>>114466734>>114466886I like this better than Wold Newton's soul clone theory, which is about Dracula infusing parts of his soul into victims to create copies of himself. I love the idea of Dracula being THE vampire virus cross-spanning dimensions, having grown into a tumor in the fabric of existence varying in power and morality.
But Alucard being "Dracula-Prime", or at least the one who spawned all the others, doesn't sit right with me at all.
Here's an idea.
The horrorverse seems to operate on layers of fiction and reality, like all fictional universes. Real people writing these stories and showing up as fictionalized versions of themselves, fictional characters who have fictionalized stories of them written in-universe, and that kind of stuff. Beings who exist primarily as concepts which give them power over all (beings like JUDY and Berserk's Idea of Evil).
Maybe, in turn, Dracula is like that. Powerful because he's an idea, because he's closer to "our" reality than most others.
It started off in the legends told surrounding a real world figure (Vlad Tepes), and then a fictional story about a character superficially resembling said figure. Said monster was killed and beaten at the end of that story. But then endless and endless permutations of said monster, across many different fictional universes, kept the idea alive, gaining further and further power, even taking over certain worlds (Anno Dracula) and becoming a godlike figure in certain universes (Castlevania, Vampire Hunter D), and then Hellsing comes along and provides the Dracula of that world the means to Schrodinger himself into a higher plane of existence. Closer to what the "real" Dracula is, but not quite there.
Because there isn't a "real" Dracula. There is only Vlad Tepes, and a story written by Bram Stoker. But in turn, this is the true secret of Dracula's immortality and influence.
