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60 free Vlad the Impaler trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Vlad the Impaler trivia quiz is about the historical Vlad III of Wallachia, not the vampire. The easy questions cover what most people know: where his 'Dracula' name actually came from, the empire he spent his life fighting, his favourite method of execution and the novelist who borrowed his name four centuries later. From there it moves through a genuinely strange life: a childhood as an Ottoman hostage, a father and brother murdered by the Hungarians, three separate reigns, a purge of the boyars, and a war with the Saxon merchants of Transylvania that produced Europe's first true-crime bestsellers. The harder end covers the 1462 campaign in detail: the letter counting '23,884 Turks and Bulgarians', the night attack on the sultan's camp, the forest of stakes outside the capital, and the forged letters that got him locked up by the King of Hungary for fourteen years. There are also questions on his wives and children, the German and Russian story cycles, the 2023 blood-tears study and where his head is said to have ended up. Every answer was checked against Vlad's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. For the fictional count, try our Dracula quiz.
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Q 01The Ottoman writer Tursun Beg called Vlad 'Kazıklı Voyvoda' around 1500. What does it mean?
Impaler Lord
A later voivode used the Romanian equivalent in a letter of grant in 1551.
Q 02How many separate reigns did Vlad III have?
Three
The middle one, 1456 to 1462, was the long one; the last lasted only weeks before he was killed.
Q 03By what sobriquet is Vlad III known in Romanian historiography?
Țepeș
The word is tied to impalement, his favourite method of execution.
Q 04Vlad's father earned the sobriquet 'Dracul' through membership of which militant fraternity?
The Order of the Dragon
'Dracula' is simply the Slavonic genitive: 'son of Dracul'; in modern Romanian, dracul means 'the devil'.
Q 05Which King of Hungary founded the militant fraternity that gave Vlad's father his nickname?
Sigismund of Luxemburg
The brotherhood was dedicated to halting the Ottoman advance into Europe.
Q 06What does 'dracul' mean in modern Romanian?
The devil
In medieval Romanian it meant 'the dragon', which is what his father was actually being called.
Q 07How did Vlad himself sign his name in two surviving letters from the late 1470s?
Dragulya or Drakulya
Diplomatic reports were already calling him Dracula, Dracuglia or Drakula in the 15th century.
Q 08According to historian Radu Florescu, in which Transylvanian Saxon town was Vlad born?
Sighișoara
His father lived there in a three-storey stone house from 1431 to 1435; the town was then called Segesvár.
Q 09Vlad's grandfather was which famous ruler of Wallachia?
Mircea I
Vlad's father, Vlad II Dracul, was an illegitimate son of Mircea the Elder.
Q 10To secure their father's loyalty, Vlad and his younger brother were held as hostages by whom from 1442?
The Ottomans
Ottoman chronicles say the boys were held in the fortress of Eğrigöz.
Q 11Which sultan ordered Vlad's father to Gallipoli in 1442 to prove his loyalty?
Murad II
Father and both sons were imprisoned; the father was released within the year and the boys were kept as hostages.
Q 12Which Hungarian regent-governor invaded Wallachia in 1447, after which Vlad's father was murdered?
John Hunyadi
The same man later tasked Vlad with defending the Transylvanian border in 1456.
Q 13Which second cousin of Vlad took the Wallachian throne in 1447 and died in Vlad's 1456 invasion?
Vladislav II
Vlad had briefly seized the throne from him with Ottoman help in October 1448, only to be chased out within two months.
Q 21How many 'Turks and Bulgarians' did Vlad claim to have killed in his 1462 letter to Hungary's king?
23,884
The oddly precise figure came with a request for military help 'for the honor' of the Holy Crown of Hungary.
Q 22Which sultan led an army of more than 150,000 men into Wallachia in 1462?
Mehmed II
Chalkokondyles said it was second in size only to the army that had taken Constantinople in 1453.
Q 23On the night of 16–17 June 1462, Vlad broke into the Ottoman camp with what aim?
To capture or kill the sultan
His men attacked the wrong tents, those of the viziers Mahmud Pasha and Isaac, and withdrew at dawn.
Q 14In his first surviving letter as voivode, Vlad wrote that when a prince is weak, what happens?
A stronger one will come and do what he wants to him
The 1456 letter to the burghers of Brașov is often quoted as a window into his authoritarian personality.
Q 15On taking power in 1456, Vlad launched a purge against which class of Wallachian society?
The boyars
Only two members of the princely council kept their seats between 1457 and 1461.
Q 16Vlad's long conflict in the late 1450s was with which community of Transylvania?
The Saxons
They sheltered his rivals; he plundered their villages and impaled the captives, which inspired his epithet.
Q 17According to Dan III's letter, how many Brașov merchants did Vlad impale?
41
The same letter accused him of gathering 300 boys and impaling some and burning others.
Q 18Which pretender did Vlad defeat and execute before 22 April 1460?
Dan III
Vlad then destroyed the suburbs of Brașov and impaled every man and woman captured.
Q 19When the sultan's envoys came to summon him, what did Vlad do?
Had them captured and impaled
He then gave orders in fluent Turkish to open the gates of the fortress of Giurgiu, and his men stormed it.
Q 20In which language did Vlad give orders to the commander of Giurgiu to open the fortress gates?
Turkish
Years as an Ottoman hostage had left him fluent; he later reportedly disguised himself as a Turkish soldier in battle.
Q 24Near which town did the Night Attack of 1462 take place?
Târgoviște
When the sultan entered the deserted town at the end of June, he found the 'forest of the impaled' outside it.
Q 25Per Chalkokondyles, roughly how many people were on stakes in the 'forest of the impaled'?
About 20,000
The field was described as seventeen stades long and seven wide; the sultan reportedly said such a man could not be deprived of his country.
Q 26Which port on the Danube was Wallachia's only one, where the Ottoman fleet landed in May 1462?
Brăila
The main army crossed the river under the sultan at Nikopol on 4 June.
Q 27Which brother of Vlad did the sultan install as ruler of Wallachia in 1462?
Radu
Known as Radu the Handsome, he had been a fellow hostage at the Ottoman court as a boy.
Q 28Which King of Hungary had Vlad imprisoned when he came seeking help in late 1462?
Matthias Corvinus
His Czech mercenary commander John Jiskra captured Vlad near Rucăr.
Q 29What do most historians think of the three November 1462 letters the Hungarian king produced to justify jailing Vlad?
They were forged
The clumsy Latin and meek tone did not match Vlad; Florescu suspects a Saxon priest of Brașov as the author.
Q 30In which Hungarian castle town was Vlad held for about 14 years?
Visegrád
No documents about him survive from 1462 to 1475; his cruelty stories spread through Germany and Italy meanwhile.