It’s almost Halloween, dear readers, so you’ll be able to suss out my theme for this week without a hitch. On that note, I cannot believe that I have not yet done a post on Elizabeth Bathory, aka “the Blood Countess”.
So here’s her story: born into an aristocratic Hungarian family in 1560, Elizabeth Bathory was married off at the ripe age of 15. Her husband spent most of the marriage off at war, so that Elizabeth learned to manage her estates (like the one featured on the second slide in Slovakia, castle Cachtice) all by herself.
According to later accusations against Elizabeth, things got macabre in the Bathory household. Young female servants went missing, and Bathory’s closest confidantes claimed that disease had taken their lives. Eventually the excuses were not considered sufficient, and an official inquiry began investigations.
And what the search uncovered became the stuff of horrifying legend. Elizabeth had cultivated an unchecked desire to maim and kill. Over 300 victims, mostly girls, were allegedly beaten to death after being tortured. Bathory liked to use razors and tongs, even biting the faces of her victims. Her most infamous crimes came about after she murdered a servant who hadn’t been tending to Elizabeth’s hair styling well enough. After wiping the victim’s splattered blood off her face, Bathory thought she looked younger. Thus began her desire to remain forever youthful by means of bathing in the blood of young virgin girls.
Much of that last paragraph was made up — not by me, but by Bathory’s contemporary aristocratic accusers, who might have been motivated by a desire to take over her estates. The stories about the literal bloodbaths came 100 years later, however. Yet the Blood Countess still has her horrifying reputation carried on in movies and video games today.
Source(s): _Review of Historical Sciences_, 2018, vol xvii, no 3. Aleksandra Bartosiewicz, pp 103- 121.
