Elizabeth Báthory is one of the most prolific serial killers in all of history.
She was born into nobility and was highly educated but also very vain.
One day, infuriated, Elizabeth struck one of her servant girls so hard that some blood dripped from her face onto Elizabeth’s hand and she immediately thought that her skin took on a glowing freshness of her young maid.
Elizabeth believed she had found the secret of eternal youth. After this, women were abducted and hung upside down, while they were still alive and their throats were slit to prepare Elizabeth’s bath.
The Countess of Transylvania and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls, with one witness attributing to them over 650 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted.
Can I just time in here and say a few things, since half of what is written here is straight from the wikipedia page, which don’t get me wrong —it’s accurate— but extremely underwhelming.
“Elizabeth” Erzebet Bathory was so much more than some vain bitch who killed over 650 women, she was a vain bitch who could speak and write more than two languages, in a time where a woman writing one was unheard of. She was raised mostly by her very infamous openly bisexual aunt, and was a torturer and a murderer before she was 14 (rumored).
This woman was the person who made the villagers quake in both fear and revelation, that the courts refused to take action against when young girls started dissapearing, when bodies started being found. She OWNED the country, her family was richer then even the Lords presiding over it, she had all the say.
Her and her ‘accomplices” (which by the way, they were extremely trusted, and unlike her, they were executed without mercy when the truth came out), would gather village children who their parents practically threw their way in hopes of a better future, although the children would never live again. She didn’t only hang them, she caged them, used iron maidens, spears, so many different objects. And the whole ‘bathing in blood’ thing, although is technically can be true, that and the whole striking her maid is all exagerrated to add to the story. Her and her husband got off to killing, literally, they liked the screams. If she bathed in blood, it wasn’t to be younger, it was to enjoy their life ending. Not to say she wasn’t vain, but for good reason. She was considered the most beautiful woman in Hungary for all of her days.
And she technically was tried, although as I said before she practically owned the country, they couldn’t actually kill her. But she had killed another young girl of noble blood, and that couldn’t just be set aside. So instead of execution, they sentenced her to house arrest for the rest of her days, unable to punish her for all the women she had killed.
Also, she had three children, and regardless of her murderous ways it was said that she had been a wonderful, loving mother. Strange how the ‘vain blood mistress’ can be more than just, isn’t it?
I could go on and on about this woman, I’ve read and watched basically everything pertaining to her due to reports and essays that I wrote when I was younger, and even though she was a horrifying murderer, she deserves a bit more than ‘blood bitch’.
I researched the hell out of this woman back in the day just for fun because she was just so fascinatingly grotesque to me. A lot of her methods of torture were things I integrated into my own stories. Particularly the iron maidens, and pouring freezing water onto the naked bodies of her victims while they were dragged out into the snow. This woman was scarier than Vlad the Impaler because the things he did were done mostly in order to gain political notoriety which was a huge asset back in hisday. Erzebet, however, tortured women for her own sadistic means of entertainment. She implemented an unsettling brand of eroticism into her methods of torture. She may as well have invented the connotations of the word sanguine. Very few historical figures can give me nightmares quite like she can.
