Bela Lugosi as Dracula in 1931.
Count Dracula of Transylvania is the title character of Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel Dracula (1897). He is considered to be both the prototypical and the archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. He is also depicted in the novel to have been the origin of werewolf legends. Some aspects of the character are believed to have been inspired by the 15th-century Wallachian Prince Vlad the Impaler, who was also known as Dracula, by Elizabeth Bathory, a 17th-century noblewoman convicted of a series of ritual murders, and by Sir Henry Irving, an actor for whom Stoker was a personal assistant.
One of Dracula's most iconic powers is his ability to turn others into vampires by biting them and infecting them with the vampiric disease. Other character aspects have been added or altered in subsequent popular fictional works. The character has appeared frequently in popular culture, from films to animated media to breakfast cereals.
Although there was no connection between Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818), fictional works since the 1940s have had Count Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster interacting, whether as allies or as enemies.