whoreofabaddon:

Have I ever mentioned that Mircea is without doubt my favorite Dracula brother? (Though I do so love Radu cel Frumos and Vlad Tepes, as well.)

Yet, the way Mircea is written about seems to make the argument that he was very much a storybook knight. His people loved him to the point that he had followers before he had the crown, people who rallied behind him when he was just fourteen years old. He was dashing and brave. He was just and lawful. He was so adored by his own family that in some accounts, he was Vlad Tepe’s childhood hero even while their father openly favored him. 

Past even this he was considered incredibly devout; a champion of Christianity and ever good to his word. He had sworn to never make peace against his enemies for the sake of God, so with youthful zeal he maintained that oath. He argued against his own father not to pay tribute to the Ottoman (as Dracula himself would later refuse,) holding the stance that they should die before they knelt. He fought so valiantly against the idea that we know today that he opposed keeping peace (this tribute had been paid since his grandfather’s time) that cost them independence.

Mircea, supposedly, once spoke so strongly against a famous crusader who he believed had ‘not fought with honor’ that his father had to quiet him in order to try to minimize the harm from his words. The crusader happened to be a favorite of their people and was considered a great hero so the misdeed was intended to be carefully forgotten. Mircea thought that such things were no matter and that they should kill him as they would kill anyone else who had dishonored themselves, especially someone whose actions would be conflated with their own.

When he was nineteen years old, the castle would be attacked by boyars who just so happened to support this crusader. Partially for political reasons, and partially due to the fact that said crusader had been humiliated by his words and demanded the prince be punished.  Mircea did not run. He fought as valiantly as ever but that night he lost. He was dragged into the woods surrounding them, where he was forced onto his knees and blinded with a hot poker. He was then buried alive in the cold dark forest.

Years later, when Vlad came into power, he would have his brother’s body dug up and given a proper Christian burial (suggesting a mocking tribute had been left to mark the spot of the gruesome execution.) Vlad would then gather all the boyars together ‘to celebrate,’ before demanding that the doors of the hall be nailed shut and all of them burnt alive for having killed his father and beloved brother.