flock to the next viable option. Zamfir, on the other hand, seemed to have the people of the Underground Court pretty convinced the royals were alive and well, so they may have been doggedly believing her promises and clinging to the old regime.

Due to the hostile environment of the court, Zamfir was probably already deeply disturbed before Dracula's attack. If she was the Prince's daughter, she's living a world where her father could be at any time deposed, either by his own people or by an outside force, or even betrayed and murdered by his own family members. As a woman, she wouldn't be able to present herself as a claimant to the throne and so would not be in danger of being murdered as a political rival, but the sudden loss of her father would still threaten her already tenuous place of safety. Her madness didn't start with Dracula; he probably just finished what the Wallachian political scene started.

...

As to the identity of dead prince himself, he can only be Vlad III Dracula or Basarab Laiotă and at the same time, it's impossible for him to be either. It's unlikely the prince has the same name as the vampire and Basarab Laiotă doesn't die until 1480.

To reconcile this, I'm calling the reigning prince Dan III because Dan III did not exist and is often confused by historians with Vladislav II, who may have simply used the name as an alias. (Ever misunderstand something so bad that you accidentally invent a whole-ass dude?)

...

Another thing of note is Zamfir is a Romanian surname that denotes a jeweler, not a given name. With this information, she's neither a Dănești or a Drăculești, but she could be an illegitimate child of the prince. Illegitimate children in Wallachia didn’t have the same status as they did in the west.  Any one of a man’s sons had the opportunity to inherit. The daughters were another story, but the Prince still could technically acknowledge her as his if he chose.

[septentrrional]

Târgoviște, Romania, 6th July 2024

[halpwhatdoiputhere]

Me watching castlevania once more

Dracula: targoviste will pay for burning my wife

My dad who was half asleep: their burning her at Taco Bell?

[gretasworld]

Princely Court of Targovishte, Romania

A very important place in the history of Voivode rule from 13th to 16th century.

[mazilucristian]

[hopernicus]

Ep. 238. Poetica Anda Mihaela Miroiu.

Poeme din  volumul de poezie “Pastele Cailor”, Ed. Bibliotheca, Targoviste, 2023.In lectura autorului

[bornfreakdraws]

But what if Sypha got to have TWO girlfriends... *eyes emoji*

(ppst... uncensored version & drawing template for this pose are available. Look me up @ BornFreak on P*tre0n to find them)

[coffeewithcutcaffeine]

Okay, but here is the thing with Vlad Dracula:

I know that there is this popular notion that the war in 1462 and the subsequent famous night attack at Târgoviște was Vlad’s own risky endeavour to settle personal beef with Mehmed once and for all. No matter if painted as a hero or a villain, we see this vengeful guy who cannot stop thinking about his past issues with Mehmed (and the country he represents) and keeps looking for the right opportunity to start provoking the Sultan and settle the personal conflict.

I know, I know. It adds the angst, the flavour. However, it’s not only a very incorrect way of looking at Vlad’s character and the pretext of the war, but it also takes away from his brilliance as a ruler and a strategist.

First and foremost, Vlad was a voivode of an entire country. As the ruler of the land, the fate of Wallachia fell on his shoulders. Any sovereign has to detach himself from any personal feelings and conflicts and put the matters of the state first. Vlad was not only a highly intelligent man, but his rule was definitely marked by ambitious reforms to push the country forward. To wage a war just to settle personal issues would be an insanity, a sure way to not only dig his own grave but to dig a grave of the entire country as well.

Also, we do in fact know what Vlad’s role and motives were regarding this war, and we should not omit those facts. The war of 1462 was the planned Step One of a much larger Crusade. Vlad knew the Ottomans well, knew the risks that the Wallachian attack would bring, but he was promised significant help from another, much stronger state. He was needed for his knowledge and skills. He really took the big step forward only when the help was promised.

Especially from the preserved correspondence addressed to Matthias Corvinus, we can easily tell that Vlad kept his side of the deal and was persistent on making others stick to their promises as well:

You know that our land is a neighbour to your land... You also may have heard that the Sultan has set up a huge army against us. If this land of ours is subjugated, please, realise that they will not stay content with our land but will immediately make war on you, and the inhabitants of your land will suffer great misfortunes at their hands. So now is the time: by helping us, you really help yourself by stopping their army far from your own land and by not allowing them to destroy our land and harm and oppress us.

Maybe it’s time people stopped showing Vlad as an angry, angsty avenger who pushed his country into a freaking war just to kick the Sultan’s ass out of personal issues. Let’s show it instead for what it really was — an opportunity to change the politics of the time, with Vlad being one of the most important links of the campaign. And let’s show the personal nature of the events for what it was, too — a man who stayed true to his words, did what he had promised to do (and did so valiantly), and then was betrayed by those who promised him aid.

(Also, his subsequent imprisonment and the whole slander campaign obviously shows that he was devoted to the cause and to staying loyal to the allies, but the allies had to get rid of him fast because his involvement was becoming too inconvenient.)

[lastofthebelmontsrp]

Some folks think if you had been in Targoviste when Lisa was murdered, you could have saved her and stopped Dracula's war from ever happening at all. What do you think?

"Oh that is interesting," Trevor folded his arms, looking up as he thought, "I really had just lost the last of my family to the church at the time, so I think I would be feeling happy to give that big middle finger to the church. I wonder how things would go differently had I been able to do that," He scratched his chin in thought, "hm," He said to himself.

[chorus-the-mutate]

Graham McTavish is the male Vera Farmiga of screaming.

[witekspicsoldpostcards]

TARGOVISTE - ROMANIA / RUMUNIA

[autumnmobile12]

This is an interesting and really vague line, and it’s unfortunate Zamfir’s arc is probably the most rushed subplot in the series.  (I mean, I didn’t really care for what Sumi and Taka had going on, but at least they got a brief flashback explaining their motives.)

So let’s dive into the historical context here:

Since it’s founding in 1310, Wallachia was ruled by the House of Basarab, a family that some historians believe may have migrated from Asia.  Wallachia’s first ruler on record was Basarab the Great.

After the death of Mircea the Old in 1418, a direct descendant of Basarab the Great, the ruling family split into two factions:  Mircea’s descendants through his sons known as the Drăculești and the descendants of his brother, Dan I, known as the Dănești.  This split would become the defining feature of Wallachian politics for this time period.  During the last years of Mircea’s reign, he named his only legitimate son Mihail as co-ruler to ease the transition of power after his death.  Within three years of ruling on his own though, Mihail was overpowered by the Ottoman Empire and the boyar lords under him defected to his cousin Dan II and Wallachia broke into a civil war.  Mihail was killed in the spring of 1420, after which several of his illegitimate half-brothers took up the Drăculești line’s bid for power, fighting the each other as much as Dănești faction.  It’s like Game of Thrones but even more chaos and the bastards are 100% valid players in the eyes of the law and society.

Castlevania takes place in 1476, so in between this year and the year of Mihail I’s death, rule of Wallachia (the Voivodate) would change hands 24 times and see a total of 10 separate rulers, only one of whom would die of natural causes.  (In comparison, England’s throne saw three different occupants in the same amount of time.  Although, one of those three was a usurper and one died under mysterious circumstances of the ‘probably murder’ variety.) So Sypha coming out and guessing that Zamfir is the last of the nobles is thought-provoking in that the royal court was already a hostile place even without Dracula bearing down on the capital.

Zamfir’s psychosis may have deeper roots than what happened when Dracula attacked, and I really want to explore that further.  ‘Last person of noble birth’ can have a few meanings.  The Wallachian nobility were the boyar lords, whose power and influence was dependent on wealth and/or land.  At court, there was the princely council who advised (or schemed against) the ruling prince, and there were also a few court positions that weren’t part of the council.  More to the point, Wallachia’s society behaved the same way as most European nations did at the time: ‘You have no power for you are but a woman.’

As for the mummified corpses in the Underground Court, in the interest of loose historical accuracy, the dead prince could only be Vlad III Dracula of House Drăculești.  In November of 1476, Vlad III usurped the throne from Basarab III, who had held it since 1474 after killing his predecessor Radu III (Vlad III’s younger brother, actually.)  In December of that year, Basarab III returned to Wallachia and took back the throne, killing Vlad III in the process.  Basarab III would live another four years.  In addition, the capital of Wallachia was moved from Târgovişte to Bucharest this same year.  So intentional or not on the creators’ part, the show roughly matches up with the historical timeline.  There’s also the fact that it’s not entirely clear exactly how Vlad III died and there is some speculation by historians that Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the historical Dracula only share the same name and the latter was not the actual inspiration for the former.

It’s a bit of a stretch to say Vlad III Dracula and the vampire Vlad Dracula Ţepeş were intended to be two separate people in the series, so I won’t go out there and make that claim.  The mummified royals are probably just nameless artifacts for the plot and we are definitely in speculation, headcanon, string and thumbtacks territory now.

Still, the ‘last person of noble birth’ line does have me wondering what Zamfir’s connection to the court is aside from ‘leader of the Târgovişte resistance.’  Daughter of a courtier, daughter of a council lord, or daughter of the ruling prince himself?

[ghxstlly]

Do you have a general summary of the vampire AU? Like their dynamics and everything? I feel like I don’t know much about that one compared to the other two

Thank you for your patience!

I hope you can accept my apologies, I've been highly slow with sharing stuff about my vampire AU 😭 But here's some now!

Lord Nikolaevich III — Stolen from his home as a young man and sired by the fearsome, cruel vampire lord Byron Nikolaevich, Friedrich was little more than a lowly thrall for a long time. Weak, timid, he was forced to carry out menial tasks for his vampire lord master and was content to stay on the down-low. However, when a crusade led by the Church of Targoviste stormed Lord Byron's castle, intent to kill him, the vampire lord, determined to preserve the Nikolaevich bloodline, passed all his titles and power to Friedrich... who just so happened to be in the room. When Byron was slain, the castle was destroyed, leaving Friedrich and a handful of thralls loyal to the Nikolaevich bloodline as the only survivors of the attack.

Rising then as the new Lord Nikolaevich, Friedrich had little idea what to do. He wasn't cut out for the cruelty and mercilessness needed for being a vampire lord at all, and opted to hole up in a different castle nearby the small village of Tusavichy, where he tries to pretend he doesn't exist.

Juliane Lecarde — Juliane is a young woman who lives in Tusavichy, a friendly face in a cold mountain village. Though by day she is a simple peasant, a husbandless one at that, by night she is a secret witch, spending her time reading and learning the art of medicine. Though not particularly superstitious or religious, she does harbor a healthy fear of vampires, and finds herself frustrated and mistrustful of the efficacy of Tusavichy's defense against night dwelling creatures.

Sir Idris Trantoul — Idris, the Knight Commander of Tusavichy, is a fiery spirit who harbors a deep-seated hatred for evil. Having been selected as his predecessor’s squire after his fighting spirit was noticed, he rose through the ranks as his victories in battle grew in numbers. Unfortunately, however, he finds himself needing to prove his worth to the people of Tusavichy as a shield against the darkness, for an attack by a werewolf one night left him severely defeated and humiliated. Thus, he has vowed to stop at nothing to kill the elusive Lord Nikolaevich, the one called The Ghost of Tusavichy— the vampire that no one has ever seen— to prove himself a worthy protector and Knight Commander.

Adella Viscardi — Adella is a sireless thrall— a weak vampire with no master. Having witnessed her own brother, Friedrich, be stolen from her family when she was younger, she could not understand why he never came back for her. And when she was stolen away and turned into a vampire herself, she heard that he had become a powerful lord and felt betrayed and hurt, slowly growing a resentment for him which culminated in a plan to usurp his powers and titles.

Elie Lavaude — A mysterious, suspiciously powerful vampire, Elie was discovered by Adella during her efforts to find a way to destroy her brother. Though she was highly intimidated and afraid at first, to her surprise, Elie was willing to hear her out and was rather easily convinced to join her cause. Apparently seeing it as a mutually beneficial arrangement, Elie's intentions are unclear, though she did seem particularly swayed by Adella's promise that she'd never have to hunt for her own food again if they succeed.