Elisabeta

Elisabeta is a fictional character featured in the 1992 film Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker's Dracula by director Francis Ford Coppola. She is played by actress Winona Ryder.

Biography
Elisabeta lived during the mid-15th century. She was the wife of Prince Vlad III, also known as Vlad the Impaler, who was the ruler of the Romanian nation of Wallachia in Transylvania. In the year 1462, Vlad went off to fight the Turks, who had just taken Constantinople. Though he was victorious in battle, the vengeful Turks sent false news back to Castle Dracula, informing Elisabeta that her beloved had fallen. Unable to bear the loss, Elisabeta wrote a letter explaining her grief, then took her own life by leaping from an open parapet in the castle into the Danube below. Her body was found and brought to a chapel. When Vlad returned, he was beside himself with sadness. The priest told him that since Elisabeta had taken her own life - an act of sin - her soul would be consigned to damnation. Vlad flew into a rage at this, as he had dedicated himself towards defending Christendom in his lands. He renounced God and plunged a sword into a large stone cross, which then began to bleed. Taking the blood into a cup, he drank from it, swearing that he would use all of the powers of darkness to avenge his beloved. Vlad became the vampire known as Dracula.

Vlad never recovered from Elisabeta's death. Even four-hundred-years later, in 1897, he shed a tear for her while telling a young solicitor from London, Jonathan Harker, about how he was once married.

That same year, Vlad relocated to London himself and met Harker's fiance, Wilhelmina Murray. He was astonished to find that she bore a remarkable similarity to his long-dead bride. He seduced Mina and gave her some absinthe, the effects of which caused her to hallucinate and she became aware of events surrounding Elisabeta's death.

Notes & Trivia



 * Francis Ford Coppola finally gets Winona Ryder to star in a film. Winona was originally cast to play Mary Corleone in Coppola's The Godfather: Part III, but dropped out due to illness. The part then went to his daughter, Sofia Coppola.


 * Actress Winona Ryder played the dual roles of Elisabeta and Mina Murray-Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula.


 * Production shooting of Elisabeta's corpse can be seen in "The Making of Bram Stoker's Dracula" documentary on the Dracula Blu-ray.


 * It is heavily implied that Mina Murray was the reincarnation of Elisabeta, which would seem to countermand the notion held by the priest earlier in the film that her soul is damned for taking her own life.