So was his brother Mircea, but he didn’t impale people on sharp (or even worse, blunted) stakes for somehow irritating him.
Vlad was a superb military strategist and tactician, who managed to be a major handicap to the Turks for over two decades in spite of being consistently outnumbered and outgunned. His personal “style”, however, was that of a (barely) controlled homicidal psychopath. I do agree that his Turkish captivity probably triggered the behavior, but it must have been latent in his character before that.
Vlad Tepes is a casebook example of a homicidal psychopath who just happened to be a square peg fitting almost precisely in a square hole, in his time and place. However, I doubt many of us would want him for a dinner guest- or a military commander- today. (Imagine him with access to nuclear ordnance…)
cheers
eon
