The Countess

The Countess by Rebecca Johns is based on the infamous Countess Erzabet Bathory de Esched.

During the late 1500's and very early 1600's there was a woman in Hungary named Erzabet Bathory. Her infamy grew around names like the Blood Countess, or Countess Dracula, for the many murders she is said to have committed. While she never went to trial, 4 of her most loyal servants did go to trial and were burned for being skrata (witches) for the parts they had in the murders. While they only got convicted for 80 murders, there was said to be closer to 650 murders of young women in her various estates. So many stories were spread about these events, one of which saying that Erzabet went so far as to bathe in the blood of her victims to maintain her youthful beauty. The evidence was so thin that many believe it may have been nothing more than lies to gain control over her very wealthy lands during a time of war and unrest. Erzabet herself was never tried, although she was walled into a set of rooms in 1610 where she lived out the last 4 years of her life in solitary confinement.

As a child she was raised by a governess, and betrothed at the age of 11, married at the age of 15. Her husband was a brilliant soldier, frequently away on campaigns. He became known as the Black Bey of Hungary for his ruthlessness in battle. During the course of her life her father, mother, brother, two children, and her husband passed away. It is after her husband's passing that her murders were mostly reported, lending more power to the argument that it was all a set-up and political maneuvering on the part of the palatine to aid her two sons-in-law and the guardian of her underage son heir who openly supported the shift of power in Hungary at that time. Many people believe she was never tried and put to death because her death would have reverted all her lands to the crown with no male child of age to claim the titles and rights of her family. This is a small sacrifice on the part of the crown who had owed her and her husband a great deal of money for loans made during the wars, which the king then never repaid.

Overall Erzabet Bathory sounds like a normal noblewoman of the time period, and I can honestly say I don't know to which side I lean as to if she was a torturing murderer, or a helpless widow trapped in the political mechanizations of nobility after her husband's death.

As for the book: it is well written and left me relatively upset at the way she is said to have treated people. I had a difficult time reading it because the author seems to feel sympathetic with her at times, painting her as a wounded woman with a slim grasp on her faith. Other times she made her sound like a madwoman with no control over her emotions at all. There is at least one point where she writes her as a woman completely at odds with the world around her, beset at every side by hatred and jealousy which causes her to lose her grip on reality and makes her seem as if she were the victim.

I would suggest this story to anyone who has a love of historical fiction, although there are a couple of gory parts it is much more focused on the trials of Erzabet as a noblewoman than it is on her as a "demon woman" who "bathed in the blood of her murder victims." I enjoyed the use of Hungarian words throughout the story, and wish there had been slightly more facts on the war included~ but the narrow perception of a noblewoman fits with the story better, I suppose.