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604 days ago
In the Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula loses his wife Elisabeta to suicide when she is falsely informed of his death in battle. The tragic loss causes him to renounce God after he is told that her soul cannot be saved because she has taken her own life. Truth or fiction? Apart from a brief notice in the Russian narrative, this tragic folklore is practically the only reference anywhere to a so-called first wife.
"During the night, one of Dracula's relatives who had been enslaved by the Turks years before, decided to forewarn the Wallachian prince of the great danger he was incurring by remaining in the fortress. Undetected, during the pitch-dark, moonless night, the former Romanian, who was now a member of the Turkish janissary corps, climbed to the top of Poenari Hill, a short distance from Dracula's castle, and then, armed with a bow and arrow, took careful aim at one of the dimly lit openings in the main castle tower, which he knew contained Dracula's quarters. At the end of the arrow he had pinned a message advising Dracula to escape while there was still time. The Romanian-born Muslim witnessed the accuracy of his aim: the candle was suddenly extinguished by the arrow. Within a minute it was re-lit by Dracula's Transylvanian concubine; she could be see reading the message by the flickering light. What followed could have only been recalled by Dracula's intimate advisers within the castle, who presumably witnessed the scene. The lady apprised her husband of the ominous content of the message. She told him that she would " rather have her body rot and be eaten by the fish of the Arges than be led into captivity by the Turks." She then hurled herself from the upper battlements, her body falling down the precipice below into the river, which became her tomb. A fact that tends to corroborate this story is that to this day the river at that point is known as Râul Doamnei, or the "Princess's River."
Ilona Szilágyi was the second wife of Dracula. Around 1465, she bore two sons.

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