#czarina catherine

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

[my-name-is-not-kimmy]

Why is Dracula’s Ship the Czarina Catherine?

Since we’re in a slow period while the gang gets settled in Varna and waits for a telegram and the Czarina Catherine makes its way (with favoring winds) through the Mediterranean, it’s time to break out some random bits of knowledge. Czarina Catherine (aka Catherine II, aka Catherine the Great) had the longest reign of any woman in Russian history: 34 years. She westernized and modernized Russia and led efforts to bring western (European) politics and culture to the forefront in Russia.

What does this have to do with vampires? 

Well, Catherine, who *was* a modern, enlightened woman, had 12 lovers.She especially enjoyed having them over to play cards and talk about art and literature (scandalous, I know).  For all of the scandal and slut-shaming though, she was said to be a serial monogamist who was actually a little prudish. She didn’t approve of nudes in art  generally or allow people to tell off-color jokes around her. She woke early and made her own coffee so she didn’t trouble her servants so early in the morning and started work at 6 a.m. 

Still, it was the 18th century and people gossiped about her and her lovers. The most famous bit of gossip persists to this day. She had a stroke and died. However, the rumor was started (and is still told to this day) that she was an old slut who couldn’t be satisfied by her lovers any more and so was killed by attempting sex with a horse. This is the common perception of our Czarina Catherine now, but even more so in Bram Stoker’s England. The name of the ship is a nod to the character of the women who are affected by the vampire.

The implication here is clear. Dracula allies himself with evil and with appetite. His wives cannot be satisfied in the normal ways (unlike sweet, plain Mina, who has simple tastes and is overwhelmed by Jonathan’s inheritance and is a good girl in all the ways Victorian girls should be). Lucy was so voluptuously voluptuous after her transformation that we can only assume that Mina is on the way to become, like Catherine the Great and Lucy Westenra, a woman of monstrous, unnatural, and horrifying appetite. 

[perfidiously-snatching]

There has been no munching action from Drac on his recent voyage.

Conclusions:

Dracula was mostly starved when boarding Demeter.

Demeter blood is far tastier than Czarina Catherine blood.

How can Dracula tell if the food is good? Does he sniff a person like in Twilight? Or do people that are generally pleasant appeal more to him?

Czarina Catherine's captain cussed out Dracula to his face numerous times, indicating bitter blood rather than the umami taste Dracula prefers.

[kaelma]

[see-arcane]

I love his grin, smiling while pissed is scarier than snarling rage

Nothing worse better than a grin with no mirth or mercy in it :)

If you haven't seen it yet, @moonsun2010 portrayed my favorite version of Jonathan with that expression toward the final climactic beat of this mind-meltingly fantastic animatic. (It's at 3:03!)

[immediatebreakfast]

It's so morbidly funny how Jonathan was coiled and tense like a spring ready for some murder since the ship was now near them, and today there is no following action.

Which leaves an entire comedic possibility of absolutely both Jonathan and Mina sitting in their train room, doing absolutely nothing.

[vickyvicarious]

I love the paper and scribbly noises again...! Also Jack's frustration is so good.

[captainsparklefingers]

You know, if I had a nickel for every time a vampire was on a boat and did horrible things like spawning fog and eating the crew one by one, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice...in the same book...

[queenbeyondthewalll]

Reading today’s Daily Dracula and man. You do not understand how much I wish Team Kill Dracula’s quest ended when they roll up on the Czarina Catherine and find out some random Romanian sailors pushed his stupid box overboard, trapping the Count beneath water that he can’t cross

Like I know they gotta actually kill him to free Mina or whatever but like. It would be so funny. They’ve gone on this quest to far Romania, they’ve bribed everyone they can think to bribe, they’ve got a plan, and then they get aboard the ship and the crew are like, “there was a fucked up man in that box so we threw it overboard”

[excentricat1]

I remember thinking last year that they had to know the fog was Dracula. They’ve read the log of the Demeter. But this year I caught a detail that makes me see how they could miss it, even if (some of them) suspect.

The fog is reported North and South of the port. Dracula can only make the fog around himself, and fog is probably not uncommon in the area over the water. The spread of reports means it may be natural fog.

Especially as they never suspect the Czarina Catherine will bypass the port altogether. If they had, they might have checked the timings of the fog reports. But their best person to make that calculation is Mina, and she can’t be told.

I would love an Arthur point of view here. He always seems to sense when something more is needed. I feel like he would sense their carefully laid plan going awry without understanding exactly why or how after being so careful to track the boat thus far.

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

"The Roumanians were wild, and wanted me right or wrong to take out the box and fling it in the river."

Wow, these sailors are a lot smarter than the crew of the Demeter!

"I had to argy wi' them aboot it wi' a handspike; an' when the last o' them rose off the deck wi' his head in his hand, I had convinced them that, evil eye or no evil eye, the property and the trust of my owners were better in my hands than in the river Danube."

Never mind.

[my-name-is-not-kimmy]

Todays map, from https://infocult.typepad.com/dracula/2022/10/arrival-in-galatz.html 

Mina and the boys are all in a tizzy at the purple pin in Varna. The Count and his child-brain is at the gray pin. 

[thegoatsongs]

Jonathan traveling in May:

Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom—apple, plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the “Mittel Land” ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame.

Jonathan traveling in October:

The journey may have had incidents; I was, however, too eager to get on, to care for them. Until the Czarina Catherine comes into port there will be no interest for me in anything in the wide world. 

[treespen]

Jonathan: "The journey may have had incidents; I was, however, too eager to get on, to care for them. Until the Czarina Catherine comes into port there will be no interest for me in anything in the wide world."

Ever since he snapped out of his brain fever he has been so focused on catching Dracula to not harm anyone else, but now he explicitly doesn't have a care in the world but this. He used to be so wide-eyed and caring about everything that happened around him.

Jonathan: "If, then, we can come on board after sunrise, [Dracula] is at our mercy ... What mercy he shall get from us will not count for much." 

He has a sweet nature, but it hardly prevails here. Once again, contrary to popular belief, it's not Van Helsing who is the merciless one when it comes to vampires.

[see-arcane]

In her very first letter, Mina tells Lucy that she wants to travel with Jonathan to other countries and see everything. She and Jonathan traveled together only on their way back from Hungary while he was still really weak and recovering, so it was not actually honeymoon... and now she's mostly only awake at night like a vampire, with Dracula in her head- spying and ready to call and manipulate her, and her mind is free only for two hours. So she doesn't actually experience the train rides and the hotel stay as she had dreamed of. She wished to travel with Jonathan, and she got her wish the worst way.

thank you for this, anon

[immediatebreakfast]

After so many days without writing anything, without emails, Jonathan announces that everything is still the same, tensioned and unmoving.

Then the waited call to action is sent, and the tension springs through the roof.

One has to wonder why Jonathan didn't include anything in the documentation we have so far. Because that is what the novel is right now from the perspective of every single character, a written record of the events passed, and coming to track Dracula down.

It's now something that needs to be treated in a delicate manner; do they include this or that? Should he write about the hypnosis session even if Mina repeated the same as yesterday? A lot of decisions regarding what to keep, what to record, and what to take out from this documented recording of a supernatural impossibility.

And yet, today in single manner of pure coincidence (or maybe not, maybe something else) Jonathan takes his pen to write today. Why today? Why not yesterday or the day before?

Because something changed.

"Czarina Catherine reported this morning from Dardanelles."

And with it everything changed too.