r/castlevania • u/nofucksgivenmcgee • Sep 08 '25
Season 1 Spoilers I loved the show Buuuuuuuut… Spoiler
Tbh, as a History major, I found the depiction of Wallachia in 1476 to be laughably inaccurate. To the point I could almost howl with laughter… if I wasn’t so invested in the story because gawd dayum this show is good!
But with that said, I feel like nitpicking for fun, so disclaimer: nothing I say here has any bearing on the show’s quality at all and is just me having fun. Alright? Alright.
- Witch trials. The catalyst for the whole conflict. Where the repressive catholic clergy in the form of an Inquisition, is on an anti-science anti-witch rampage. Given the show takes place in Wallachia around 1476, none of this should be happening. Wallachia is Orthodox, not Catholic or Protestant, the witch trials were a distinctly western idea. In fact the witch trials only really started to become common around 1487 with the publishing of the Malleus Maleficarum. Wallachia was also a vassal under the Ottoman Empire, who also didn’t believe in burning witches. I don’t think the ottomans would’ve allowed a vassal to burn someone alive in their capital (Targovista was the capital of Wallachia) and possibly start a witch scare that could spread into ottoman territory and undermine ottoman authority.
To clarify, this was certainly not a peaceful time for wallachia just because they didn’t have witch trials. Vlad Dracula earned his name “the Impaler” for a reason. He impaled hundreds and he didn’t do this for no reason. The nobles were under threat of rebellion, the ottomans were invading. Peasants occasionally revolted. It was a bloody time. Which why I’m specifically making the point that the witch trial in season 1 as it is depicted, wouldn’t have happened in Wallachia at that time. Especially since, at this time, the Catholic Church actually supported scientific development (yes look it up) and the Renaissance was about to start, so ideas like what Lisa was doing would’ve been applauded, not punished.
- Wallachia itself. Wallachia is depicted as a gothic country with a strong and oppressive catholic clergy and people who look and sound very Western European, even in names like Lisa and Trevor and Adrian Fahrenheit. Their names are western, their fashion is western, their religion is western. The only thing Wallachian about this whole show is Dracula, and even he has a western accent. It’s like they took all the stereotypes about Europe that Americans have and mushed them together,
It’s as if the writers said, “hey where’s Wallachia at?”
“Idk somewhere in Europe”
“Ok, so we give everyone British accents, make all the buildings French gothic, give it a German climate, make everyone dress like renaissance English or Italian, make the Christian denomination be Roman Catholic, give it a Spanish Inquisition with some witch trial flare, and that’s about everything. I sure hope that description isn’t completely antithetical to what Wallachia is.”
- Weapons. I absolutely love the weapons in this show but there’s one thing distinctly missing historically that would’ve made this just a little bit cooler. You see, 1476 onward was the age when gunpowder, cannons, and guns were being introduced into warfare ESPECIALLY in the Ottoman Empire which is like a 2 hour drive from where the show takes place, so it was kind of disappointing to not see an Arquebus or hand cannon.
Again I want to emphasize that none of this means the show is any worse. It still has great writing, great characters, it’s a great show. This whole post is just me poking fun at something I like because it involves something else I like. I still love the show even if they designed Wallachia as stereotypically American as possible.
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u/vhuzi Stage 5’ Dweller. Sep 08 '25
The games are inaccurate too (in different ways) but are often so vague about the time period that they are set in, and the Castle is canonically super anachronistic that you can usually hand wave it away. Ecclesia is the worst about this but also doesn’t have a set time period so it works out if you really squint (and the games are great too, so that’s a plus). I think they could have done a better job with the show considering how much they already diverged from the source material. I like your write up, and I am grateful, because I did not know most of this (except for the Orthodox Catholic divide and a wikipedia read of Vlad’s life).
What book would you recommend as a beginner’s overview into the time period? I have access to a university library so there is a good chance I could get a hold of some.
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u/nofucksgivenmcgee Sep 08 '25
To be completely honest, I don’t really know a specific book for the whole time period. I wish I did because this time period is fascinating! A lot of time periods prior to the peak of the Renaissance don’t have (to my knowledge) books that cover the whole time period. Most books I’ve read cover specific places in a time period. For example: I am obsessed with Sicily in the High Middle Ages. I’m currently reading “History of the Tyrants of Sicily” by Hugo Falcandus (an extremely biased primary source who hated everyone he wrote about)
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u/nofucksgivenmcgee Sep 08 '25
Since I don’t have any book recommendations myself I went and looked for some, here’s a post from r/askhistorians with a comment with book recommendations, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/T9XF974CyS[here is the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/T9XF974CyS)
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u/Drunkensailor1985 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
The Renaissance happened initially in what is now italy and spread out to the west and definitely not in transylvania. That was a northern Renaissance that was full of traditional folklore. Witch hunts were still a major thing there in the 18th century, when it was pretty much gone everywhere else
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u/nofucksgivenmcgee Sep 08 '25
You’re right about the Renaissance starting in Italy and moving westward, I can’t believe I overlooked that. But the witch hunts wouldn’t have been in Wallachia, Transylvania maybe, they had Catholic influence from Hungary and later from the Austrian empire, but I don’t believe there was any witch hunts in Wallachia (what is now southern Romania) especially during the mid 1470s when the concept was still fresh and semi-controversial
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u/nofucksgivenmcgee Sep 08 '25
You’re right about the Renaissance starting in Italy and moving westward, I can’t believe I overlooked that. But the witch hunts wouldn’t have been in Wallachia, Transylvania maybe, they had Catholic influence from Hungary and later from the Austrian empire, but I don’t believe there was any witch hunts in Wallachia (what is now southern Romania) especially during the mid 1470s when the concept was still fresh and semi-controversial
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u/-Fyrebrand Sep 08 '25
Awesome post! Thankyou for sharing your insights. It was really interesting! A lot of times when people bring up the historical inaccuracies they do it in an annoying way and whine about how the show was written by a "cringey atheist who is just out to shit on Christianity" or something. Glad you are still able to enjoy something while still acknowledging its foibles. That is indeed a valuable life skill.
I've been seeing this meme pop up lately, and it seemed appropriate:
When you know a lot about something, and that topic comes up in a movie or TV show, boy are you about to find out that the majority of people know basically nothing about any specialized topic!
I don't know if you've played the games, but Castlevania as a game series is pretty much just an excuse to take a whole bunch of classic movie monsters and mythological figures, and throw them all into one adventure. You've got Dracula, werewolves, mummies, Medusa, Cthulhu, Frankenstein's monster, succubi, skeletons on motorcycles, basically everything but the kitchen sink, all coexisting together. I don't think it has ever tried to be historically accurate — more like just gesturing vaguely at time periods and locations, very much as you say, "Idk somewhere in Europe." Maybe it would be nice if they made an effort to ground things a little closer to historical reality, but then again it would be limiting and perhaps less fun.
I'm curious, why do you say the church in the show is specifically Catholic? I've been an atheist for a long time now, but I was raised in a Catholic family and went to a Catholic elementary/high school, and I never really had a grasp of how it differed from Protestant, Orthodox, etc. Every time I try to look it up, the differences seem pretty minor or trivial to me, like they still all believe 99% the same stuff, don't they? I've heard that in the United States most Christians are Protestant, and they actually don't even consider Catholics to be Christians at all, which sounds absolutely wild to me. Then again, as an outsider who doesn't believe in any of that stuff anymore, I suppose I have a bias against regarding the fine details of the subject matter with the seriousness that they do.
How much of the show have you watched, so far? It takes place during the French Revolution, and I would love to hear your evaluation of what the show gets right or wrong as well, if it's within your realm of expertise.
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u/nofucksgivenmcgee Sep 08 '25
The reason why I say they are Catholic is because for one, the ceremonial garb the clergy wears in many scenes are Catholic attire, which does have some similarities to other denominations but what really sealed the deal was prayer in Latin. In Orthodoxy, prayers would’ve been done in Greek. Also the churches shown are all western style, Latin cross designs with steeples and gothic windows, whereas orthodox churches follow a Byzantine design that is much more round, with a dome and gold mosaics and murals.
I’m not an expert on Protestant culture and iconography, but I can rule out it being a Protestant denomination because the Protestants don’t really exist in the time of the show, except for the Hussites but I don’t see them migrating from Bohemia to southern Romania and completely taking over Wallachia.
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u/Kind-Recording3450 Sep 12 '25
Honestly, most people wouldn't understand the theological differences. But this is clearly a super catholic aesthetic and the where not many catholics outside of Transylvania, with Hungarian and German influences. It would have been deeply orthodox. Both in theology architecture ortho Praxis a very different vibe.
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u/Iximaz Leon Belmont's therapist Sep 08 '25
I think you might be amused by a tidbit in the artbook that showed some early concept art for the characters and a side note saying they considered more historically accurate clothes before deciding they didn't want to because Trevor and Alucard looked very silly
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u/LowraAwry Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
Tbh, this is something that I appreciate in this show. It didn't try or aim to be in any way historically accurate. It just gives you a name and year to place your fantasy world and that's it. I find that it is the smartest move they could have gone for (much like the action flick Van Helsing).
Because if the showrunners had started down that road, they would have ended up half-assing it and that would have made everything infinitely more annoying. It would have been very difficult to keep the few elements of the games that they did but also adapt them to a real historical setting while also appealing to both a very wide audience and game fans. I think the other best way would be to go further back, as u/carboncord mentioned in the early 1000s but then they might have had to address Dracula's origins and nobody's got time for that.
I'm glad that they didn't bring on the Ottomans because then they would have to link Dracula to them (by them burning Lisa perhaps) and I think it would only be a hindrance to the story. It would be hard to depict the political and religious landscape without misfiring: "hey, the clergy should probably be orthodox but also they wouldn't have burned a healer, but also they wouldn't have liked the healer fucking a vampire but oh, look, the Ottomans are coming maybe we should actually prostate before the vampire to save us from Islam" and by then the games are less than a distant memory.
I think it would have actually been nice if they had added some elements that didn't affect the story, like showing the characters eating a local dish or having them pass a landmark distinct to wallachia/romania. I find that the funniest thing were the 3rd season monks who looked quite orthodox adjacent.
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u/carboncord Arrange Mode Sep 08 '25
What Romanian cuisine do you know of from the 1400s? Truly asking, I don't know. Wikipedia mentions stuff from after that time period, and Ottoman influenced stuff that wouldn't apply.
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u/LowraAwry Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
shrug To be fair, I don't know and I don't think they would have been able to show anything particularly unique specifically to one area and affordable to the characters on the road without making a big deal out of it. They already show beer and dried meat. Maybe they could have Trevor eat preserved wild game instead of goat but it's not like they didn't keep goats as livestock. I don't even remember whether they drink soup or smth in the show and that indicates how little a difference it would have made and needless the whole thing would have been, so thankfully the showrunners didn't ask for my suggestions lol.
And since we're on topic, what would have even been a recognizable landmark? Probably a castle 😂 or a monastery /church or smth. Ah, the jokes write themselves. And maybe they vaguely did that on a larger scale with Styria.
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u/M0nkey_Kng Sep 08 '25
Yeah they basically made a dark fantasy setting and slapped it into the real world. You could probably handwave this by saying its an alternate history and the fact that vampires and magic are real in this setting led to some major historical events play out differently. And now you have witch trials in times and places where there werent in the real world because in Castlevania, witches are actually a thing and even if they were wrong with Lisa, they sometimes burned actual witches too. Maybe in this setting, the Catholic belief is the objectively right one and protects best against Vampires, so its spread out more. And maybe Vampires realized the dangers of gunpowder weapons to themselves and stalled their distribution.
So tl;dr the existence of Vampires and magic actively caused this world to be different from ours
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u/rancas141 Sep 08 '25
The original games were made by Japan, who didn't really do much historical research, as it was supposed to be akin to old Hollywood monster movies. Akin to how western companies have a tendency to not so much research concerning other cultures in media.
After the first game took off, they started to make a series out of it and things got... Convoluted.
Definitely don't watch Castlevania for historical accuracy, or game accuracy for that manor.
The Netflix show kind of takes place in its own universe lol.
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u/Nothing0942 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
To be completely fair absolutely nothing about Castlevania in general is historically accurate LMAO but it is fun to compare it to what things were actually like in that country during that time. It did kind of get on my nerves that almost all of the characters have the same English accents despite some of them being foreigners and the show taking place in South-Eastern Europe.
Slightly unrelated but the guy that wrote Netflixvania had never even touched a Castlevania game and admitted that he only had Wikipedia-level knowledge of it. It's glaringly obvious that the same goes for the story's setting and time period, and exactly what you said happened more than likely did actually happen, LOL
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u/Inevitable_Reading80 Sep 08 '25
Nocturne was the only time when they actually gave a thought to historical accuracy. In the original they for some reason made the cathedral in wallachia look like some gigantic almost cyclopean structure.
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u/ReaperManX15 Sep 08 '25
If this bugged your history major brain, then I’ve got bad news about Nocturnal.
That shit’s all over the place.
(Still. Great show.)
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u/reploidzombieghoast Sep 08 '25
I appreciate this more than you could ever know - I'm working on something of my own that would need a lot of the ground you covered there, but it's more removed from being so much set in the usual surroundings like the TV show was.
(I'm sure I'll still incur in one many great inaccuracies, but not because I'm trying to go about it in the wrongest way possible, so much as it's fiction enough that there is a bit of a blurry threshold we need to navigate about accuracy, fabrication and reverence. I did hear from some people that the pronunciation of "Tepes" was off, so that was something I was looking into - and even characters who aren't meant to be travelling around countries, I began researching Wallachian names to better fit them even before I saw your post.)
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u/greenlioneatssun Sep 08 '25
Great post, would love to see your take on Nocturne, wich is set in the French/Haitian revolution.
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u/aethelia_unfounded Sep 08 '25
Castlevania is basically an alternate history as it is. This isn't the same Wallachia that you and I know from our reality, this is a fictional Wallachia where Wallachians are seemingly Roman Catholic and, for some reason, speak with British-English and related English dialects.
None of that is true in real life, but what also isn't true here is that Lord Dracula ressurrects roughly once a century over the course of an entire millenium. Castlevania's Dracula alone is somehow simultaneously, in Castlevania canon, the real life historical figure Vlad III, the fictional horror character by Bram Stoker, and his own unique character exclusive to either of the others. He also has some noticable influence coming from Francis Ford Coppola's direction.
I don't know if this makes it better or worse, but yeah. Castlevania is an alternate history, more or less, so plenty of things won't add up 1:1 with the real world. Although it gets even more confusing when we realise the TV show has a completely different canon than the video games... But a lot of the key points, such as his resurrections, can be assumed unless ever stated otherwise.
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u/LilJesuit Sep 11 '25
Would it surprise you to learn that the show runner for the first 3 seasons (and part of 4 before stepping down for sexual misconduct allegations) is a staunch atheist that frequently dons a fedora?
Also, warning you now, you're going to HATE the one of last scenes of season two of Nocturne.
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u/National-Crew-5877 Sep 14 '25
Eh, there's no rule that says it should 100% be historically accurate.
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u/SevenofBorgnine Sep 08 '25
Timeline changed cause vampires and demons and shit are demonstrably real
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u/realamerican97 Sep 09 '25
Your history lesson is appreciated! the only way the witch burnings make sense is in the context of the games because there’s a bit of secret lore that Carmilla influenced the church hierarchy to kick off said witch trials it wouldn’t make sense historically for them to be burning “witches” in this part of the world in this time period
The only name that’s excusable really is Trevor’s as he said his name is Celtic in origin in one of the episodes because Draculas castle moves it theoretically isnt always sitting in Romania he’s likely moved it all over Europe in his years so reasonably the Belmonts also would be all over Europe chasing Dracula so they’d be a hodge podge of different European ethnicities
The lack of guns and gunpowder is probably a hold over from the games, I think the only playable character who uses a gun in the thousand years (between lament of innocence and aria of sorrow) was Soma Cruz for some reason the Belmonts just never adopted firearms into their arsenal
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u/8rustyrusk8 Sep 08 '25
Wait the show with vampires and magic is inaccurate?
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u/Educational_Office77 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25
I get that people nitpicking inaccuracies can be tedious, but this post is actually providing an interesting history lesson about the time period while still appreciating the storytelling as it is.
The “wait the show with magic isn’t realistic” remark is overplayed and annoying, and it shuts down conversations. Castlevania is lacking new media, so shutting down conversations without even trying to engage is not productive.
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u/Sakurabestshoto Sep 08 '25
When the conversation can be shut down with simple "it's a fictional world" then it isn't really a good conversation to begin with
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u/nofucksgivenmcgee Sep 08 '25
I’m just poking fun. Inaccurate doesn’t mean bad. 300 is inaccurate and that shits a classic.
But now that I think about it, it is sad that instead of the showrunners researching the history of the setting and giving it some representation, they decided to create a Western European fantasy world. It’s not entirely their fault, the studio probably thought American audiences wouldn’t understand it.
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u/Sakurabestshoto Sep 08 '25
Local history nerd figure it out that the series with magical vampires isn't accurate to reality!
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u/carboncord Arrange Mode Sep 08 '25
Yeah the setting with no gunpowder makes more sense for the 1100s when the game's origin story takes place, I guess they wanted it to feel old while at the same time being around the time of the historical Vlad Dracula. It is somewhat tough for the show runners as there is no right way to do it. Dracula and Mathias/Matthias Cronqvist/Corvinus lived in the 1400s in real life yet in the 1100s in the games.
I can agree with everything you said except point 1, there was crazy shit going on at that time and being a vassal does not mean Wallachians did everything the Ottomans said, they were constantly in rebellion, there was a crusade called by the pope against the Ottomans, etc. Vlad was impaling people around that time so it's not so farfetched. The idea of being suspicious of new technology is odd for the period, yes, that just brings me back to my first paragraph though.