cliterature

In Peverse Crimes in History the authors write “Countess Bathory is also of especial interest because she is a woman.” But there reasoning is not what you might suspect as they continue: “Female sadists and mass-murderers have been less frequent than males ones, though perhaps only because women have less often attained positions of power where large-scale crimes are possible.”  Bathory was a 16th century Hungarian countess and is often mentioned in relation to the invention of the modern notion of vampires, because she amused herself torturing and murdering and is often described in this book, and many others, as bathing in their blood.

It might seem that the importance of power, and its associated immunity, is clear in that Bathory was the only person directly implicated in the murders who was not executed as a result.  She was declared insane and walled up within her apartment to spend the rest of her life in isolation and darkness where she lived for four more years and died at the age of 54.  But there is another explanation, that her two son-in-laws didn’t want her convicted as her property would revert to the throne–and dammit they married for that castle and the meant to have it. 

Add to that–it is often said that Countess Bathory bathed in blood, the basis for her fame as a proto-vampire, but this does not seem to be the case.  This morbid detail arose in fables and tales that appeared after Bathory’s death and can be easily falsified as many documents relating to her life and the trial of her servants and associated are a matter of public record.  The closest accurate detail is that some of her victims were bitten, but there is no indication of blood being consumed or otherwise enjoyed (the vampire equivalent of ‘not inhaling’ at best).

So, maybe it is a good point that if more women had enough power to be kill over 600 people before anyone felt the need to intervene, more women might be mass murders.  But she achieved power from her noble father, retained by a noble marraige, was taught how to torture woman by her husband and (temporarily) escaped death through the actions of her daughters’ husbands.  And as for the bloo fable, it was suggested I suppose to explain how a women could be a mass-murderer.  What acceptable reason could they could come up with that would drive a female to such extremes?

Vanity.

 So there we go.  A woman so powerful she is now remembered almost entirely for something she never did.

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