So here’s the thing: Vampires – at least the vampires of western literary tradition – have always been a little queer.
They’ve never just been queer (though they’ve certainly always been sexy). The vampire literary canon of the 1800s is thick with mysterious, dark strangers, sadistically fixated upon some innocent, young maiden – and not at all short on naïve young men falling for the charms of seductive vampire ladies either. Dracula is no exception on either count.
But the very first literary vampire, Lord Ruthven of 1819’s The Vampyre, was modelled on (and sort-of-stolen-from ‒ it’s a long story) the real and famously bisexual poet, Lord Byron ‒ Mr. “Mad, bad and dangerous to know” himself. And it’s not just women this vampyre threatens – ultimately, his chief victim is a young man called Aubrey, whose starstruck-admiration becomes disillusionment and horror as he realises just what Ruthven really is. Though largely forgotten today, The Vampyre was a sensation on is publication.
And then there’s Carmilla: the prototypical lesbian vampire, from a tale about as explicit on that front as anything from 1872 could have gotten away with. It’s not for nothing that Carmilla is second only to Dracula as the most referenced and adapted vampire tale ever told. Next to Carmilla and Ruthven, Dracula – whose best-known victims are Lucy and Mina, and who mostly leaves his entourage of voluptuous vampire brides to scandalise their menfolk – looks positively hetero.
But then there’s that one passage. You know the one ‒ Dracula Daily sent it to us all on May 16. The one where – just as Dracula’s three “brides” are on the cusp of stealing “kisses” from poor, innocent Jonathan, in a scene sizzling with sexual tension – the Count himself swoops in, enraged, to claim his young guest for himself.
