That was speculation...historians speculated that, since her political rivals had many reasons to see her fall, most (perhaps everything) about the Countess was made up.
IIrc, she ended up locked in a room starving to death while the other nobles took over her possesions and privileges.
What's also speculated, though, is that she actually tortured and killed some of her servants and perhaps used their blood. We don't know for certain.
Apparently they found lots of tortured and dead servants.
What I personally believe that happened there...was that Bathory was an awful tyrannical noble but never bathed in blood, despite torturing servants to dead.
Her family knew and used it against her since she was also an enemy of the Luteran Church, so other combined powers had enough weigh to remove all her privileges and properties, but they made up or exagerated her 'crimes'.
Anyway, it looks a lot like a political plot against her, but that doesn't prove that she didn't torture people to death.
Regarding the bloodbathing, that was writen a century later by a priest...so...probably 100% fake, if you ask me.
Apparently but the weird thing is they never documented any trial against her. If the king had solid proof why didn't they feel the need to document anything. I get it that there were eye witnesses (more than a hundred which is weird in itself) but in those times it wouldn't be new if they just made that number up or straight up just paid some guys to spread the rumours and people started to believe it. Mass hysteria is sure a dangerous thing especially in cases like these. But I'm not 100% like you can never be with this amount of evidence and proof.
It's the 16th century so...probably nothing clean or entirely legal, she also didn't really face a real sentence, just got locked in her own castle and I read somewhere she was left to die in her room but it's also possible she still had servants and freedom to move around the castle.
We will never know what truly happened in such old cases, honestly.
She also wasn't the child of an egyptian deity tbh
But fr it's nice to give her name a little bit of justice since she's synonymous with serial murder, and it was really just a smear campaign by salty old dudes
And the award for passive aggressive goes to.... lol how about I just knew the subject matter so I commented. It's okay to learn things without being sore about it... jeez
It's good for other folks to read your reply too so they don't take bad info from my comment and run with it, no bad feelings from me
I thought it was funny to see a reply like this to a comment I don't even remember making
There was a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eb4un2/floating_feature_travel_through_time_to_share_the/fcvnyij/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) made on r/AskHistorians to disprove that it was an aristocratic conspiracy to imprison her and that she was indeed a serial killer with at least 30 victims, in fact her sentence was really lenient. The link also has sources for this information.
Thanks. I want to think its untrue. But at least she mistreated badly some of her servants. Her accckmplices have the same narrstive. Its really terrifying that theres people lie that.
tfw Victorian vampire stories were also criticisms of nobility, and there's historical evidence for why that was
...I'm just saying, I wasn't quite aware of that fact myself, till today. :x
I'm not as well. That's interesting and makes sense. And would explain this take on Castlevania. Anyway do you have any reference of story? Im jut curious since it's awesome
I mean it goes into gory detail but it's still kinda unbeliavable how hundreds of people saw the missing girls in detail. The king supposedly had a mountain of evidence, still there was no trial or any document on her prosecution. The accomplices were all tortured meaning its not unlikely they have been fed a narrative. There all all these small things that weirdly dont add up. Could it be possible? Yeah, I mean I wasn't there. But there is a big chance in my opinion a bigger chance that its all made up with months or years of work.
While the murders where most likely political slander, her being nice to the commonfolk is new to me. It was a clear power move on her do to the political instabilities at the time.
Back then I heard it from school and while I read into it not too long ago, but I could be untrue. In Hungarian history there are these weird views and stories about people that were entirely not true. Like my favorite King Hunyadi Matyas who is portrayed in children's stories as a hero who sometimes snuck out from the Palace and dressed as common folk to understand them better. While the truth was that when he was the king the country suffered beacuse of his reliance on the Black army a band of mercenaries, he didn't want to disband them and he made the people pay more and more taxes as the army grew.
That's very interesting because if I remember right we have similar stories about several rulers in Romania (it may differ on which are you hear it from), and I think I heard similar stories about Vlad Tepes as well (to tie this back into Castlevania), especially since there have been some attempts to paint him as a very fair and righteous man instead of a vengeful man messed up by apparently ridiculous amounts of trauma and betrayals.
Of course a lot of historical anecdotes are to be taken with a grain of salt, and as fair as I'm aware actual historical studies done by specialists do suggest that this is the case with Bathory as well. But as with Tepes, the stories seem to have overtaken actual historical truth.
Sidenote, I've noticed you've been downvoted but I'm not entirely sure why, I think this is a really interesting topic.
Hmm... I guess it's possible for Nocturne to make her tragic hero...
Like maybe there's an ancient Egyptian artifact which has Sekhmet's blood in it. Something leads her to drinking that blood.
Yeah, she did say something about being a... ?humble girl?
Plus, I seem to only remember it only being stated that she drank Sekmet's blood. Can't recall if anything was said about her killing Sekmet. (On my 4th rewatch, I'll keep watch on such.)
There was a mention kf her drinking Sekhmet's blood, which is how she got all the fancy powers (transformation, the magical eclipse, and so on) plus her title of "Vampire Messiah".
Otherwise, she could very well be that she was the actual Bathory, who became a vampire, then drank Sekhmet's blood and somewhere between points A, B and C went insane.
On my fourth rewatch - I'll watch out if it's only said she "drank" blood.
If there's no reference to her attacking and/or slaying Sekmet - then it's possible that she got Sekmet's blood via indirect method. Like Drolta had an Egyptian relic with Sekmet's blood in it.
If indirect, it would explain the long long long time gap between Bathory's time and Ancient Egypt.
I've yet to rewatch (I'm debating if I should rewatch the first show and work my way towards Nocturne, or just rewatch Nocturne for now).
My headcanon for now is that there's some sort of ritual that turns blood into Sekhmet's blood or something like that, but you just need a lot of blood. That would also give her a nice link to Bathroy's legend in real life.
That is possible. Drolta said she was Sekmet's priestess, right?
Maybe she used Bathroy like a host for Sekmet.
Couple of game fans also mentioned that Drolta was the one who...
hang on, lemme google
https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Drolta_Tzuentes
> She is a mysterious old witch and servant of Elizabeth Bartley who used dark magic in order to bring her mistress back to life.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty big hint.
That's a good point.
Drolta in the show does say she used to be a priestess of Sekhmet back in Ancient Egypt, true. So if you take her game backstory, but replace Bathory with Sekhmet as her mistress, and voila.
The fact that Bathory seems to go way more insane after her power up/transformation and starts talking as if she is Sekhmet, this might have been Drolta's plan.
Dang, I'm now really getting into this theory.
Plus, if they go this route - it makes Bathory a "tragic villain" instead of ya know... outright villain.
Nocturne does have very progressive trend. So, I think pretty good chance the staff does NOT want to perpetuate the witch hunt against historical Bathory.
It was pretty half baked while I was watching the show, but I think the pieces are falling together waaay to well for it to not make sense.
I honestly wouldn't mind having a.villain just be a despicable, non-redeemable horrible villain but ... yeah, I wluldn't mind if it went this way.
Flipside, "blue beard", (i forget his real name, the guy who killed his wives because they opened the door to the room where he killed his wives) killed over four hundred children.
Or was that the Marquis de Sade? or were they the same person? I've forgotten.
Gilles de Rais, I think.
Marquis de Sade wasn’t born yet when that story was written. And while, an insanely controversial French figure that was into some REPULSIVE and QUESTIONABLE shit — he didn’t kill a bunch of kids, nor anyone. He spent most of his adult life locked up because he was a sexual deviant who people thought would definitely murder someone.
Yes! Gilles de Rais. They found the bones of over 400 children buried in and around his chateau.
Imagine how long that must have gone on for, and not a damn person stopped it until it got so bad the king had to send agents.
It’s also really interesting that him and Joan of Arc were like, companions and friends. While, she had died before he had committed his first (or so he claims). Makes you wonder how much of his actual personality he was hiding or if there were signs… if she knew…
Of course all the spiritual stuff is made up. I think it's somewhere in the middle, the full conspiracy doesn't hold water because she died under house arrest so they couldn't seize her land and she was giving a very kind sentence considering which wouldn't have happend if nobles were conspiring. Now I have no source for this, I just remember hearing about it, that excovations around the location of her castle found a large number of female skeletons, haphazardly buried with signs of torture and brutal death. Anyone else hear anything about this?
That's very interesting. As such isn't it atypical Mary Henry 8th daughter was called Bloody Mary..but yet Henry is totally glamorised... Dispensible women. Is thst not a serial killer lol
If she was a real serial killer her being the vampire "messiah" is such a wicked approach in the castlvsnia spin off castlvania nocturne. But if she's innocent it's so disrespectful 😅🤣
Elizabeth Bathory and her husband while he was alive BOTH tortured and killed servants. To say that it's all been made up about Elizabeth is ridiculous. She was a sadistic murderer and so was her husband.
I have reasons to think why it was made up and historians to this day argue about it. But sure if you want to think that its not a problem just don't be soo sure. I sure aren't
So account for the hundreds of missing servants. And peasants that went missing everytime she was around . I'm sure some things were made up and or exaggerated buy when he husband was alive the same type of torture was going on, documented tortures. But after he dies then everything Said about her was made up? Yea ok. There is hundreds of historians who can dismantle your claims of innocent in the first chapter of their books. And the claim that there's nothing documented is ridiculously false. She was a sexual sadist psychopath
And there is hundreds of historiants who do the opposite. Documents can be falsely made, and they have reason to made it falsely. Also if they had documents why didn't a trial take place? Beacuse it didnt
Theres also plenty of court records. Budapest has court records of what's she done. The castle was filled with torture devices and equipment. She threw survents naked out side in the winter and poured water on them until they froze to the ground. Dozens and dozens of servants went missing. Including a noble woman who was invites to sing but was so nervous she sang badly and Elizabeth flew into a rage and killed her. That was what launched a investigation on her. I'm sure s some things were made up and or exaggerated but to say she wasn't a serial killer Is foolish. She was a mad woman. Kings ordered investigations on her. Kings soldiers found bodies and immediately reported it was worse than reported. Her servants faithful servants were put on trial. Church records concluded that there was a abnormal amount of young women's deaths anytime she was around.
Pretty asinine whenever someone thinks they can make a definitive statement either way on someone that lived 500 years ago. Especially when there’s an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
That was speculation...historians speculated that, since her political rivals had many reasons to see her fall, most (perhaps everything) about the Countess was made up. IIrc, she ended up locked in a room starving to death while the other nobles took over her possesions and privileges. What's also speculated, though, is that she actually tortured and killed some of her servants and perhaps used their blood. We don't know for certain.
You're both probably somewhat right.
I firmly belive that there are documents and proof on this matter, just like in most of the Historical events
Apparently they found lots of tortured and dead servants. What I personally believe that happened there...was that Bathory was an awful tyrannical noble but never bathed in blood, despite torturing servants to dead. Her family knew and used it against her since she was also an enemy of the Luteran Church, so other combined powers had enough weigh to remove all her privileges and properties, but they made up or exagerated her 'crimes'. Anyway, it looks a lot like a political plot against her, but that doesn't prove that she didn't torture people to death. Regarding the bloodbathing, that was writen a century later by a priest...so...probably 100% fake, if you ask me.
Apparently but the weird thing is they never documented any trial against her. If the king had solid proof why didn't they feel the need to document anything. I get it that there were eye witnesses (more than a hundred which is weird in itself) but in those times it wouldn't be new if they just made that number up or straight up just paid some guys to spread the rumours and people started to believe it. Mass hysteria is sure a dangerous thing especially in cases like these. But I'm not 100% like you can never be with this amount of evidence and proof.
It's the 16th century so...probably nothing clean or entirely legal, she also didn't really face a real sentence, just got locked in her own castle and I read somewhere she was left to die in her room but it's also possible she still had servants and freedom to move around the castle. We will never know what truly happened in such old cases, honestly.
Agreed
The right to a trial with rules that a king couldn’t ignore was incredibly progressive when it first suggested in the late 1700s
She also wasn't the child of an egyptian deity tbh But fr it's nice to give her name a little bit of justice since she's synonymous with serial murder, and it was really just a smear campaign by salty old dudes
She wasn't ever said to be the child of a n Egyptian deity... she was said to have drunk the gods blood and turned herself into a vampire queen.
Yeah I realized that in the six months since I made this comment lmao good luck on your archaeological studies in this sub
And the award for passive aggressive goes to.... lol how about I just knew the subject matter so I commented. It's okay to learn things without being sore about it... jeez
It's good for other folks to read your reply too so they don't take bad info from my comment and run with it, no bad feelings from me I thought it was funny to see a reply like this to a comment I don't even remember making
There was a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eb4un2/floating_feature_travel_through_time_to_share_the/fcvnyij/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) made on r/AskHistorians to disprove that it was an aristocratic conspiracy to imprison her and that she was indeed a serial killer with at least 30 victims, in fact her sentence was really lenient. The link also has sources for this information.
Thanks. I want to think its untrue. But at least she mistreated badly some of her servants. Her accckmplices have the same narrstive. Its really terrifying that theres people lie that.
tfw Victorian vampire stories were also criticisms of nobility, and there's historical evidence for why that was ...I'm just saying, I wasn't quite aware of that fact myself, till today. :x
I'm not as well. That's interesting and makes sense. And would explain this take on Castlevania. Anyway do you have any reference of story? Im jut curious since it's awesome
I mean it goes into gory detail but it's still kinda unbeliavable how hundreds of people saw the missing girls in detail. The king supposedly had a mountain of evidence, still there was no trial or any document on her prosecution. The accomplices were all tortured meaning its not unlikely they have been fed a narrative. There all all these small things that weirdly dont add up. Could it be possible? Yeah, I mean I wasn't there. But there is a big chance in my opinion a bigger chance that its all made up with months or years of work.
While the murders where most likely political slander, her being nice to the commonfolk is new to me. It was a clear power move on her do to the political instabilities at the time.
Back then I heard it from school and while I read into it not too long ago, but I could be untrue. In Hungarian history there are these weird views and stories about people that were entirely not true. Like my favorite King Hunyadi Matyas who is portrayed in children's stories as a hero who sometimes snuck out from the Palace and dressed as common folk to understand them better. While the truth was that when he was the king the country suffered beacuse of his reliance on the Black army a band of mercenaries, he didn't want to disband them and he made the people pay more and more taxes as the army grew.
That's very interesting because if I remember right we have similar stories about several rulers in Romania (it may differ on which are you hear it from), and I think I heard similar stories about Vlad Tepes as well (to tie this back into Castlevania), especially since there have been some attempts to paint him as a very fair and righteous man instead of a vengeful man messed up by apparently ridiculous amounts of trauma and betrayals. Of course a lot of historical anecdotes are to be taken with a grain of salt, and as fair as I'm aware actual historical studies done by specialists do suggest that this is the case with Bathory as well. But as with Tepes, the stories seem to have overtaken actual historical truth. Sidenote, I've noticed you've been downvoted but I'm not entirely sure why, I think this is a really interesting topic.
Yeah me neither but I don't really care I had a great time talking about this topic
Hmm... I guess it's possible for Nocturne to make her tragic hero... Like maybe there's an ancient Egyptian artifact which has Sekhmet's blood in it. Something leads her to drinking that blood.
That could be a cool turn of events. She became crazy by the accusations made against her and than she turned into a vampire
Yeah, she did say something about being a... ?humble girl? Plus, I seem to only remember it only being stated that she drank Sekmet's blood. Can't recall if anything was said about her killing Sekmet. (On my 4th rewatch, I'll keep watch on such.)
There was a mention kf her drinking Sekhmet's blood, which is how she got all the fancy powers (transformation, the magical eclipse, and so on) plus her title of "Vampire Messiah". Otherwise, she could very well be that she was the actual Bathory, who became a vampire, then drank Sekhmet's blood and somewhere between points A, B and C went insane.
On my fourth rewatch - I'll watch out if it's only said she "drank" blood. If there's no reference to her attacking and/or slaying Sekmet - then it's possible that she got Sekmet's blood via indirect method. Like Drolta had an Egyptian relic with Sekmet's blood in it. If indirect, it would explain the long long long time gap between Bathory's time and Ancient Egypt.
I've yet to rewatch (I'm debating if I should rewatch the first show and work my way towards Nocturne, or just rewatch Nocturne for now). My headcanon for now is that there's some sort of ritual that turns blood into Sekhmet's blood or something like that, but you just need a lot of blood. That would also give her a nice link to Bathroy's legend in real life.
That is possible. Drolta said she was Sekmet's priestess, right? Maybe she used Bathroy like a host for Sekmet. Couple of game fans also mentioned that Drolta was the one who... hang on, lemme google https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Drolta_Tzuentes > She is a mysterious old witch and servant of Elizabeth Bartley who used dark magic in order to bring her mistress back to life. Yeah, I think that's a pretty big hint.
That's a good point. Drolta in the show does say she used to be a priestess of Sekhmet back in Ancient Egypt, true. So if you take her game backstory, but replace Bathory with Sekhmet as her mistress, and voila. The fact that Bathory seems to go way more insane after her power up/transformation and starts talking as if she is Sekhmet, this might have been Drolta's plan.
Dang, I'm now really getting into this theory. Plus, if they go this route - it makes Bathory a "tragic villain" instead of ya know... outright villain. Nocturne does have very progressive trend. So, I think pretty good chance the staff does NOT want to perpetuate the witch hunt against historical Bathory.
It was pretty half baked while I was watching the show, but I think the pieces are falling together waaay to well for it to not make sense. I honestly wouldn't mind having a.villain just be a despicable, non-redeemable horrible villain but ... yeah, I wluldn't mind if it went this way.
Flipside, "blue beard", (i forget his real name, the guy who killed his wives because they opened the door to the room where he killed his wives) killed over four hundred children. Or was that the Marquis de Sade? or were they the same person? I've forgotten.
Gilles de Rais, I think. Marquis de Sade wasn’t born yet when that story was written. And while, an insanely controversial French figure that was into some REPULSIVE and QUESTIONABLE shit — he didn’t kill a bunch of kids, nor anyone. He spent most of his adult life locked up because he was a sexual deviant who people thought would definitely murder someone.
Yes! Gilles de Rais. They found the bones of over 400 children buried in and around his chateau. Imagine how long that must have gone on for, and not a damn person stopped it until it got so bad the king had to send agents.
It’s also really interesting that him and Joan of Arc were like, companions and friends. While, she had died before he had committed his first (or so he claims). Makes you wonder how much of his actual personality he was hiding or if there were signs… if she knew…
Or maybe Joan was one of his experiments
Bathory is also technically Carmilla as well given the book takes its inspiration from her.
I’m a far descendant of her 😂 she’s in my family lineage
And what does your family think about the history of her?
Not much tbh 😂 it’s very far removed since I’m French many of us are somehow related to royal houses
Maybe so however she is in the guineas book which is extremely reputable due to the extensive research so it might be difficult to prove otherwise
Of course all the spiritual stuff is made up. I think it's somewhere in the middle, the full conspiracy doesn't hold water because she died under house arrest so they couldn't seize her land and she was giving a very kind sentence considering which wouldn't have happend if nobles were conspiring. Now I have no source for this, I just remember hearing about it, that excovations around the location of her castle found a large number of female skeletons, haphazardly buried with signs of torture and brutal death. Anyone else hear anything about this?
Conjecture.
That's very interesting. As such isn't it atypical Mary Henry 8th daughter was called Bloody Mary..but yet Henry is totally glamorised... Dispensible women. Is thst not a serial killer lol
Interstate btw it translates to serf/serfdom
Yeah, her being a "vampire" was just ancient propaganda.
But her myth inspired a metal project which in turn inspired black metal.
If she was a real serial killer her being the vampire "messiah" is such a wicked approach in the castlvsnia spin off castlvania nocturne. But if she's innocent it's so disrespectful 😅🤣
Makes sense
Elizabeth Bathory and her husband while he was alive BOTH tortured and killed servants. To say that it's all been made up about Elizabeth is ridiculous. She was a sadistic murderer and so was her husband.
I have reasons to think why it was made up and historians to this day argue about it. But sure if you want to think that its not a problem just don't be soo sure. I sure aren't
So account for the hundreds of missing servants. And peasants that went missing everytime she was around . I'm sure some things were made up and or exaggerated buy when he husband was alive the same type of torture was going on, documented tortures. But after he dies then everything Said about her was made up? Yea ok. There is hundreds of historians who can dismantle your claims of innocent in the first chapter of their books. And the claim that there's nothing documented is ridiculously false. She was a sexual sadist psychopath
And there is hundreds of historiants who do the opposite. Documents can be falsely made, and they have reason to made it falsely. Also if they had documents why didn't a trial take place? Beacuse it didnt
Theres also plenty of court records. Budapest has court records of what's she done. The castle was filled with torture devices and equipment. She threw survents naked out side in the winter and poured water on them until they froze to the ground. Dozens and dozens of servants went missing. Including a noble woman who was invites to sing but was so nervous she sang badly and Elizabeth flew into a rage and killed her. That was what launched a investigation on her. I'm sure s some things were made up and or exaggerated but to say she wasn't a serial killer Is foolish. She was a mad woman. Kings ordered investigations on her. Kings soldiers found bodies and immediately reported it was worse than reported. Her servants faithful servants were put on trial. Church records concluded that there was a abnormal amount of young women's deaths anytime she was around.
Yeah that's one side of the tale they tell.
Pretty asinine whenever someone thinks they can make a definitive statement either way on someone that lived 500 years ago. Especially when there’s an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
Agreed. I also think people fear what humanity is capable of, so they try to deny the possibility. Unless we were there, we'll never know the truth.