Vlad the Impaler
Early life
Vlad was the second legitimate son of Vlad II Dracul, who was an illegitimate son of Mircea I of Wallachia. Vlad II had won the moniker "Dracul" for his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a militant fraternity founded by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. The Order of the Dragon was dedicated to halting the Ottoman advance into Europe. As he was old enough to be a candidate to the throne of Wallachia in 1448, his time of birth would have been between 1428 and 1431. Vlad was most probably born after his father settled in Transylvania in 1429. Historian Radu Florescu writes that Vlad was born in the Transylvanian Saxon town of Sighișoara (then in the Kingdom of Hungary), where his father lived in a three-storey stone house from 1431 to 1435. Modern historians identify Vlad's mother either as a daughter or a kinswoman of Alexander I of Moldavia, or as his father's unknown first wife.
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