Dracula's Bloodline

Every person can find within him or herself a voice, beckoning them to their ancestral roots. Having known where and how a family is started, one can draw life and new meaning helping to shape a path toward the future.  You will now experience a reputable historian’s endeavor to write the history of his family roots whilst reaching for his country’s historic essence.

This is the Romanian saga of Florescu genealogy, a story that both precedes and includes the real life Vlad the Impaler, known to the world as Dracula. The Florescu name was born in a time and in a place when the written word was rarely used.  But it is one that can be traced back centuries, even before Dracula existed or Christopher Columbus sailed.

Nevertheless, the process of digging starts with a distant past, and it is a story that never ends.

Ahead of his story, Radu R. Florescu came to discover, in over decades of sharing his wisdom, the historical significance of his family, a story marked by the undying seal of Vlad the Impaler. Despite all difficulties, the Florescu name reached out and stood its ground throughout centuries of wars, political conflicts, betrayals of blood and, in the end, family survival. This is why the Florescu saga is the story of an undying family, a name that stood tall against all odds.

The immortal flower

Throughout more than six centuries, the Florescu family has survived the trials and tribulations of a little known and understood corner of Europe. Despite all misfortunes, the Florescu name has stood tall and to this day continues to write its own story in a new age far removed from the first burial grounds of the first medieval tombs. Immortalized by a flower, the Florescu heraldry became the symbol of an immortal family, led by religious beliefs, national pride, a sense of service and a deep respect for Romania’s own national heritage.

In search
of the truth

Among many obvious reasons, one would believe that Radu R. Florescu’s background as a historian - and several grants such as the Fulbright Foundation and the American Philosophical Society - would have led him (and his late colleague Raymond T. McNally) to discover the real person, a Romanian prince called Vlad Tepes.. However, another inspiration came from Radu Florescu’s uncle, George D. Florescu, a flamboyant character like many of the Florescus who walked the streets of Bucharest in 19th century clothing and knew the history of every family in Romania. Spiritually adopting Radu as his son, George Florescu instilled the passion for the Florescu genealogy – a love of labor that blessed his nephew and inspired Matei Cazacu, one of Uncle George’s students.

George Florescu helped the authors with their work on Vlad the Impaler by taking Radu Florescu on a historical tour of the Florescu family. With Uncle George at his side, Radu visited archives, castles, monasteries, private collections, galleries and libraries throughout all the regions of Romania and beyond. So this is how the story behind the story began.

Never-ending story

During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Florescu name flowed like its own fast running stream through the events and among the iconic personalities of Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia. Dramatic events drew the family into a whole universe of battles, fraternal jealousies and geo-political conflicts. At every turn, the flower of the Florescu was there: at Dracula’s Castle in Targoviste; alongside the battling Michael the Brave at the famous Battle of Calugareni; in the many council chambers with the Prince of Wallachia, Contantin Brancoveanu and his sons, Constantin, Matei and Radu. And last, but not least, the Florescus and the enduring symbol of the flower, survived and prospered through another four generations from eighteenth to nineteenth century under Greek rule and into the twenty-first century.

The rise of the undying

The Florescu family rose through entangled intermarriages of the Florea family (the Florescu family’s original ancestor) with the official princely families of the lands now known as Romania. Having to deal with a near total absence of written word, the story’s beginning is similar to a bildungsroman exhibition. The reader is taken in a historical trip and meets the early family members, born and buried in the area of Severin (the native soil of the original Florescus).

Here, the reader meets Vlad Tepes, Prince of Wallachia, also known as Dracula, and acknowledges how Vlad the Impaler interacted with the Florescu family. To be sure, the 15th and 16th centuries passed leaving profound wounds on the family roots. The Florescu name survived mostly due to the Florescu women – two “Marias” in fact, one who lived to more than 100 years in the 16th century!