The killer's legend has inspired many works of fiction

Elizabeth Báthory’s fame does not come just from her family name, riches or power, but rather from the dark and twisted tales that have attached themselves to her over the years. Bathing in the blood of virgins is a tall tale, but is it really true? As it stands, there is no contemporary evidence that Báthory bathed in blood or that its 'power' gave her eternal youth. During her lifetime, she was usually referred to as The Infamous Lady, and it would not be until around 200 years later, when the origin of the vampire was starting to take shape in Eastern Europe, that the story would be attributed to her. Youth and vitality were connected to blood, and it wasn’t a big leap to think that new blood would keep someone fit and healthy. Her story is told in various different ways, the most common being that an enraged Báthory slapped a servant and as a result got some of the victim’s blood on her hand. On wiping it away, she observed that the skin looked noticeably younger and healthier. After this discovery she would regularly bathe in tubs full of it, or take a ‘shower’ under bodies cut and hung from the ceiling, covering her in blood. The first time the legend appeared in print was in 1729 in Tragica Historia by a Jesuit scholar. This account is thought to have been gained from local oral history that has either been warped in translation or was hearsay from the start. Biographers of Báthory have drawn parallels between the countess and the title character of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), insinuating that the former – as much as Vlad the Impaler – was the inspiration for the latter. Whether or not she spawned Stoker’s icon is up for debate, but it is certain that Báthory has had a huge impact on tales of the modern-day bloodsucker. Her bloody infamy has contributed to the iconography of vampire fiction through the likes of Hammer’s Countess Dracula and provocative Belgian horror Daughters Of Darkness, both released in 1971. Less directly, her antics are believed to have inspired the ‘lesbian vampire’ trope, established through Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla (1872), while one of her haunts – Čachtice Castle in Slovakia – served as Count Orlok’s home in the silent film masterpiece Nosferatu (1922).