Dracula Helena

Of all the Soul-Clones created by the Impaler, the figure known as Dracula-Helena may be the strangest. 

Her origin is unique for one thing.  She was married to the latest (and one of the least impressive) holder of the title Baron Frankenstein, who had grown quite obsessed both with his beautiful bride--who in turn felt little or nothing for him--and with re-creating his famous ancestor's work.  What happened with and to them both was dramatized (with lots of silly humor and exploitative footage) in the motion picture Mistress Frankenstein.

Basically, she suffered a severe head trauma due to a fall.  The damage was severe enough to be fatal, or would have been had her husband not had the equipment needed to maintain life.  However, she required a new brain. 

The Baron's servant was able to get a new brain with good speed, and so she was revived.  Exactly what methods were used remains unknown but such a transplant has been successfully carried out by many Frankensteins in the past, including both Victor and Frederick Frankensteins as well as the former's son Wolf (in the films Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein).  However, Helena immediately began to show a wildly different personality.  Formerly bored and asexual, now she demonstrated a powerful libido aimed exclusively at women.  More, the women with whom she had encounters acted dazed, distracted, even mesmerized.

In short, they behaved precisely as vampire victims do.

Which begs the question--where did that brain come from?  My own research has led me to specific theory, mostly based on subsequent behavior and "filling in some dots."

Quite simply, at approximately the same time as (but prior to) the events above, the Countess Irina Karnstein underwent a huge change.  She was a strange individual, who had at one point been "adopted" by the mentally unstable clone called Dracula-Lejos as his "daughter."  It was at this time at least she attracted the attention of Dracula-Prime himself.  This terrible figure watched as Irina performed a weird blood experiment to use blood to transfer her consciousness into another person to become the wife of her step brother, Lejos' natural son.  She did this in Transylvania, the very lands the Impaler himself calls his domain.

Thus when Irina's body was abandoned in a an old castle (as chronicled in the motion picture Nadja), Dracula had his servants steal it and sell the brain to a servant of Baron Frankenstein.  The Baron might never have realized his wife was now a vampire, and if not then becoming was soon to become a soul-clone of Dracula!

What happened of course was not merely a scientific process.  An element of magic was involved.  The resulting individual evidently gained the powerful lust for women which is part of the first Dracula's personality, as well as a degree of arrogance.  Her powers seem impressive--not least an ability to walk in sunlight, which may mean at least physically she was something of a dhampyr a la the infamous Blade.

However the next time we see her, as chronicled in the silly comedy film The Sexy Adventures of Van Helsing, she encounters one of two sisters in the Van Helsing family.

Again, the filmmakers were focused upon making a farcical exploitation film so using it as a guide for actual evens requires more than a few pinches of salt.

Maybe a whole pillar.

Essentially, however, it would appear during college this particular Van Helsing, Lavina, underwent a strange experience wherein the ghost of some ancestor helped her incapacitate Dracula-Helena who was using Lavina's growing awareness of her own orientation to almost seduce her.  However, if not completely destroyed such creatures can come back.  When Dracula-Helena returned, she had a more involved plot which involved both Lavina and her sister Mina.

As chronicled in the film Lust for Dracula, this next plan took years, and was aimed at driving both Van Helsing sisters mad.  It also saw Dracula-Helena helping fund some drugs that could result in weakening the will of test subjects.  Mina Van Helsing was one such subject, persuaded she had married a man named Jonathan Harker but who was in fact a woman and minion of Dracula-Helena.

In the course of events, both Lavina (now using her middle name Abigail and working as a doctor) and Mina were seduced and betrayed by the Soul-Clone--arguably making her one of the most successful of all the Impaler's creations.

The precise fate of the sisters remains unknown at this time.  As of this writing, it has been sixteen years since the events described herein.  One possible clue is the motion picture An Erotic Werewolf in London, which hints as a nightmarish dreamscape in which Mina Van Helsing may be trapped--or it may be she has become a werewolf as part of Dracula-Helena's schemes.

So far as we know, this marks the only female Soul Clone the true Prince of Darkness has created.  If indeed she has retained (as it seems) the ability to walk in sunlight due to Irina Karnstein's dhampir nature, then she remains also a formidable opponent.

Dracula Pan

The Dark Prince, Vlad Tepes, Count Dracula we now know created many an individual soul clone (as recorded via the motion picture The Seven Golden Vampires) which leaves a vampire historian the job of tracking them down.

Ironic that, since the international best-seller The Historian offers plenty of genuine clues as to a very powerful clone, one this chronicler has dubbed Dracula-Pan for reasons which will soon become clear.

Dracula-Pan began his life as a scholar into the esoteric and the occult.  His history has been recorded in the novella  The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. His researches led him to discovering one of the books left behind by the Impaler as a clue and bait, to become the King of the Vampires' personal librarian.  All this happened most likely in the 1890s, but in the early 1900s the Impaler decided upon revenge on all those who thwarted his 1887 attempt to invade England (as chronicled by Bram Stoker in his famous novel).  A series of Soul-Clones were created and dispatched to wreck vengeance upon various members of the Seward, Harker, Holmwood, and Van Helsing families.  One of these was Raymond, the former scholar who by now was a vampire enslaved to Dracula Prime.

This new Soul Clone proved unusually successful, gaining nearly all the powers of Dracula himself (which is not at all always the case).  But he also showed certain specific individual traits from his original personality which "bled" into the new copy.  I list those below.

But first, his history.  We know his initial encounter with a member of the Van Helsing family involved a man whose daughter had married a man named Poirot, and by him had a son named Hercule.  Dracula-Pan at this time had claimed a castle in Luxembourg as his own, but when he used a cult to persuade a member of  the Holmwood family infected with syphillus to invite him to England via a young solicitor, the elderly vampire regained his youth by draining the young man dry.

This entire tale was recounted (with some changes of detail for marketing purposes) in the 2006 British adaptation of Dracula starring Marc Warren and David Suchet.

We know at the end of this misadventure, the Soul Clone had committed a lot of slaughter but some of his would-victims escaped.  He, terribly wounded, yet survived.

It would appear this same Soul Clone later created a human persona for himself as an international tycoon under the alias "Alexander Lucard" and again head-quartered in Luxembourg at the same castle as before.  He vied with one Emil Van Helsing, ultimately transformed the man's son into a vampire himself out of malice.  Now at this time Lucard (or Dracula-Pan) had achieved something only a few versions of the Impaler had ever done--he could walk in sunlight, albeit at the cost of nearly all his supernatural powers. 

Yet at the same time, he showed several traits which show him to be an unusual and specific Soul-Clone:

• The ability to walk in sunlight, which Dracula-Pan initially showed when he survived his first battle with the Van Helsings.
• An ability and even taste for enjoying things like wine.
• In fact, generally this creature seems to be interested in the "finer" things of life, dwelling in luxury, surrounding himself with art and antiques.
• Unlike most Soul-Clones (but in common with other) he can and does wield magical items--indeed one such is almost certainly the only reason he can endure sunlight.
• Also unlike the vast majority of Soul Clones, he does not keep a 'harem' of any kind, although he enjoys very much the hunt and seduction of his female prey.

His adventures in Luxembourg were the subject of the t.v. show Dracula: The Series.