March 25, 2025 • 57 mins
When history remembers Elizabeth Bathory, it recalls a monster - the "Blood Countess" who allegedly murdered 650 young women and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth. But what if the most notorious female serial killer in history was largely a victim of political conspiracy?
Our journey into the dark legend of Elizabeth Bathory reveals a tale far more complex than vampire lore suggests. Born into Hungarian nobility and married to a war hero, Elizabeth wielded immense wealth and power - making her a target in the politically volatile landscape of 16th century Transylvania. Following her husband's death, she found herself vulnerable against formidable enemies: King Matthias II, who owed her family substantial debts, and Gregory Thurzo, who stood to gain control of her vast estates.
The evidence against Elizabeth crumbles under scrutiny. Of 300 witness testimonies, only three provided firsthand accounts. Her servants "confessed" only after enduring brutal torture - having their fingers ripped out with hot pincers before being burned alive. Most damning is that Elizabeth herself was never even put on trial, instead being placed under house arrest while only her servants faced prosecution.
What emerges is a portrait not of a bloodthirsty monster, but of a powerful woman whose downfall served multiple political agendas. The vampiric elements of her story - the blood bathing, the supernatural connections - appeared more than a century after her death, coinciding with Eastern Europe's vampire hysteria and the rise of Gothic literature. These embellishments transformed a potentially cruel noblewoman into a convenient cultural bogeyman.
Was Elizabeth Bathory completely innocent? Probably not. Historical records suggest she may have been harsh and even abusive by today's standards. But the leap from difficult noblewoman to history's most prolific female murderer reveals more about societal attitudes toward powerful women than it does about Elizabeth herself.
Listen now to untangle fact from fiction and decide for yourself: was the Blood Countess a monster, a victim, or something in between?
Tale of the "Blood Countess": Elizabeth Bathory
By Reading the Past
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngI5EWC8zXw
Elizabeth Bathory - The Blood Countess Documentary
By The People Profiles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UqXtGDLiLA&t=253s
The bloody legend of Hungary’s serial killer countess
By Ronan O’Connell
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Oh, hey there.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You keep starting and I'm not ready.
Oh, hey, there why aren't youready?
I had to burp.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
At least it's not me this time.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, it's early.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I haven't had bubbles .
Speaker 2 (00:36):
My bubbles.
So this is we just want to saythis is the second part to.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
We are the history buffoons too.
We're the history buffoons.
I'm Kate, that's Bradley.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Let's do this over.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
No, this is great, this is gold, this is podcast
gold.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We are the History Ruffoons.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm Bradley that is Kate over there?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Sorry, I didn't mean to take your thunder on saying I
am Kate, but thank you forlistening to us.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
us and we're about to finish our story on elizabeth
battery yes yeah, so if you havenot listened to part one yet,
yes that is elizabeth's umpretty much backstory of like
how she came to be who she is umpart two.
We dove a little bit deeperinto her character.
Yeah, a little bit deeper, alot a.
We dove a little bit deeperinto her character.
(01:25):
Yeah, a little bit deeper.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
A lot of it, deeper A lot of it yeah.
We try and uncover some of the,the, the history portions of
what's real and what's not interms of her mystique throughout
history because of beingconsidered the blood countess.
And yeah, hope you learnedsomething about good old
elizabeth, yeah absolutely enjoyokay.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So what I said about the two-parter, that's bullshit.
We're gonna keep going.
I don't fucking care.
Whatever happens, happens okay.
So whatever happens.
When he got back from war yesthe story goes okay that he
(02:15):
taught elizabeth the art of war,the art of torture, yeah, so
does that seem kind of weird?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's like, alright, I'm out fighting our enemies,
get a little taste for a littlelust for blood.
Fucking these people up Blood,blood and bells Well, and
apparently dodgeball, and it'slike you know what a good idea
(02:46):
is.
I'm gonna go back and teach mywife, my wife, my ways?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
what the fuck?
Well, he gave her tips on howto punish their servants I'm
guessing he had a real fuckinginkling for this.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Like he really enjoyed it because you wouldn't
come back and teach your wifethis shit unless you really
fucking enjoyed it yeah, that'sreally creepy, yeah, but guess
what?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
one of the ways that one of the pieces of torture
that he taught her, yeah, wascovering a girl in.
Okay, let's do a spoiler alertor like a trigger warning, like
some of this can get prettygrotesque here.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, if you have any aversion to it, well, skip ahead
or something.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Let's do some 18 plus here, people.
Okay, well, I do mark it asexplicit this is true, yeah, so
he would cover a girl in honey.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
And leave her for the ants.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Would he tie her down so that she couldn't move?
Because why wouldn't you justget up and run away from the
ants?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I'm assuming she doesn't have that capability?
Well, you would hope, but youjust said she covered it, and
then they would soak paper inoil and stuff it between her
toes and set those on fire.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, that I mean.
Feet are gross to begin with.
Those are going to be reallyraunchy.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So Elizabeth picked up some of these habits.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, yeah, she apparently liked it too.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
But get this the really bad stuff she wasn't
accused of until after she died,right?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Wait, uh, it's kind of like uh letting the wind out
of the sails pope formosus,let's, uh, let's not formosus.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Look at that drawback bringing it back.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's like you know what we're not gonna accuse you
till you're dead.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yes, fucking clowns if you don't know, Pope Formosus
was an origin of weird story.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
They put a dead Pope on trial.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Sure did Literally put him on trial in his throne,
in his throne, anyways.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Okay, so it wasn't that shocking at the time for
servants to be treated this way?
Well, no, because they wereliterally property of.
It was a master servantrelationship.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Super uh, violent yep and there is a story of a
servant pulling your hair whileshe was being brushed, oh dear,
and she like turned around andhit her servant.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
But that was pretty normal.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, but she didn't light shit between her toes well
, not in this story.
Well not yet, at at least.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Plus, as a noble, she can basically do whatever she
wants.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, yeah, she's in charge.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
She could kill a servant.
It'd be okay and she wouldliterally just pay a fine to the
family and that's it.
Yeah, which is wild, and shewas wealthy AF, so, yeah, so
when they finally did chargeelizabeth with crimes, it wasn't
about the servants, no, it wasabout killing noble kids.
Okay, and that was a muchbigger deal well, yeah, because
(05:52):
they're nobles yes, and that'snot to say she, like, wasn't
cruel to her servants.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It was just harder to prove those stories since
there's not a lot of evidencewell, and not only that, that
obviously the nobles are goingto be a lot more watched, or
whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Whereas these servants and common folk, or
whatever you want to call them,nobody fucking knows.
No.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And she got a kick out of it.
She actually enjoyed causingthis pain.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And there's this story about her husband giving
her a black claw, or out of likea dragon myth, to scratch up
her victims.
Sure, they said that she alsothis is icky, icky, icky push
needles under the servant'sfingernails.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
That just gives me the willies.
I don't like thinking aboutthat stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Poke underneath your fingernail, just shove it in
there.
Get in there nice and deep anddeep.
That is dodgeball.
Bringing it back, there's evena story that she broke a
servant's arm.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Like she, it sounded like she, I would rather have my
arm broken than shit shovedunder my fingernails, I'd rather
have you break both my armsthan one fingernail gets
something shoved under Fuck that.
Good Lord.
That seems like a fuckingholiday compared to the
fingernail thing.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yes, so of course they couldn't just blame her for
these things.
They had to drag other peopleinto it?
Yeah, of course.
So there were rumors that she'dlearned Satanism and witchcraft
from family members as a kid.
Oh jeez, and they didn't chargeher with witchcraft like they
did with other rebellious women.
(07:34):
Yeah, they went straight fortorture and murder.
Oh, so there was a woman namedAnna Darvola.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
There's a lot of people named Anna in this story.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
There's two Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
There's three.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There's the mother.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And you named another Anna, and now you're named a
third.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Who's the other, anna I?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
don't recall.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Was it her daughter?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Was it her daughter Anna?
I don't remember I think thatsounds right.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes, that sounds right.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I don't know, I'm lost now.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's why I said don't worry about it, but either
way, so this woman Anna, theycalled her Darvulia.
Darvulia yes, what does thatmean?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
She was, I don't know .
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Was that in a part of your research?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Her name is Anna Darvulia Darvulia Voila Voila.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Voila.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Darvulia, Voila, Voila, Voila, but they like
shortened it to Darvulia Sure, Idon't know that's fine, but I
mean Elizabeth has BettyElizabeth, Eliza, Liz, Libby
Beth.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Beth.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
There's so many, okay , anyway.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Iterations yes.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Darvulia was Elizabeth's right-hand woman.
She was her confidant.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Do we know who her left-hand woman was?
Fuck off.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
People said that Darvulia taught Elizabeth
everything she knew abouttorture and showed other
servants how to help.
So you got one story where thehusband's teaching her these
things, and then you've gotanother story of darvulia
teaching her all these things sothe common denominator is
elizabeth knows how to do thesethings right, well, okay, why.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Why do they?
Why did they think thisdarvulia person taught her?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Because after Darvulia showed up, Elizabeth
got way more brutal.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Oh, what is, if you even have this, the timeline
from when she showed up to whenhusband got back from war Does
that coincide?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
with each other.
So at one point her husbandactually gets injured and is
basically like bed bound.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Oh dear.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
He eventually gets sick and dies of his war
injuries.
So, I'm not quite sure of theoverlap.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But even with Elizabeth knowing some of these
torture remedies from herhusband, it got so much worse
with Darvulia Gotcha.
Okay, so they claimed so.
Okay.
So around this time herhusband's health was failing.
As I said, Elizabeth startedinviting young girls from lower,
noble families into hergynoceum.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
What's a gynoceum?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
It is basically a women's quarters, oh, but they
were completely separate frommen.
It was a place where womengathered, but it was usually
young, unmarried women or girlswho would come in Were they so.
It would be like finishingschools.
They would be taught in thesegyneceums how to be proper
(10:50):
ladies um manners, dancing, howto run a big house, even
learning foreign languages, Sure, and it was basically like a
school.
Yeah, exactly, but it's in thiscastle, right?
Yeah, and they called it thegyneceum.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Okay, I never heard that word before.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yes, I haven't either before the story All right.
So, especially in Hungary,since it was stuck between all
these powerful countries,knowing German and Hungarian was
pretty much a must if youwanted to marry well.
So this gyneceum was wasprepared for that yeah sure, so
they would also learn how to sewor read, play music and just
(11:25):
hang out like gab folks, okay,so, wow, gab Gabbing folks, did
they watch the Real?
Housewives of like England orsomething they were the Real
Housewives of England.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Real Housewives of Hungary.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
But Elizabeth, she was the perfect role model.
She spoke a bunch of languages,she married well and she was
super intelligent and she seemedlike the ideal person.
But the gyneceum was a littlebit darker than what people
thought.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Okay, Do tell.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So people started saying she was luring these
girls through her castles totorture them right.
She had gotten bored ofchurching her, torturing her
servants and she'd run out oflocal victims and she needed
more yeah, so she had to use herstatus and promises of social
climbing to bring these peoplein yes, to bring these daughters
in.
Sure penny's playing by herselfbecause there's no one else out.
(12:31):
Throw the spring.
She loves the spring, she's socute.
So these smart, noble women arecoming to elizabeth right to be
educated.
Yeah, but what was weird wasall the deaths yeah, it's like
how do we account for this?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
girls were dying right and left and that's really
weird that you said it that way, because most people say left
and right it's written as leftand right normally, when people
are dyslexic, they just changeletters not words.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Oh my gosh, that's so funny.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
These stories did start spreading, about cruelty,
starvation, the girlsdisappearing, showing up with
these strange injuries.
So the girl started dying atelizabeth's place and she tried
to brush it off, saying it wasfucking cholera seriously oh,
there's 20 women here.
It's just cholera, but come onyeah, that seems unlikely, but
(13:39):
okay the number of bodies arepiling up at this churchyard and
priests are constantly beingcalled.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, like hey.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
People are starting to get suspicious.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
What's going on over there in the Yod, yeah, in the
Havid Yod.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Havid Yod, but while her husband Fenric was alive,
she was pretty Can we sayhusband.
I'm trying to combine husbandand fenerick together, that was
great husband, fenerick husband,she was untouchable.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Nobody really dared to openly accuse her of anything
they can't, because they'regonna well get fucking killed
then yes, but 19 in 1604,fenerick died and this was his
serious leg problems, thatprobably got from the war, from
the war okay, he was disabled.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
They're not quite sure what killed him, sure, but
they think that might have aneffect no, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I mean that's pretty probable, yeah, don't you think?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
yeah, so so he left Elizabeth and their kids in the
care of Grigori Thurzo.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Thurzo.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
He was a powerful Hungarian guy who was basically
like the king's right-hand man.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Now, even though he was supposed to look after her
and the kids.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
He did not.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Thurzo ended up leaving the investigation into
Elizabeth's crimes.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
He led it.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
He led it, so he was trying to get rid of her he was
trying to protect her, and thenhe got involved in someone who
wanted to take her over oh, sohe.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
He got involved with this person who said hey, yes, I
want that spot.
Yes, fuck her.
Yes, take me.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yes, gotcha so elizabeth was left in charge of
all the family's money and thelands, because her son, paul,
was just a baby.
Yeah, um, but that made her apretty tempting target.
Things really started tounravel in 1602, when the rumors
of her crime started to spreadlike wildfire.
Sure, um, but even then thepriests of her estates were
(15:45):
getting suspicious oh, you knowwhen the priest finally gets
suspicious I know they're alllike wait a minute this woman
and this woman died of cholera.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
See what what's isn't there like a book or a movie
called love in the time ofcholera?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
okay, yeah I think, yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
What's up?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Penny Sure.
So Elizabeth was making thingsreal suspicious when these
priests would come over to thecastle ask to look at the bodies
, and she's like.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
What bodies you?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
can look at their faces.
Oh really, Mm-hmm, she wouldn'tlike allow any other like
viewing.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So, basically, she was trying.
Whether she was or not, itimplied she was hiding something
that she did to the bodies, yes, whether alive or dead for that
matter.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Um, that's wild, okay yes, so before her husband died
, and even for a while after,she was pretty much untouchable.
Thanks to her connection, herwealth right.
But someone's finally spoke up alutheran minister named istvan
magyari okay and he publiclyaccused her both in hungary and
(16:55):
in the habsburg court in vienna,oh dear.
So when I first wrote both inhungary, I was gonna say both in
the language Hungary and theGerman language Hungary, the
country.
But these rumors turned intofact, non-rumors.
Quote, unquote fact yes,everyone was saying at the time
(17:21):
that she was a serial killerwell, I mean, if you boil it
down to what the shoe fits dadshoes back then what?
Yeah, sandals?
They're probably mules, mules.
Yeah, they're like slip-ons.
Oh really yeah not nikes.
No, oh shit, shouldn't wear airjordans at the trial probably
not oh shit, in october 1610 sheretreated to an isolated castle
(17:46):
in the mountains, probablyhoping for the winter storms
that would keep her from peoplegetting to her.
Essentially, yeah, but she wasalso um trying to rally her
family for support, especiallyher cousin gabriel battery, who
was prince of transylvania.
The official investigationkicked off in 1610 when King
(18:07):
Matthias II told Gregory Thurzoto investigate, said yo, check
this shit out.
And boy, did they find somethings.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, I mean yeah, on some things.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Well, I mean, yeah, they collected over 300 witness
statements by 1611.
1611.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I don't know if you understand the gravity of that.
1611.
That's an important year, sothat's like one a day almost,
because you said this started in1610, right, 10, yeah, okay,
wow yeah.
Jesus okay.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
But there were definitely, like political
motives behind all of this.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
There always is.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Which is why we started off with a deep
background.
Correct Historians have beenarguing for centuries about
whether or not she was framedright.
So there are three maintheories.
Okay, money, sure, power, ofcourse, religion always.
So first money elizabeth wassuper rich.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yep, owned a ton of land yep, thanks to what was her
husband's name.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Fenric.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Fenric yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
She was a tempting target.
She was a widow, which made hera little bit more vulnerable.
Yep and Matthias II had apersonal reason.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
What which is.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Her husband, fenric, had loaned a ton of money to
Matthias' predecessor, Okay, andMatthias had inherited his debt
.
Oh, and elizabeth had like beenbugging him about it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
he even went to it like his castle you still owe me
some money exactly go knockingon the fucking draw drawbridge
or whatever, exactly, yeah, well, I mean the oculus or whatever
no, that's attorney thing,that's the attorneyney thing.
Yeah, the door knocker Eitherway.
Door knocker Like ScroogeMarley.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But guess what?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
After her arrest, which I'll get to, yeah, the
debt magically disappeared, justpoof, poof.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
How does that happen?
It's almost like it was justwritten off the books.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
So the second theory is power.
Of course, the Habsburg wantedto control Transylvania, and the
batteries were a major obstacle.
Sure, elizabeth's cousinSigismund had led a rebellion
against them and their othercousin, gabriel, was planning to
expand his territory withElizabeth's support.
(20:41):
Okay, this is all inTransylvania, right?
Right?
So getting rid of her wouldhelp the Habsburgs.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Sure Makes sense.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
So third reason Third theory.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Third theory Third theory Do tell Was religion Is
religion.
Can you?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
say it the other way Religion.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Oh well, all right.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The third theory was religion.
Third theory was religion thethird theory was religion.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Third theory was some people think it was like a, a
protestant catholic thing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Okay, um, but that theory is a little bit more
shaky.
Elizabeth had catholicrelatives and the first accuser
was lutheran, like that, thatpre, that lutheran priest sure,
he was lutheran.
So transylvania, transylvaniawas also pretty tolerant.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I think I just had a stroke At the time.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So money and power seemed like the stronger motives
, A hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I mean especially back again time frame.
Wise back then.
Yeah, Because they always tryto utilize power and connections
and so on.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
On December 30th 1610 , thurzo arrested Elizabeth and
five of her servants.
Okay, because again.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I know of her, I'm the one who suggested this topic
.
I obviously don't know a lot ofspecifics and such.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
But I have to pee, pee, let's take a break.
But what?
But if I want to say, Iremember reading something at
one point in my life about herthat obviously she was the main
person for this.
Yes, but weren't a lot of herservants implicated in what?
Yes, okay, so that's what Ithought, because they helped her
course to people in blah blah,blah, blah, blah, whatever.
(22:32):
Yes, so, okay, so I did.
I am on the right track withthat.
I don't, I'm not misremembering.
Correct, okay, Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Enter collapse.
On December 30th 1610, thurzoarrested Elizabeth and five of
her servants Right.
They said he caught hertorturing someone.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
So he made that probably up.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, because she was actually having dinner with
guests.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, she could have been torturing her guests with
her Cher impersonation.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
With her what.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Cher, impersonation With her.
What Cher?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
impersonation, that was so rude.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And accurate.
No my.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Cher impersonation is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
It's on point.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So, even though he claimed he caught Elizabeth red
red-handed, he actually wrote ina letter to his wife that, hey,
that she was actually arrestedbefore they found any victims.
Well, how is that she was?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
framed.
You know it well.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
That's what it's leaning towards with that
comment yeah, let's move onlet's continue, let's see what
happens let's dig deeper serzothen went around saying he found
a dead girl and another onebeing helped held captive in the
in the castle yeah, they'recalled servants and this made
the locals like go crazy and therumors even crazier.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
To make the local news Probably.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I mean they got town criers right, hear, ye hear ye
Exactly.
So here's the thing they nevershowed any actual evidence of a
bloody scene anywhere at thetrial.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Well, that doesn't seem to bode well for the
prosecution, but okay.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So Thurzo was either exaggerating or making stuff up
about finding Dead Moon Girls.
But let's be real.
Thurzo had a lot to gain fromElizabeth's downfall.
He could grab her estates, herwealth, even though he was only
supposed to be her kid'sguardian.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Right.
He could definitely boost hispolitical career with her
downfall 100, even though he wassupposed to watch after I know
forensic frenic?
Yeah, did I say it right yeah,when he passed said hey, look
after my bitch.
Yeah, he's like will do fuckher.
Yeah, I believe that's exactlyhow it went yeah, there's a
(25:09):
quote somewhere.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, there's a quote somewhere.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
But it's like you're supposed to look after this
person.
He's like I could reallyadvance my, my status, my
well-being, everything here byfucking her over.
And who cares about this dumbbitch?
No one one.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
He don't.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Well, better kids did .
Speaker 1 (25:29):
But January 1611.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
A good year 1611.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
You were there.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I was there.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
They went to trial.
Fuck yeah, they did.
I was there.
The witness testimonies were abig deal, but most of them were
just hearsay.
All secondhand stories.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Wasn't everything back then hearsay?
Documentation wasn't so great.
Well, that's my point.
That was all fucking hearsay,because literally all they had
was just like hey, tell me whatyou know about this person and
they would coerce him intocertain.
Yes, shit as well.
Oh, coercion does happen.
(26:04):
Oh, I mean it happens.
Could you imagine?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
what it was 400 fucking years ago.
So they said that the victimswere mostly girls aged 10 to 14
years old.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's pretty young.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
All from lower no-book families who had been
sent to Elizabeth's gyneceumthat's the word.
Some witnesses said they hadrelatives who had died there.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
From cholera.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Mm-hmm, or that they'd seen signs of torture on
bodies in the graveyards Right.
Out of all the witnesses, onlythree people over 300 people
were called right.
And three of those 300?
Three of the 300 gave firsthandtestimony.
That's like 1% yes.
(26:48):
Two of like 1% yes.
Two of them were courtofficials, oh, and they claimed
that they saw Elizabethtorturing and killing the girls.
One of them mentioned a girlwith burns on her hands, but
they didn't say how she got them.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Oil in the.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, kitchen accident Hello.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I mean, I have those all the time.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, you do, you hit your head on everything, you,
you do.
You have a big noggin and I'mtall yeah, you're, you're very
tall, but who knows?
They didn't have any proof Iwish I was taller there was yes,
what are you?
Six, one, six, three, six, thatyou're six, three, yes, and you
(27:28):
wanted to be six, five.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I did yeah, so sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I wish I was a little bit taller do you think xavier
is gonna be six, five?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I hope so maybe that's why I was put on this
earth to give xavier the heightof six.
Five.
That's what I don't know why,when I was little.
For some reason, I want to growup to be 6'5".
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Penny.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
P-p-p-penny, p-p-p-penny and the Jets.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Penny.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Penny.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Penny.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I will throw something at you.
Hey, Sheldon.
Okay, let's move on.
That's got to stay in now.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay, then there was this girl named Anna, another
Anna, yes, who said Elizabethheard her.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
She got paid off with land and money and she kept
changing her story so that ain'tlegit.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
So they still gave her the land, even though her
story kept fucking changing.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
They gave her the land to testify against
elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So what?
I would fucking take that shitback.
Fuck you, bitch.
We told you to do one thing,you did another no, she didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Well, I mean, she kept changing her story.
That's my point.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So she kept changing it.
So it's like, yeah, no,incriminate this bitch.
Yeah, seriously, that's all wewant.
Just make shit up up, make itbelievable, burp, whatever.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
During the trial during the trial Elizabeth's
servants threw out a number.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Twelve.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Of victims.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Can you guess how many victims?
Just guess how many victimsthat these servants said that
elizabeth had.
I wish this was on video I wishthis was.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
I wish this whole episode was on video.
I'm so sorry people 112 higher633 higher 1222 650, I was
fucking close, you were closedamn it as soon as I said higher
, I was like you're gonnaovershoot, but 650 victims
(29:36):
that's what these servants aresaying you know, what's really
funny is I was gonna go 666 andI really wish she would have
made it to that okay worship thegoat one servant girl yes said,
a court official found one ofelizabeth's books and what book?
(29:57):
like a journal type, of thing,okay, this book was never shown
in court that doesn't make sense, then nope, because then they
never found it it was neverofficial nothing but, in this
book it said that the number ofvictims that she had was around
50 or 60 people, but again nevershown.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So how?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
can you?
I know times are different, Iunderstand that, but even back
then, how the fuck could you belike hey, found this book, take
my word on it, right?
It's like fuck you, dude, showme the fucking evidence.
There's literally no proof.
Yeah, because you could havesaid anything, then literally
anything.
And it's like oh, by the way,she said she'd give me a handy
(30:39):
after the trial too.
I mean, what the fuck?
I mean, that's how stupid.
That's why I'm saying that isbecause that is so fucking dumb,
so stupid.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
So two of Elizabeth's servants that testified, yeah,
confessed.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Oh, scandalous, but Fucking loyal Not.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
But, yes.
They were tortured intoconfessing.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
See.
They ripped their fingers outwith hot pinchers and then
burned them alive until theyconfessed.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Anybody's gonna say anything at that I, I would say
that I fucking helped her withthat.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
If someone did that to me today and I was born in
1979 I would say I helped her.
Fuck, that is so dumb, so dumb.
Oh my word, I'm gonna have alot of editing to do with these
loud talks.
I mean, how fucking stupid isthat?
No shit, they're gonna fuckingconfess.
(31:41):
You're literally burning themalive.
Hey, would you like someserving sandwich?
I got some fresh out of theoven.
I mean, for fuck's sake, Okay,let me rewind.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Let me rewind.
They were burned alive afterconfession.
What, my apologies.
They were burned alive afterthey confessed.
Oh their fingers were pulledapart.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
You did not make that clear at all.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I didn't so wait.
Their fingers were pulled apart, torture they confessed, and
then they were burned alive.
Why?
Their job here is done.
Thank you for your service.
(32:34):
Another service another servantnamed yanos another yanos was
executed too seriously, how manyfucking yanos are there?
But he got a less painful death.
He got his, he got like, he gotlike beheaded.
Thank, God.
Because he was a man, probably,but he was thrown in the fire
with the women too.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Afterwards he was already dead but here's the body
in the fire that's so degradingto have to be burned, with the
women I mean, come on.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Then there was Ursi, who was called a witch, another
servant.
They burned her alive after shetried to escape.
And then, finally, Katerina,who was an old washerwoman.
She got life in prison becausethey found out she was being
abused by other servants.
So she was in on it.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
But she was abused by others, but she was kind of
forced.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yes, forced into it All this is fucking wild.
And then there is a sixthperson, Anna.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Darvulia.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Another Anna, no Darvulia.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Oh, darvulia, yeah, we go way back.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
They said that she was really evil, but she died
before they were even arrested.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Good for her?
Yeah, because she would havebeen in for a world of fucking
hurt before she died but theservants under torture said that
Anna taught Elizabeth withwitchcraft and torture methods
of course you can't trust any ofthese confessions because
they're under fucking tortureand then they're like let's just
blame the dead lady because shecan't defend herself.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
She can't defend herself.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
She can't say anything anymore, yeah, no,
exactly, that's fucking wild.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Wow.
So eventually the servants didstart blaming Elizabeth herself.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Well, of course, because they have no one left to
fucking.
No, no one left to blame.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
But she tried to clear her name.
She even asked a dead girl'smother to say her daughter had
died naturally.
When the cholera story didn'twork, she blamed one of the
girls, then all the servants,saying they were too sadistic
for her control.
Oh dear.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
But the rumors were already like running rampant
well, and that's the thing,especially back then, I mean
because, god forbid, we havestraight and narrow media these
days.
It only tells the truth exactlywould never run a narrative
that would be cited on one orthe other so clearly back then,
not so much the case people weresaying that she used hot tongs
(34:57):
oh geez, needles freezing waterto torture girls some even said
they freeze the water back thenfucking ice where they get the
ice from I don't know.
There's companies the freezer, Imean, I know in the wild west.
They had companies that woulddeliver did you know the town I
(35:18):
grew up in actually um, pewaukee?
Yes, the town I grew up in,pewaukee, for milwaukee back in
the day, they actually um cameout to pewaukee lake and did
that.
Yeah, that's where theyharvested a lot of big ice
blocks that's awesome andbrought them down to milwaukee.
Yeah, I think it was tomorrow,but yeah anyways that's cool.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, so when the colorist story didn't work, she
blamed one of the girls, thenall the servants, but the rumors
were.
I already said all that, solet's skip that.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm not really sure why you're saying it again.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Some said she'd tear their skin off with her teeth
and then bathe in their bloodfor beauty and that is the main
thing, and that's why she's veryassociated with vampires.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, and called the blood countess, because the
whole rumor, besides everythingelse you've gone over, which a
lot of it, is news to me, so Iappreciate this, um, but yes,
the reason why she's called theblood countess I'm so sorry
folks, he's uncontrollable.
(36:27):
All right, I am so fuckingdoing.
A burp track, a Kate burp track.
Fuck you for that, jesus Christ.
And again derailed.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
No, you're not, I don't mean to derail you.
You know her as the bloodcountess, the one who was
bathing in blood.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yes, are you okay?
You want me to continue?
She was very closely associatedwith vampire vampires.
Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, because the rumor was she
was bathing in virgin noble'sblood.
(37:20):
Blah, whatever the hellvariation you want to come up
with to help her stay young and,um, not age, so on.
I mean that's all right, I'mtalking that's gonna be on there
too, but uh, yeah, I mean thatwas like the whole lore rumor,
whatever you want to come upwith for a word there.
(37:42):
But yeah, so it sounds like alot of just bullshit.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It is, it's framed bullshit.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
I mean, could she have been sadistic?
Yes, obviously Was she probably.
Yes, probably Did she do allthese things?
Probably not, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Or the extent, the numbers no.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
To that degree?
Probably not, probably not.
No, did she do one?
Probably did she do 650?
Probably not.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
But we don't know, and neither today, we don't and
we'll never know, honestly so sothe servant said that she had
like a whole network of peoplehelping her right.
Noble women were accused ofluring girls into the castle and
even her daughter, catalin, wasremoved to have rumored to have
like joined in on the torture.
(38:35):
And they said that Elizabethhad a torture chamber in her
dungeons.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
And did they find that?
No, did they go investigate.
No, Just like hey, I saw thisbook.
You're going to have to take myword for it.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
So get this.
Only the servants went to trial.
I'm blown away.
Elizabeth never went to trial.
How is that possible?
So they had two trials for heraccomplices.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Okay, wait, so they had two trials for her
accomplices.
Okay, wait, wasn't elizabeth ontrial and they were talking to
the servants?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
they were always talking to the servants.
The servants were on trial.
Oh, elizabeth was never ontrial.
Is it because she was a noblewoman?
She was denied her rights as anoblewoman, but her son and
sons-in-law made a deal withthurzo the guy gunning for her
(39:35):
position.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yes, yes, yeah and they.
They wanted to keep like the,the land and the family's name
right, so they said let's justsend her to a nunnery but didn't
, and correct me if I'm wrongand I'm sorry if I'm jumping the
gun on this.
This was and I I don't thinkI'm mixing this up didn't she
(39:57):
basically lack of a better wordwas retired to a castle yes and
she was walled up in it.
Yes, okay yes, um.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
So they were going to send her to the nunnery, but
then they decided on housearrest at her castle exactly.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
That's a good way to put it yeah, so king matthias
wasn't happy about that.
He wanted her to stay in trialso he could take her land well,
and he didn't care aboutanything other than just hey put
her on trial, so I can removethis from her, but he did agree
to house arrest.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Well then, he's an idiot.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So Thurzo argued it was the best way to handle a
noble woman like Elizabeth Right, especially since a public
trial and execution could causea lot of trouble, including for
him, yep, since he was also aHungarian noble and a Protestant
Right.
So King Matthias, who wasworried about upsetting the
already rebellious nobles inTransylvania, agreed to house
(40:55):
arrest, but only if the Baterifamily canceled his debts which
was from his predecessor, whichis all he wanted, really.
And Elizabeth's son Paul.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Said okay.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Okay.
That's wild Now now the detailsof the house arrest are a
little fuzzy because some people, as you said, think that she
was bricked up in a room that's,that's part of the lore.
Yes, yes, but she actually hada bodyguard oh really yes, and
she actually did have quite abit of rain in the castle free
(41:28):
rain in the castle but all ofthis is a little bit speculation
, but but what documents havesurvived?
Said that she had a bodyguardand it just doesn't make sense
that she's walled up can.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Can I interject onto again?
I never did this in depth onher.
Yeah, I've read some fictionalthings about her, so on.
One of the things I remember isshe was walled up in a tower
like all these nobles princesses, whatever, were back in the day
(42:02):
, and it was rumored and I couldbe getting exactly wrong, for
what I read.
It was rumored like when theyfinally went back in there she
wasn't as decomposed as sheshould have been for when she
died Stuff along those lines,like the whole vampire slash,
whatever kind of mythology thatwent behind.
(42:22):
It is like she should be deadbut she's not, or she should be
more decomposed but she's notkind of thing.
That was the thing that Iremember from many, many, many,
many, many years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
So that wasn't ever something that came up in my
reading Right.
She did end up dying at age 54on August 21st 1614, while still
under house arrest.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
And.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So she just, she just turned 54.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, there's no like , there was no autopsy.
There's nothing that said likethis is how she died, she just
died.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
So um I never read anything about like her
decomposed corpse or anythinglike that.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
No of course that was all probably romanticized, you
know, completely fabricated.
That's probably all that everwas.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
I don't remember what it is I read, it doesn't matter
, it was probably just afictitious tale of this actual
person, just like Vlad theImpaler, who wasn't really a
fucking vampire, right, but BramStoker built him up to be this
mythical creature.
Same thing with those people,with her, it's like well, she
(43:41):
died, but her body was whatever.
I could go on.
But yeah, no, it's just.
I think it was just allfictitious shit yeah, it was
fabricated correct, yeah and itwas just based off a real person
is all it is so because shenever went to trial.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, her kids actually inherited all of her
stuff well, good for her kidsyes, so the biggest loss for the
battery family, besides the badreputation well right um was
that they never got money backfrom the king.
I mean, it was a lot of moneywith interest, but but that
seems pretty minor.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
That seems especially because they still made money
off of all those lands that theygot, so it's not like they were
struggling.
Did they miss out on a bigchunk of money?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
But they had no repercussions.
Nope, they got to lock Mama upYep In a castle, yep With a
bodyguard.
Free reign, free reign in thein there.
Who knows what she did with thebodyguard?
It's speculative.
I'm just kidding, but you knowit's like okay, and we get to
keep all this yeah, we're good,yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So after she died, they supposedly moved her body
from the local cemetery becausethe villagers were like we don't
want a serial killer in here.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Even though that word wasn't coined back then.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
No, it wasn't, but nobody knows where she actually
ended up.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, so they don't know if she's at her childhood
home, if she's buried deep inthe church.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
They have no idea.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Excavators, excavators, geologists,
paleontologists, excavators,diggers.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
They opened a grave at at the castle in 1938, but it
was empty sure, so see, and andshit like that is what leads
into the whole vampiric yes loreand all that.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
So yeah, so so where elizabeth's body ended up
whether she was actually guilty?
We have no idea so trying tofigure out what she did is
really like a needle in ahaystack we have.
Well, it's all speculationespecially at this point the
first written account of herstory came out over a hundred
years after she died that's wildthat it took that long,
(45:57):
especially with all the trialsand everything at the end of her
life and everything that wenton with the torture of her
servants took a hundred fuckingyears for someone to find, like
you know what I'm bored and thenright about this person things
were just being made up left andright.
They were adding all sorts ofcrazy myths, blood bathing the
vampires that's the big.
(46:18):
Thing yeah, they started um ina book by a jesuit scholar.
Okay in 1729 it was the firsttime anyone wrote about battery
yeah and he probably heard thestory from superstitious like
local peasants and just wrote itdown without question oh this
is just absolute fact and againit's it's always like,
(46:39):
especially for history back then.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I always kind of refer to it as the telephone
game yes you tell one person,they tell another.
Yes, so on so on, so on, so on.
It gets embellished, things getadded, things get removed, so
on, and it just fucking morphsinto this weird ass fucking
story and then in 1742, ahungarian historian wrote a book
based on that first book yeah,we'll see about the blood
(47:05):
bathing.
So the the myth just spread likewildfire and that's and that's
exactly what I was just sayingis the fact that you have no
basis for this.
You're basing it off of afictional thing, anyways, yes,
and then you're fuckingcompounding that to the nth
degree.
It's like well, clearly you'renot going to get shit right.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
So by the time they finally published the actual
records in 1817, blood drinkingand vampire stories were already
set in stone.
Even though they weren't intrial records, they did stick
around.
So, Elizabeth's bloodthirstyreputation really took off
during the vampire scare in the18th century.
Vampires were a big deal inEastern European folklore, but
(47:48):
during the 17th and 18thcenturies, with all the famine,
the disease, social problems,people got super scared and
started believing in all sortsof superstitions.
Right so, even though it wassupposed to be the age of reason
, people were obsessed with theempires 100 and, like the, the
um austrio-hungarian governmentwas actually writing official
(48:10):
reports about vampire outbreaks.
Isn't that funny?
Like that should be a story initself?
Probably is.
Scholars were publishingacademic papers on this.
Witchcraft, magic and demonswere also popular explanations
for all the bad stuff happeningback then.
Yeah, um, if you recall, whenwe were talking about um the
(48:30):
black plague, there was a cometin the sky and they're like
that's a bad omen well, justlike, yeah, game of thrones,
dragons are here but it was thewhole like living corpse thing
that the vampires, that theyreally people really freaked out
well, it's just like the idiomlike uh, save a bell.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yes, I told you about yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
So vampires started showing up in poems and then
became main characters in gothicnovels.
There was um a writing calledthe vampire from 1819 by john
william polidori was it spelledwith a y?
Yes, vampire was spelt with a yfuck yeah that story came from
the same place that mary shelleywrote fankenstein yeah yeah,
(49:13):
and all that macabre stuff inliterature pretty much turned
Elizabeth into a caricatureRight, and the vampire thing led
to all sorts of crazy rumorsabout her even being a lesbian
and having satanic connections.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
That's how I always think about my vampires.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
But those stories about cults and demons came from
the idea that women weren'tsupposed to be violent.
They couldn't even be violenton their own.
They had to be influenced bysomething supernatural.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Or a man yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
So maybe it's just easier for people to think of
her as a monster than to admitlike regular women could do
these things.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Right, well, and again, did she do some of these
Probably.
Probably, Did she do it to theextent that you just went over?
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Probably, not so probably did she do it to the
extent that you just went over,probably not, so we kind of
brought this up earlier.
But she was said to have alsobeen inspired.
Um, she inspired bram stroker'sdracula well, along with vlad
the impaler.
She had that transylvanianconnection and the blood thing,
but that's really all that wassaid.
There's no proof that Stokereven knew about her.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
No, and he probably didn't honestly.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
But she still had the nickname the Blood Countess and
the Countess Dracula, yes.
So people today are still kindof obsessed with the Bloody
Countess version.
Movies are portraying her as avampire and Guinness Book of
world records even called herthe most prolific female
murderer, even though there'sbarely any evidence see, how can
(50:45):
you do that when you have nofucking evidence?
yes I mean that's dumb so she'swealthy, she's powerful, she's
accused of witchcraft, but thesheer scale of her crimes are
just super hard to believe.
Mostly they're made up right.
So we're dealing with a lot ofrumors, a lot of hearsay, and
(51:10):
it's super tricky.
But on one hand it looks likeshe was caught in a conspiracy.
There was zero evidence oftorture, of murder.
She never got to speak forherself, she was never put on
trial, which is still kind ofwild.
The whole investigation was runby guys who had a lot to gain
by framing her Yep.
The king wanted his death gone,Transylvania under his thumb,
(51:34):
and Thurzo wanted her money Yep.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
So her story got lost in all this political drama
yeah, which is funny becauseeveryone focused on the
fictitious vampiric whatever youwant to call it side of it.
But yet, literally in plainsight, all these people are just
trying to fuck her over,whether she she did this or not.
That's irrelevant at this point.
(51:59):
They're just like we're goingto say she did, because my
debt's gone, I get this land, soon, so on, so on.
It's like cool.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
But it's also hard to ignore that she was probably
cruel to her servants.
Oh sure, too many girls died ather place to be of coincidence,
but there was cholera.
Too many girls died at herplace to be of coincidence, but
there was cholera.
So the 650 number obviously isway off.
It's probably closer to 50.
That is so inflated.
That's still a ton of people.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
I mean yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
That's still a serial killer, if not like a mass
murder, but the wholeblood-bathing vampire thing.
That's more about her beingfrom Transylvania than actually
being a monster.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
It's just lore.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
But we are never going to know how many people
she actually hurt or killed.
So everything is just therumors are just fill in the
blanks.
Essentially Yep 100%.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
So, personally.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Was she a cold-blooded killer?
Or was she just a powerful ladywith a lot of enemies?
Or was she both?
Speaker 2 (53:04):
I guess I was going to say, a mix of both.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
I think she, from the evidence that we have uncovered
here today, I clearly don'tthink she was just a
cold-blooded killer.
I think she had maybe a littlesadistic uh power trip yeah and
maybe fucked with some shit.
No way in fuck she killed thatmany people.
Yeah, 50, sure that's even astretch, but again, who knows?
(53:30):
Not 650?
No, I don't believe that no bit.
And it's funny how her husbandcomes back from war, teaches her
these things allegedly.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Dravulia.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Dravulia.
And then, what was the chick'sname, dravulia?
Speaker 1 (53:47):
Oh, that's the chick's name.
I'm sorry, that's okay.
Yes, goddamn Anna Dravulia.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yes, and then she shows up.
Yes, and then she shows up yes.
Do you find it funny that she'sa woman and they blamed her to
coerce, corrupt?
Whatever you want to say thiswoman of power.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Husband came back from fucking war Literally war
where they did unspeakablethings, especially back then In
the late 15, early 1600s,whatever it was, but yet they
blamed a woman Product of thetimes.
Yeah, is it not?
Yeah, so no, I don't.
I think maybe it's a I'm noteven saying a 50-50 combination
(54:28):
Combination, but maybe 2020.
More about the enemies ratherthan the.
It's very politically motivated.
Yeah, because look at what,look at what all those people
had to gain yeah, no debt, moreland, more power.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
More money.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Fuck her.
Yep.
So yeah, crazy.
This is funny, but I mean it'sme being a fan of Anne Rice and
all that A character that hadthat mystique built around her,
whether it's true or not, whichclearly it's not.
Yeah, I mean you know that hadthat mystique built around her,
whether it's true or not, whichclearly it's not, yeah, I mean
you could tell, I mean anyonewho just took that for oh, it's
(55:06):
got to be right, she was avampire and bathed in virgin's
blood and all this stuff andwhatever.
Well then, you're a fuckingidiot Either way.
Kate's yawning.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
I've been talking a lot.
It's a long episode, it is along episode.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
If you stayed this far, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Thank you for listening thanks, tara yes, tara
is uh our number one fan.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
No, she's awesome.
I really appreciate herfeedback on her episodes and I
like her interaction with us onthat, so it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
So I rather enjoy it yeah, so hopefully you've stayed
this far.
This was a long episode.
I was kind of going back andforth and back and forth on this
, trying to figure out if Iwanted to do a two-parter or a
single and or cut some or evenjust like scrap it for another
time well, I'm glad you didn'tcut anything out, though,
because I feel like that's adisservice to the story kind of
(56:01):
thing.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
I understand it's a longer episode and that's fine.
And to everyone who made itthis far, huzzah.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Thank you, I suppose.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
Alright, buffoons.
That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Buckle up, because we've got another historical
adventure waiting for you.
Next time Feeling hungry formore buffoonery, or maybe you
have a burning question or awild historical theory for us to
explore.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
Hit us up on social media.
We're History Buffoons Podcaston YouTube X, instagram and
Facebook.
You can also email us athistorybuffoonspodcast at
gmailcom.
We are Bradley and Kate.
Music by Corey Akers.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and turn
those notifications on to stayin the loop.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Until next time, stay curious and don't forget to
rate and review us.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Remember the buffoonery never stops.
Love it, love it, Love it.
Oh, hey there.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You keep starting and I'm not ready.
Oh, hey, there why aren't youready?
I had to burp.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
At least it's not me this time.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, it's early.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I haven't had bubbles .
Speaker 2 (00:36):
My bubbles.
So this is we just want to saythis is the second part to.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
We are the history buffoons too.
We're the history buffoons.
I'm Kate, that's Bradley.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Let's do this over.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
No, this is great, this is gold, this is podcast
gold.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We are the History Ruffoons.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm Bradley that is Kate over there?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Sorry, I didn't mean to take your thunder on saying I
am Kate, but thank you forlistening to us.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
us and we're about to finish our story on elizabeth
battery yes yeah, so if you havenot listened to part one yet,
yes that is elizabeth's umpretty much backstory of like
how she came to be who she is umpart two.
We dove a little bit deeperinto her character.
Yeah, a little bit deeper, alot a.
We dove a little bit deeperinto her character.
(01:25):
Yeah, a little bit deeper.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
A lot of it, deeper A lot of it yeah.
We try and uncover some of the,the, the history portions of
what's real and what's not interms of her mystique throughout
history because of beingconsidered the blood countess.
And yeah, hope you learnedsomething about good old
elizabeth, yeah absolutely enjoyokay.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
So what I said about the two-parter, that's bullshit.
We're gonna keep going.
I don't fucking care.
Whatever happens, happens okay.
So whatever happens.
When he got back from war yesthe story goes okay that he
(02:15):
taught elizabeth the art of war,the art of torture, yeah, so
does that seem kind of weird?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's like, alright, I'm out fighting our enemies,
get a little taste for a littlelust for blood.
Fucking these people up Blood,blood and bells Well, and
apparently dodgeball, and it'slike you know what a good idea
(02:46):
is.
I'm gonna go back and teach mywife, my wife, my ways?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
what the fuck?
Well, he gave her tips on howto punish their servants I'm
guessing he had a real fuckinginkling for this.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Like he really enjoyed it because you wouldn't
come back and teach your wifethis shit unless you really
fucking enjoyed it yeah, that'sreally creepy, yeah, but guess
what?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
one of the ways that one of the pieces of torture
that he taught her, yeah, wascovering a girl in.
Okay, let's do a spoiler alertor like a trigger warning, like
some of this can get prettygrotesque here.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yes, if you have any aversion to it, well, skip ahead
or something.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Let's do some 18 plus here, people.
Okay, well, I do mark it asexplicit this is true, yeah, so
he would cover a girl in honey.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
And leave her for the ants.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Would he tie her down so that she couldn't move?
Because why wouldn't you justget up and run away from the
ants?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I'm assuming she doesn't have that capability?
Well, you would hope, but youjust said she covered it, and
then they would soak paper inoil and stuff it between her
toes and set those on fire.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, that I mean.
Feet are gross to begin with.
Those are going to be reallyraunchy.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So Elizabeth picked up some of these habits.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, yeah, she apparently liked it too.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
But get this the really bad stuff she wasn't
accused of until after she died,right?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Wait, uh, it's kind of like uh letting the wind out
of the sails pope formosus,let's, uh, let's not formosus.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Look at that drawback bringing it back.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
It's like you know what we're not gonna accuse you
till you're dead.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yes, fucking clowns if you don't know, Pope Formosus
was an origin of weird story.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
They put a dead Pope on trial.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Sure did Literally put him on trial in his throne,
in his throne, anyways.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Okay, so it wasn't that shocking at the time for
servants to be treated this way?
Well, no, because they wereliterally property of.
It was a master servantrelationship.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Super uh, violent yep and there is a story of a
servant pulling your hair whileshe was being brushed, oh dear,
and she like turned around andhit her servant.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
But that was pretty normal.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, but she didn't light shit between her toes well
, not in this story.
Well not yet, at at least.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Plus, as a noble, she can basically do whatever she
wants.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Well, yeah, she's in charge.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
She could kill a servant.
It'd be okay and she wouldliterally just pay a fine to the
family and that's it.
Yeah, which is wild, and shewas wealthy AF, so, yeah, so
when they finally did chargeelizabeth with crimes, it wasn't
about the servants, no, it wasabout killing noble kids.
Okay, and that was a muchbigger deal well, yeah, because
(05:52):
they're nobles yes, and that'snot to say she, like, wasn't
cruel to her servants.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It was just harder to prove those stories since
there's not a lot of evidencewell, and not only that, that
obviously the nobles are goingto be a lot more watched, or
whatever.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Whereas these servants and common folk, or
whatever you want to call them,nobody fucking knows.
No.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And she got a kick out of it.
She actually enjoyed causingthis pain.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And there's this story about her husband giving
her a black claw, or out of likea dragon myth, to scratch up
her victims.
Sure, they said that she alsothis is icky, icky, icky push
needles under the servant'sfingernails.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
That just gives me the willies.
I don't like thinking aboutthat stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Poke underneath your fingernail, just shove it in
there.
Get in there nice and deep anddeep.
That is dodgeball.
Bringing it back, there's evena story that she broke a
servant's arm.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Like she, it sounded like she, I would rather have my
arm broken than shit shovedunder my fingernails, I'd rather
have you break both my armsthan one fingernail gets
something shoved under Fuck that.
Good Lord.
That seems like a fuckingholiday compared to the
fingernail thing.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yes, so of course they couldn't just blame her for
these things.
They had to drag other peopleinto it?
Yeah, of course.
So there were rumors that she'dlearned Satanism and witchcraft
from family members as a kid.
Oh jeez, and they didn't chargeher with witchcraft like they
did with other rebellious women.
(07:34):
Yeah, they went straight fortorture and murder.
Oh, so there was a woman namedAnna Darvola.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
There's a lot of people named Anna in this story.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
There's two Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
There's three.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There's the mother.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
And you named another Anna, and now you're named a
third.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Who's the other, anna I?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
don't recall.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Was it her daughter?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Was it her daughter Anna?
I don't remember I think thatsounds right.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes, that sounds right.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I don't know, I'm lost now.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's why I said don't worry about it, but either
way, so this woman Anna, theycalled her Darvulia.
Darvulia yes, what does thatmean?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
She was, I don't know .
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Was that in a part of your research?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Her name is Anna Darvulia Darvulia Voila Voila.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Voila.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Darvulia, Voila, Voila, Voila, but they like
shortened it to Darvulia Sure, Idon't know that's fine, but I
mean Elizabeth has BettyElizabeth, Eliza, Liz, Libby
Beth.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Beth.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
There's so many, okay , anyway.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Iterations yes.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Darvulia was Elizabeth's right-hand woman.
She was her confidant.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Do we know who her left-hand woman was?
Fuck off.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
People said that Darvulia taught Elizabeth
everything she knew abouttorture and showed other
servants how to help.
So you got one story where thehusband's teaching her these
things, and then you've gotanother story of darvulia
teaching her all these things sothe common denominator is
elizabeth knows how to do thesethings right, well, okay, why.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Why do they?
Why did they think thisdarvulia person taught her?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Because after Darvulia showed up, Elizabeth
got way more brutal.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Oh, what is, if you even have this, the timeline
from when she showed up to whenhusband got back from war Does
that coincide?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
with each other.
So at one point her husbandactually gets injured and is
basically like bed bound.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Oh dear.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
He eventually gets sick and dies of his war
injuries.
So, I'm not quite sure of theoverlap.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But even with Elizabeth knowing some of these
torture remedies from herhusband, it got so much worse
with Darvulia Gotcha.
Okay, so they claimed so.
Okay.
So around this time herhusband's health was failing.
As I said, Elizabeth startedinviting young girls from lower,
noble families into hergynoceum.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
What's a gynoceum?
Speaker 1 (10:28):
It is basically a women's quarters, oh, but they
were completely separate frommen.
It was a place where womengathered, but it was usually
young, unmarried women or girlswho would come in Were they so.
It would be like finishingschools.
They would be taught in thesegyneceums how to be proper
(10:50):
ladies um manners, dancing, howto run a big house, even
learning foreign languages, Sure, and it was basically like a
school.
Yeah, exactly, but it's in thiscastle, right?
Yeah, and they called it thegyneceum.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Okay, I never heard that word before.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yes, I haven't either before the story All right.
So, especially in Hungary,since it was stuck between all
these powerful countries,knowing German and Hungarian was
pretty much a must if youwanted to marry well.
So this gyneceum was wasprepared for that yeah sure, so
they would also learn how to sewor read, play music and just
(11:25):
hang out like gab folks, okay,so, wow, gab Gabbing folks, did
they watch the Real?
Housewives of like England orsomething they were the Real
Housewives of England.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Real Housewives of Hungary.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
But Elizabeth, she was the perfect role model.
She spoke a bunch of languages,she married well and she was
super intelligent and she seemedlike the ideal person.
But the gyneceum was a littlebit darker than what people
thought.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Okay, Do tell.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So people started saying she was luring these
girls through her castles totorture them right.
She had gotten bored ofchurching her, torturing her
servants and she'd run out oflocal victims and she needed
more yeah, so she had to use herstatus and promises of social
climbing to bring these peoplein yes, to bring these daughters
in.
Sure penny's playing by herselfbecause there's no one else out.
(12:31):
Throw the spring.
She loves the spring, she's socute.
So these smart, noble women arecoming to elizabeth right to be
educated.
Yeah, but what was weird wasall the deaths yeah, it's like
how do we account for this?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
girls were dying right and left and that's really
weird that you said it that way, because most people say left
and right it's written as leftand right normally, when people
are dyslexic, they just changeletters not words.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Oh my gosh, that's so funny.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
These stories did start spreading, about cruelty,
starvation, the girlsdisappearing, showing up with
these strange injuries.
So the girl started dying atelizabeth's place and she tried
to brush it off, saying it wasfucking cholera seriously oh,
there's 20 women here.
It's just cholera, but come onyeah, that seems unlikely, but
(13:39):
okay the number of bodies arepiling up at this churchyard and
priests are constantly beingcalled.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, like hey.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
People are starting to get suspicious.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
What's going on over there in the Yod, yeah, in the
Havid Yod.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Havid Yod, but while her husband Fenric was alive,
she was pretty Can we sayhusband.
I'm trying to combine husbandand fenerick together, that was
great husband, fenerick husband,she was untouchable.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Nobody really dared to openly accuse her of anything
they can't, because they'regonna well get fucking killed
then yes, but 19 in 1604,fenerick died and this was his
serious leg problems, thatprobably got from the war, from
the war okay, he was disabled.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
They're not quite sure what killed him, sure, but
they think that might have aneffect no, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I mean that's pretty probable, yeah, don't you think?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
yeah, so so he left Elizabeth and their kids in the
care of Grigori Thurzo.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Thurzo.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
He was a powerful Hungarian guy who was basically
like the king's right-hand man.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Now, even though he was supposed to look after her
and the kids.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
He did not.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Thurzo ended up leaving the investigation into
Elizabeth's crimes.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
He led it.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
He led it, so he was trying to get rid of her he was
trying to protect her, and thenhe got involved in someone who
wanted to take her over oh, sohe.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
He got involved with this person who said hey, yes, I
want that spot.
Yes, fuck her.
Yes, take me.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yes, gotcha so elizabeth was left in charge of
all the family's money and thelands, because her son, paul,
was just a baby.
Yeah, um, but that made her apretty tempting target.
Things really started tounravel in 1602, when the rumors
of her crime started to spreadlike wildfire.
Sure, um, but even then thepriests of her estates were
(15:45):
getting suspicious oh, you knowwhen the priest finally gets
suspicious I know they're alllike wait a minute this woman
and this woman died of cholera.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
See what what's isn't there like a book or a movie
called love in the time ofcholera?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
okay, yeah I think, yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
What's up?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Penny Sure.
So Elizabeth was making thingsreal suspicious when these
priests would come over to thecastle ask to look at the bodies
, and she's like.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
What bodies you?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
can look at their faces.
Oh really, Mm-hmm, she wouldn'tlike allow any other like
viewing.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So, basically, she was trying.
Whether she was or not, itimplied she was hiding something
that she did to the bodies, yes, whether alive or dead for that
matter.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Um, that's wild, okay yes, so before her husband died
, and even for a while after,she was pretty much untouchable.
Thanks to her connection, herwealth right.
But someone's finally spoke up alutheran minister named istvan
magyari okay and he publiclyaccused her both in hungary and
(16:55):
in the habsburg court in vienna,oh dear.
So when I first wrote both inhungary, I was gonna say both in
the language Hungary and theGerman language Hungary, the
country.
But these rumors turned intofact, non-rumors.
Quote, unquote fact yes,everyone was saying at the time
(17:21):
that she was a serial killerwell, I mean, if you boil it
down to what the shoe fits dadshoes back then what?
Yeah, sandals?
They're probably mules, mules.
Yeah, they're like slip-ons.
Oh really yeah not nikes.
No, oh shit, shouldn't wear airjordans at the trial probably
not oh shit, in october 1610 sheretreated to an isolated castle
(17:46):
in the mountains, probablyhoping for the winter storms
that would keep her from peoplegetting to her.
Essentially, yeah, but she wasalso um trying to rally her
family for support, especiallyher cousin gabriel battery, who
was prince of transylvania.
The official investigationkicked off in 1610 when King
(18:07):
Matthias II told Gregory Thurzoto investigate, said yo, check
this shit out.
And boy, did they find somethings.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Well, I mean yeah, on some things.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Well, I mean, yeah, they collected over 300 witness
statements by 1611.
1611.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I don't know if you understand the gravity of that.
1611.
That's an important year, sothat's like one a day almost,
because you said this started in1610, right, 10, yeah, okay,
wow yeah.
Jesus okay.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
But there were definitely, like political
motives behind all of this.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
There always is.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Which is why we started off with a deep
background.
Correct Historians have beenarguing for centuries about
whether or not she was framedright.
So there are three maintheories.
Okay, money, sure, power, ofcourse, religion always.
So first money elizabeth wassuper rich.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yep, owned a ton of land yep, thanks to what was her
husband's name.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Fenric.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Fenric yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
She was a tempting target.
She was a widow, which made hera little bit more vulnerable.
Yep and Matthias II had apersonal reason.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
What which is.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Her husband, fenric, had loaned a ton of money to
Matthias' predecessor, Okay, andMatthias had inherited his debt
.
Oh, and elizabeth had like beenbugging him about it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
he even went to it like his castle you still owe me
some money exactly go knockingon the fucking draw drawbridge
or whatever, exactly, yeah, well, I mean the oculus or whatever
no, that's attorney thing,that's the attorneyney thing.
Yeah, the door knocker Eitherway.
Door knocker Like ScroogeMarley.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But guess what?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
After her arrest, which I'll get to, yeah, the
debt magically disappeared, justpoof, poof.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
How does that happen?
It's almost like it was justwritten off the books.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
So the second theory is power.
Of course, the Habsburg wantedto control Transylvania, and the
batteries were a major obstacle.
Sure, elizabeth's cousinSigismund had led a rebellion
against them and their othercousin, gabriel, was planning to
expand his territory withElizabeth's support.
(20:41):
Okay, this is all inTransylvania, right?
Right?
So getting rid of her wouldhelp the Habsburgs.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Sure Makes sense.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
So third reason Third theory.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Third theory Third theory Do tell Was religion Is
religion.
Can you?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
say it the other way Religion.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Oh well, all right.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The third theory was religion.
Third theory was religion thethird theory was religion.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Third theory was some people think it was like a, a
protestant catholic thing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Okay, um, but that theory is a little bit more
shaky.
Elizabeth had catholicrelatives and the first accuser
was lutheran, like that, thatpre, that lutheran priest sure,
he was lutheran.
So transylvania, transylvaniawas also pretty tolerant.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I think I just had a stroke At the time.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So money and power seemed like the stronger motives
, A hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I mean especially back again time frame.
Wise back then.
Yeah, Because they always tryto utilize power and connections
and so on.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
On December 30th 1610 , thurzo arrested Elizabeth and
five of her servants.
Okay, because again.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I know of her, I'm the one who suggested this topic
.
I obviously don't know a lot ofspecifics and such.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
But I have to pee, pee, let's take a break.
But what?
But if I want to say, Iremember reading something at
one point in my life about herthat obviously she was the main
person for this.
Yes, but weren't a lot of herservants implicated in what?
Yes, okay, so that's what Ithought, because they helped her
course to people in blah blah,blah, blah, blah, whatever.
(22:32):
Yes, so, okay, so I did.
I am on the right track withthat.
I don't, I'm not misremembering.
Correct, okay, Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Enter collapse.
On December 30th 1610, thurzoarrested Elizabeth and five of
her servants Right.
They said he caught hertorturing someone.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
So he made that probably up.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, because she was actually having dinner with
guests.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, she could have been torturing her guests with
her Cher impersonation.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
With her what.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Cher, impersonation With her.
What Cher?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
impersonation, that was so rude.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And accurate.
No my.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Cher impersonation is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
It's on point.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So, even though he claimed he caught Elizabeth red
red-handed, he actually wrote ina letter to his wife that, hey,
that she was actually arrestedbefore they found any victims.
Well, how is that she was?
Speaker 2 (23:39):
framed.
You know it well.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
That's what it's leaning towards with that
comment yeah, let's move onlet's continue, let's see what
happens let's dig deeper serzothen went around saying he found
a dead girl and another onebeing helped held captive in the
in the castle yeah, they'recalled servants and this made
the locals like go crazy and therumors even crazier.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
To make the local news Probably.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I mean they got town criers right, hear, ye hear ye
Exactly.
So here's the thing they nevershowed any actual evidence of a
bloody scene anywhere at thetrial.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Well, that doesn't seem to bode well for the
prosecution, but okay.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So Thurzo was either exaggerating or making stuff up
about finding Dead Moon Girls.
But let's be real.
Thurzo had a lot to gain fromElizabeth's downfall.
He could grab her estates, herwealth, even though he was only
supposed to be her kid'sguardian.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Right.
He could definitely boost hispolitical career with her
downfall 100, even though he wassupposed to watch after I know
forensic frenic?
Yeah, did I say it right yeah,when he passed said hey, look
after my bitch.
Yeah, he's like will do fuckher.
Yeah, I believe that's exactlyhow it went yeah, there's a
(25:09):
quote somewhere.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, there's a quote somewhere.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
But it's like you're supposed to look after this
person.
He's like I could reallyadvance my, my status, my
well-being, everything here byfucking her over.
And who cares about this dumbbitch?
No one one.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
He don't.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Well, better kids did .
Speaker 1 (25:29):
But January 1611.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
A good year 1611.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
You were there.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
I was there.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
They went to trial.
Fuck yeah, they did.
I was there.
The witness testimonies were abig deal, but most of them were
just hearsay.
All secondhand stories.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Wasn't everything back then hearsay?
Documentation wasn't so great.
Well, that's my point.
That was all fucking hearsay,because literally all they had
was just like hey, tell me whatyou know about this person and
they would coerce him intocertain.
Yes, shit as well.
Oh, coercion does happen.
(26:04):
Oh, I mean it happens.
Could you imagine?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
what it was 400 fucking years ago.
So they said that the victimswere mostly girls aged 10 to 14
years old.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's pretty young.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
All from lower no-book families who had been
sent to Elizabeth's gyneceumthat's the word.
Some witnesses said they hadrelatives who had died there.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
From cholera.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Mm-hmm, or that they'd seen signs of torture on
bodies in the graveyards Right.
Out of all the witnesses, onlythree people over 300 people
were called right.
And three of those 300?
Three of the 300 gave firsthandtestimony.
That's like 1% yes.
(26:48):
Two of like 1% yes.
Two of them were courtofficials, oh, and they claimed
that they saw Elizabethtorturing and killing the girls.
One of them mentioned a girlwith burns on her hands, but
they didn't say how she got them.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Oil in the.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, kitchen accident Hello.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I mean, I have those all the time.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, you do, you hit your head on everything, you,
you do.
You have a big noggin and I'mtall yeah, you're, you're very
tall, but who knows?
They didn't have any proof Iwish I was taller there was yes,
what are you?
Six, one, six, three, six, thatyou're six, three, yes, and you
(27:28):
wanted to be six, five.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I did yeah, so sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I wish I was a little bit taller do you think xavier
is gonna be six, five?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I hope so maybe that's why I was put on this
earth to give xavier the heightof six.
Five.
That's what I don't know why,when I was little.
For some reason, I want to growup to be 6'5".
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Penny.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
P-p-p-penny, p-p-p-penny and the Jets.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Penny.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Penny.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Penny.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
I will throw something at you.
Hey, Sheldon.
Okay, let's move on.
That's got to stay in now.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Okay, then there was this girl named Anna, another
Anna, yes, who said Elizabethheard her.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
She got paid off with land and money and she kept
changing her story so that ain'tlegit.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
So they still gave her the land, even though her
story kept fucking changing.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
They gave her the land to testify against
elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
So what?
I would fucking take that shitback.
Fuck you, bitch.
We told you to do one thing,you did another no, she didn't.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Well, I mean, she kept changing her story.
That's my point.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So she kept changing it.
So it's like, yeah, no,incriminate this bitch.
Yeah, seriously, that's all wewant.
Just make shit up up, make itbelievable, burp, whatever.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
During the trial during the trial Elizabeth's
servants threw out a number.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Twelve.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Of victims.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Can you guess how many victims?
Just guess how many victimsthat these servants said that
elizabeth had.
I wish this was on video I wishthis was.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
I wish this whole episode was on video.
I'm so sorry people 112 higher633 higher 1222 650, I was
fucking close, you were closedamn it as soon as I said higher
, I was like you're gonnaovershoot, but 650 victims
(29:36):
that's what these servants aresaying you know, what's really
funny is I was gonna go 666 andI really wish she would have
made it to that okay worship thegoat one servant girl yes said,
a court official found one ofelizabeth's books and what book?
(29:57):
like a journal type, of thing,okay, this book was never shown
in court that doesn't make sense, then nope, because then they
never found it it was neverofficial nothing but, in this
book it said that the number ofvictims that she had was around
50 or 60 people, but again nevershown.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So how?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
can you?
I know times are different, Iunderstand that, but even back
then, how the fuck could you belike hey, found this book, take
my word on it, right?
It's like fuck you, dude, showme the fucking evidence.
There's literally no proof.
Yeah, because you could havesaid anything, then literally
anything.
And it's like oh, by the way,she said she'd give me a handy
(30:39):
after the trial too.
I mean, what the fuck?
I mean, that's how stupid.
That's why I'm saying that isbecause that is so fucking dumb,
so stupid.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
So two of Elizabeth's servants that testified, yeah,
confessed.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Oh, scandalous, but Fucking loyal Not.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
But, yes.
They were tortured intoconfessing.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
See.
They ripped their fingers outwith hot pinchers and then
burned them alive until theyconfessed.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Anybody's gonna say anything at that I, I would say
that I fucking helped her withthat.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
If someone did that to me today and I was born in
1979 I would say I helped her.
Fuck, that is so dumb, so dumb.
Oh my word, I'm gonna have alot of editing to do with these
loud talks.
I mean, how fucking stupid isthat?
No shit, they're gonna fuckingconfess.
(31:41):
You're literally burning themalive.
Hey, would you like someserving sandwich?
I got some fresh out of theoven.
I mean, for fuck's sake, Okay,let me rewind.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Let me rewind.
They were burned alive afterconfession.
What, my apologies.
They were burned alive afterthey confessed.
Oh their fingers were pulledapart.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
You did not make that clear at all.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I didn't so wait.
Their fingers were pulled apart, torture they confessed, and
then they were burned alive.
Why?
Their job here is done.
Thank you for your service.
(32:34):
Another service another servantnamed yanos another yanos was
executed too seriously, how manyfucking yanos are there?
But he got a less painful death.
He got his, he got like, he gotlike beheaded.
Thank, God.
Because he was a man, probably,but he was thrown in the fire
with the women too.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Afterwards he was already dead but here's the body
in the fire that's so degradingto have to be burned, with the
women I mean, come on.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Then there was Ursi, who was called a witch, another
servant.
They burned her alive after shetried to escape.
And then, finally, Katerina,who was an old washerwoman.
She got life in prison becausethey found out she was being
abused by other servants.
So she was in on it.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
But she was abused by others, but she was kind of
forced.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yes, forced into it All this is fucking wild.
And then there is a sixthperson, Anna.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Darvulia.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Another Anna, no Darvulia.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Oh, darvulia, yeah, we go way back.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
They said that she was really evil, but she died
before they were even arrested.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Good for her?
Yeah, because she would havebeen in for a world of fucking
hurt before she died but theservants under torture said that
Anna taught Elizabeth withwitchcraft and torture methods
of course you can't trust any ofthese confessions because
they're under fucking tortureand then they're like let's just
blame the dead lady because shecan't defend herself.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
She can't defend herself.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
She can't say anything anymore, yeah, no,
exactly, that's fucking wild.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Wow.
So eventually the servants didstart blaming Elizabeth herself.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Well, of course, because they have no one left to
fucking.
No, no one left to blame.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
But she tried to clear her name.
She even asked a dead girl'smother to say her daughter had
died naturally.
When the cholera story didn'twork, she blamed one of the
girls, then all the servants,saying they were too sadistic
for her control.
Oh dear.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
But the rumors were already like running rampant
well, and that's the thing,especially back then, I mean
because, god forbid, we havestraight and narrow media these
days.
It only tells the truth exactlywould never run a narrative
that would be cited on one orthe other so clearly back then,
not so much the case people weresaying that she used hot tongs
(34:57):
oh geez, needles freezing waterto torture girls some even said
they freeze the water back thenfucking ice where they get the
ice from I don't know.
There's companies the freezer, Imean, I know in the wild west.
They had companies that woulddeliver did you know the town I
(35:18):
grew up in actually um, pewaukee?
Yes, the town I grew up in,pewaukee, for milwaukee back in
the day, they actually um cameout to pewaukee lake and did
that.
Yeah, that's where theyharvested a lot of big ice
blocks that's awesome andbrought them down to milwaukee.
Yeah, I think it was tomorrow,but yeah anyways that's cool.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, so when the colorist story didn't work, she
blamed one of the girls, thenall the servants, but the rumors
were.
I already said all that, solet's skip that.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm not really sure why you're saying it again.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Some said she'd tear their skin off with her teeth
and then bathe in their bloodfor beauty and that is the main
thing, and that's why she's veryassociated with vampires.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, and called the blood countess, because the
whole rumor, besides everythingelse you've gone over, which a
lot of it, is news to me, so Iappreciate this, um, but yes,
the reason why she's called theblood countess I'm so sorry
folks, he's uncontrollable.
(36:27):
All right, I am so fuckingdoing.
A burp track, a Kate burp track.
Fuck you for that, jesus Christ.
And again derailed.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
No, you're not, I don't mean to derail you.
You know her as the bloodcountess, the one who was
bathing in blood.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yes, are you okay?
You want me to continue?
She was very closely associatedwith vampire vampires.
Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, because the rumor was she
was bathing in virgin noble'sblood.
(37:20):
Blah, whatever the hellvariation you want to come up
with to help her stay young and,um, not age, so on.
I mean that's all right, I'mtalking that's gonna be on there
too, but uh, yeah, I mean thatwas like the whole lore rumor,
whatever you want to come upwith for a word there.
(37:42):
But yeah, so it sounds like alot of just bullshit.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It is, it's framed bullshit.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
I mean, could she have been sadistic?
Yes, obviously Was she probably.
Yes, probably Did she do allthese things?
Probably not, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Or the extent, the numbers no.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
To that degree?
Probably not, probably not.
No, did she do one?
Probably did she do 650?
Probably not.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
But we don't know, and neither today, we don't and
we'll never know, honestly so sothe servant said that she had
like a whole network of peoplehelping her right.
Noble women were accused ofluring girls into the castle and
even her daughter, catalin, wasremoved to have rumored to have
like joined in on the torture.
(38:35):
And they said that Elizabethhad a torture chamber in her
dungeons.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
And did they find that?
No, did they go investigate.
No, Just like hey, I saw thisbook.
You're going to have to take myword for it.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
So get this.
Only the servants went to trial.
I'm blown away.
Elizabeth never went to trial.
How is that possible?
So they had two trials for heraccomplices.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Okay, wait, so they had two trials for her
accomplices.
Okay, wait, wasn't elizabeth ontrial and they were talking to
the servants?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
they were always talking to the servants.
The servants were on trial.
Oh, elizabeth was never ontrial.
Is it because she was a noblewoman?
She was denied her rights as anoblewoman, but her son and
sons-in-law made a deal withthurzo the guy gunning for her
(39:35):
position.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yes, yes, yeah and they.
They wanted to keep like the,the land and the family's name
right, so they said let's justsend her to a nunnery but didn't
, and correct me if I'm wrongand I'm sorry if I'm jumping the
gun on this.
This was and I I don't thinkI'm mixing this up didn't she
(39:57):
basically lack of a better wordwas retired to a castle yes and
she was walled up in it.
Yes, okay yes, um.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
So they were going to send her to the nunnery, but
then they decided on housearrest at her castle exactly.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
That's a good way to put it yeah, so king matthias
wasn't happy about that.
He wanted her to stay in trialso he could take her land well,
and he didn't care aboutanything other than just hey put
her on trial, so I can removethis from her, but he did agree
to house arrest.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Well then, he's an idiot.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So Thurzo argued it was the best way to handle a
noble woman like Elizabeth Right, especially since a public
trial and execution could causea lot of trouble, including for
him, yep, since he was also aHungarian noble and a Protestant
Right.
So King Matthias, who wasworried about upsetting the
already rebellious nobles inTransylvania, agreed to house
(40:55):
arrest, but only if the Baterifamily canceled his debts which
was from his predecessor, whichis all he wanted, really.
And Elizabeth's son Paul.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Said okay.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Okay.
That's wild Now now the detailsof the house arrest are a
little fuzzy because some people, as you said, think that she
was bricked up in a room that's,that's part of the lore.
Yes, yes, but she actually hada bodyguard oh really yes, and
she actually did have quite abit of rain in the castle free
(41:28):
rain in the castle but all ofthis is a little bit speculation
, but but what documents havesurvived?
Said that she had a bodyguardand it just doesn't make sense
that she's walled up can.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Can I interject onto again?
I never did this in depth onher.
Yeah, I've read some fictionalthings about her, so on.
One of the things I remember isshe was walled up in a tower
like all these nobles princesses, whatever, were back in the day
(42:02):
, and it was rumored and I couldbe getting exactly wrong, for
what I read.
It was rumored like when theyfinally went back in there she
wasn't as decomposed as sheshould have been for when she
died Stuff along those lines,like the whole vampire slash,
whatever kind of mythology thatwent behind.
(42:22):
It is like she should be deadbut she's not, or she should be
more decomposed but she's notkind of thing.
That was the thing that Iremember from many, many, many,
many, many years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
So that wasn't ever something that came up in my
reading Right.
She did end up dying at age 54on August 21st 1614, while still
under house arrest.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
And.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So she just, she just turned 54.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, there's no like , there was no autopsy.
There's nothing that said likethis is how she died, she just
died.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
So um I never read anything about like her
decomposed corpse or anythinglike that.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
No of course that was all probably romanticized, you
know, completely fabricated.
That's probably all that everwas.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
I don't remember what it is I read, it doesn't matter
, it was probably just afictitious tale of this actual
person, just like Vlad theImpaler, who wasn't really a
fucking vampire, right, but BramStoker built him up to be this
mythical creature.
Same thing with those people,with her, it's like well, she
(43:41):
died, but her body was whatever.
I could go on.
But yeah, no, it's just.
I think it was just allfictitious shit yeah, it was
fabricated correct, yeah and itwas just based off a real person
is all it is so because shenever went to trial.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, her kids actually inherited all of her
stuff well, good for her kidsyes, so the biggest loss for the
battery family, besides the badreputation well right um was
that they never got money backfrom the king.
I mean, it was a lot of moneywith interest, but but that
seems pretty minor.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
That seems especially because they still made money
off of all those lands that theygot, so it's not like they were
struggling.
Did they miss out on a bigchunk of money?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
But they had no repercussions.
Nope, they got to lock Mama upYep In a castle, yep With a
bodyguard.
Free reign, free reign in thein there.
Who knows what she did with thebodyguard?
It's speculative.
I'm just kidding, but you knowit's like okay, and we get to
keep all this yeah, we're good,yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So after she died, they supposedly moved her body
from the local cemetery becausethe villagers were like we don't
want a serial killer in here.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Even though that word wasn't coined back then.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
No, it wasn't, but nobody knows where she actually
ended up.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, so they don't know if she's at her childhood
home, if she's buried deep inthe church.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
They have no idea.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Excavators, excavators, geologists,
paleontologists, excavators,diggers.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
They opened a grave at at the castle in 1938, but it
was empty sure, so see, and andshit like that is what leads
into the whole vampiric yes loreand all that.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
So yeah, so so where elizabeth's body ended up
whether she was actually guilty?
We have no idea so trying tofigure out what she did is
really like a needle in ahaystack we have.
Well, it's all speculationespecially at this point the
first written account of herstory came out over a hundred
years after she died that's wildthat it took that long,
(45:57):
especially with all the trialsand everything at the end of her
life and everything that wenton with the torture of her
servants took a hundred fuckingyears for someone to find, like
you know what I'm bored and thenright about this person things
were just being made up left andright.
They were adding all sorts ofcrazy myths, blood bathing the
vampires that's the big.
(46:18):
Thing yeah, they started um ina book by a jesuit scholar.
Okay in 1729 it was the firsttime anyone wrote about battery
yeah and he probably heard thestory from superstitious like
local peasants and just wrote itdown without question oh this
is just absolute fact and againit's it's always like,
(46:39):
especially for history back then.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I always kind of refer to it as the telephone
game yes you tell one person,they tell another.
Yes, so on so on, so on, so on.
It gets embellished, things getadded, things get removed, so
on, and it just fucking morphsinto this weird ass fucking
story and then in 1742, ahungarian historian wrote a book
based on that first book yeah,we'll see about the blood
(47:05):
bathing.
So the the myth just spread likewildfire and that's and that's
exactly what I was just sayingis the fact that you have no
basis for this.
You're basing it off of afictional thing, anyways, yes,
and then you're fuckingcompounding that to the nth
degree.
It's like well, clearly you'renot going to get shit right.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
So by the time they finally published the actual
records in 1817, blood drinkingand vampire stories were already
set in stone.
Even though they weren't intrial records, they did stick
around.
So, Elizabeth's bloodthirstyreputation really took off
during the vampire scare in the18th century.
Vampires were a big deal inEastern European folklore, but
(47:48):
during the 17th and 18thcenturies, with all the famine,
the disease, social problems,people got super scared and
started believing in all sortsof superstitions.
Right so, even though it wassupposed to be the age of reason
, people were obsessed with theempires 100 and, like the, the
um austrio-hungarian governmentwas actually writing official
(48:10):
reports about vampire outbreaks.
Isn't that funny?
Like that should be a story initself?
Probably is.
Scholars were publishingacademic papers on this.
Witchcraft, magic and demonswere also popular explanations
for all the bad stuff happeningback then.
Yeah, um, if you recall, whenwe were talking about um the
(48:30):
black plague, there was a cometin the sky and they're like
that's a bad omen well, justlike, yeah, game of thrones,
dragons are here but it was thewhole like living corpse thing
that the vampires, that theyreally people really freaked out
well, it's just like the idiomlike uh, save a bell.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yes, I told you about yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
So vampires started showing up in poems and then
became main characters in gothicnovels.
There was um a writing calledthe vampire from 1819 by john
william polidori was it spelledwith a y?
Yes, vampire was spelt with a yfuck yeah that story came from
the same place that mary shelleywrote fankenstein yeah yeah,
(49:13):
and all that macabre stuff inliterature pretty much turned
Elizabeth into a caricatureRight, and the vampire thing led
to all sorts of crazy rumorsabout her even being a lesbian
and having satanic connections.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
That's how I always think about my vampires.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
But those stories about cults and demons came from
the idea that women weren'tsupposed to be violent.
They couldn't even be violenton their own.
They had to be influenced bysomething supernatural.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Or a man yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
So maybe it's just easier for people to think of
her as a monster than to admitlike regular women could do
these things.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Right, well, and again, did she do some of these
Probably.
Probably, Did she do it to theextent that you just went over?
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Probably, not so probably did she do it to the
extent that you just went over,probably not, so we kind of
brought this up earlier.
But she was said to have alsobeen inspired.
Um, she inspired bram stroker'sdracula well, along with vlad
the impaler.
She had that transylvanianconnection and the blood thing,
but that's really all that wassaid.
There's no proof that Stokereven knew about her.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
No, and he probably didn't honestly.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
But she still had the nickname the Blood Countess and
the Countess Dracula, yes.
So people today are still kindof obsessed with the Bloody
Countess version.
Movies are portraying her as avampire and Guinness Book of
world records even called herthe most prolific female
murderer, even though there'sbarely any evidence see, how can
(50:45):
you do that when you have nofucking evidence?
yes I mean that's dumb so she'swealthy, she's powerful, she's
accused of witchcraft, but thesheer scale of her crimes are
just super hard to believe.
Mostly they're made up right.
So we're dealing with a lot ofrumors, a lot of hearsay, and
(51:10):
it's super tricky.
But on one hand it looks likeshe was caught in a conspiracy.
There was zero evidence oftorture, of murder.
She never got to speak forherself, she was never put on
trial, which is still kind ofwild.
The whole investigation was runby guys who had a lot to gain
by framing her Yep.
The king wanted his death gone,Transylvania under his thumb,
(51:34):
and Thurzo wanted her money Yep.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
So her story got lost in all this political drama
yeah, which is funny becauseeveryone focused on the
fictitious vampiric whatever youwant to call it side of it.
But yet, literally in plainsight, all these people are just
trying to fuck her over,whether she she did this or not.
That's irrelevant at this point.
(51:59):
They're just like we're goingto say she did, because my
debt's gone, I get this land, soon, so on, so on.
It's like cool.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
But it's also hard to ignore that she was probably
cruel to her servants.
Oh sure, too many girls died ather place to be of coincidence,
but there was cholera.
Too many girls died at herplace to be of coincidence, but
there was cholera.
So the 650 number obviously isway off.
It's probably closer to 50.
That is so inflated.
That's still a ton of people.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
I mean yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
That's still a serial killer, if not like a mass
murder, but the wholeblood-bathing vampire thing.
That's more about her beingfrom Transylvania than actually
being a monster.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
It's just lore.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
But we are never going to know how many people
she actually hurt or killed.
So everything is just therumors are just fill in the
blanks.
Essentially Yep 100%.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
So, personally.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Was she a cold-blooded killer?
Or was she just a powerful ladywith a lot of enemies?
Or was she both?
Speaker 2 (53:04):
I guess I was going to say, a mix of both.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
I think she, from the evidence that we have uncovered
here today, I clearly don'tthink she was just a
cold-blooded killer.
I think she had maybe a littlesadistic uh power trip yeah and
maybe fucked with some shit.
No way in fuck she killed thatmany people.
Yeah, 50, sure that's even astretch, but again, who knows?
(53:30):
Not 650?
No, I don't believe that no bit.
And it's funny how her husbandcomes back from war, teaches her
these things allegedly.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Dravulia.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Dravulia.
And then, what was the chick'sname, dravulia?
Speaker 1 (53:47):
Oh, that's the chick's name.
I'm sorry, that's okay.
Yes, goddamn Anna Dravulia.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yes, and then she shows up.
Yes, and then she shows up yes.
Do you find it funny that she'sa woman and they blamed her to
coerce, corrupt?
Whatever you want to say thiswoman of power.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Husband came back from fucking war Literally war
where they did unspeakablethings, especially back then In
the late 15, early 1600s,whatever it was, but yet they
blamed a woman Product of thetimes.
Yeah, is it not?
Yeah, so no, I don't.
I think maybe it's a I'm noteven saying a 50-50 combination
(54:28):
Combination, but maybe 2020.
More about the enemies ratherthan the.
It's very politically motivated.
Yeah, because look at what,look at what all those people
had to gain yeah, no debt, moreland, more power.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
More money.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Fuck her.
Yep.
So yeah, crazy.
This is funny, but I mean it'sme being a fan of Anne Rice and
all that A character that hadthat mystique built around her,
whether it's true or not, whichclearly it's not.
Yeah, I mean you know that hadthat mystique built around her,
whether it's true or not, whichclearly it's not, yeah, I mean
you could tell, I mean anyonewho just took that for oh, it's
(55:06):
got to be right, she was avampire and bathed in virgin's
blood and all this stuff andwhatever.
Well then, you're a fuckingidiot Either way.
Kate's yawning.
Speaker 1 (55:22):
I've been talking a lot.
It's a long episode, it is along episode.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
If you stayed this far, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
Thank you for listening thanks, tara yes, tara
is uh our number one fan.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
No, she's awesome.
I really appreciate herfeedback on her episodes and I
like her interaction with us onthat, so it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
So I rather enjoy it yeah, so hopefully you've stayed
this far.
This was a long episode.
I was kind of going back andforth and back and forth on this
, trying to figure out if Iwanted to do a two-parter or a
single and or cut some or evenjust like scrap it for another
time well, I'm glad you didn'tcut anything out, though,
because I feel like that's adisservice to the story kind of
(56:01):
thing.
Speaker 2 (56:01):
I understand it's a longer episode and that's fine.
And to everyone who made itthis far, huzzah.
Speaker 1 (56:09):
Thank you, I suppose.
Speaker 2 (56:12):
Alright, buffoons.
That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Buckle up, because we've got another historical
adventure waiting for you.
Next time Feeling hungry formore buffoonery, or maybe you
have a burning question or awild historical theory for us to
explore.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
Hit us up on social media.
We're History Buffoons Podcaston YouTube X, instagram and
Facebook.
You can also email us athistorybuffoonspodcast at
gmailcom.
We are Bradley and Kate.
Music by Corey Akers.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and turn
those notifications on to stayin the loop.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Until next time, stay curious and don't forget to
rate and review us.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Remember the buffoonery never stops.
Love it, love it, Love it.
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