#matthias cronqvist

[asklisafromlupu]

Hey Liiiiiiisa, I found pictures of Vlad when he was younger! What do you thiiiiiiink? ewe

"I swear I have yet to see an iteration of my husband where I am not taken by surprise at how handsome he is. Every rumor I heard of him before getting to the castle, every negative thing I heard said about him, all of it goes away because I know him. And I know him better than anyone else. I can't believe I have such a great love. Thank you for this picture. I believe he told me he went by Mathias when he was human? This has to be from that period of time."

[sepublic]

This is all conjecture about a very obscure bit of Castlevania lore, but in Super Castlevania IV we're introduced to the boss Sir Grakul, an armored knight (or just... armor) that Simon fights and defeats. There's not much to him and based on what the wiki told me, in Japanese he's called Iron Crusher. But in the English instruction manual, his name is Grakul.

What connection does he have to Dracula besides being the boss of his castle's library? By pure coincidence, I realized Grakul's name reminds me of Dracul; The name of the historical Dracula's father. Dracul means Devil or Dragon in English, so Dracula means Son of the Dragon/Devil. It's never specified how Grakul is pronounced, and it's my first assumption that it's with a hard G, like Guest. But in some cases, G is pronounced like J, such as in Giant. The D in Dracul is also pronounced like J, so if we go by that logic, Grakul could be pronounced the same way as Dracul, the father of Dracula.

Was this intentional by the English translators for Super Castlevania IV? Who knows. They did do wordplay puns for Puweyxil and Koranot, as well as the more obvious references of Paula Abghoul and Fred Askare. Even if it wasn't planned, I think there's some compelling fanon you could extrapolate from this idea; Is Sir Grakul the father of Matthias, now haunting a suit of armor? And/or is he Matthias Sr.'s armor brought to life? What if he’s a previous wielder of the Crimson Stone, a predecessor to Dracula?

Is Grakul even necessarily a haunted suit of armor, or is there a skeleton, or even a flesh and blood being, underneath? Based on the presence of haunted armors in Grakul's level, and his death animation where he bursts into pieces of armor with seemingly nothing inside (assuming the body within isn't what's burning), I think he's just armor. But if the show ever considered adapting his character, they could reinterpret Grakul is just a dude wearing armor, with all of the other lore I suggested. Who knows?

[alpaca-clouds]

Alright. Let's Talk Matthias Corvinus

Okay. As the good guy now finally showed up in The lesser Evil, let's talk about Matthias Corvinus, because he is so weirdly important to Castlevania Lore, while also being completely ignored by it.

See, it is agreed upon that in quite a few ways Mathias Cronqvist, aka Dracula before he became Dracula, was based around Matthias Corvinus, who was King of Hungary between 1458 and 1490. Though very few aspects of Corvinus stayed when the character was written into Lament of Innocence outside of the name and some similarities in design, as well as a (claimed) fascination with the occult. Other than that, of course, Mathias in Lament of Innocence was mostly based on the depiction of Vlad Tepes Draculae from the 1992 Dracula movie by Coppola.

But, let's turn towards the historical character of Corvinus. Now, I will flat out state: Yes, I took some bits and pieces of what we know about him and basically designed an original character around it. But as I started to write the story, I looked a lot into who was ruling what bit of land and how were politicsgoing in Europe at the time. Now, we already do know that the history in the Castlevania Lore will differ in two ways: For one, the King of Wallachia is definitely dead and there is no successor (we see that in season 4), and, two, said King was very probably not Vlad Tepes Draculae, as I do assume there are no two Vlad Tepes running around at the same time. 😅 We can, however, assume that Corvinus still is the King of Hungary, which had a direct border to Wallachia at the time. Historically speaking, Vlad Tepes and Matthias Corvinus were uneasy allies in the fight against the Ottomans, which was going on at the time in question (though technically speaking it went on for a long long time after). But, also, Corvinus was having a war with Bavaria-Austria at the time over some parts of Austria and Bohemia, which Corvinus claimed should be part of Austro-Hungary. The entire issue about the Austro-Hungarian Realm is another thing, that stretches through history and brought a lot of conflct over the centuries.

In this case specifically, it just had happened, that there had been revolts against the clergy and the power of the Holy Roman Empire in Bohemia and even though it was revolts, it turned out that it was hard to quell based on the fact that the revolting folks had literally outgunned everyone else. They had guns, everyone else did not. And they knew how to tactically use them, too. So Austria and the HRE were struggling to suppress the revolts and asked Hungary for help. Hungary basically said: "Fine, but we gonna talk about those pieces of land that should be Hungarian." And yes, they suppressed the revolt, but in the end Hungary did not get that land, hence they had a war. And yes, Hungary went for two-front-war (against Austria and against the Ottomans), because Hungary had something nobody else had: A standing army of professional soldiers, compared to the other armies, that were mostly armed peasants.

Now, of course, those conflicts have probably changed through what has happened within the series. Namely: The entire Ottoman-Wallachia-Hungary conflict was very probably broken up, given that the night creatures did not give a flying fuck about who they killed and I do assume that both the Ottomans and the Hungarians withdrew from Wallachia, to try and secure their own lands against the night hordes. And while we do not know how far Dracula's armies did get, we do know that they at least made it to Austria, based on Carmilla's words at the beginning of season 3. Which also makes me think, that the Hungarian Black Army did loose at least some of their 19 000 men to the night hordes. Which might lead to them trying to find a way to fill up their ranks again.

Which is where the claims (that are not quite proven historically) about Matthias Corvinus being fascinated by the occult come into play. I decided to just run with it and have him hence be quite open to Bluebeard coming in and offering him a magic army. Especially as Dracula has now established the might such an army might have. So, yes, our dear king is playing with forces he does not quite understand. But I guarantee you, he will be an important character in this. 😊

This is how he looks in Lesser Evil :)

[monochromatictoad]

I'm having... Mactor and Celiakado fic thoughts.

Ok, so in the Au that I've been kinda working on, I'm planning on adding Mactor and to a degree Celiakado, I've been convinced by my mutuals.

Ok, this is vaguely how I plan on introducing these ships.

So, this is going to be in the same universe as Isaastle and with my Self-ship with Marie and Gabriel.

Hector is related to the Belnades, or is adopted into the family, haven't decided yet. Matthias is one of Maycella's (my sona) students/workers at the bookstore. I haven't decided if they are already together, or if it's going to be a slight slow burn. However, Cronqvist aren't as powerful as they were in the 11th century, so while he's still rich, he's by no means royalty anymore. Maybe he could figure out whether or not Gabriel is a Cronqvist in blood.

As far as Celia goes, I need to learn more about her character, but from the interpretations I've seen, I might have her be like an occasional fling Trevorcard has/had in the past, and is one of the gossip brokers in the city. She probably has dirt on every politician in the city. She isn't into having a full relationship, but really neither is Trevorcard, so a casual/business relationship is all they are into.

[miserable-pile-of-lies]

If we get a parallel between the friendship of Dracula and Leon Belmont and Alucard and Trevor Belmont, I might just burst into tears and combust into flames, just saying. Just imagine, getting insight into Dracula's human life and understanding his resentment towards humanity prior to meeting Lisa and seeing Dracula at both the peak and downfall of his humanity, it would be brilliant, just saying. I hope the writers are going to provide more background information regarding his past as they once again focused on the portrait of Leon Belmont when Alucard brought Sumi and Taka into the Belmont Hold. Not only that, but Season 3 is setting up Dracula's inevitable revival despite the efforts of our main trio, honestly stoked to see where Season 4 takes us.

[swamp-bumpkin]

For some reason I have an overly specific want for a Dracula adaptation where it’s revealed that Dracula actually isn’t Vlad the Impaler

Probably to have the same last name he’d have to be part of that same family (the Drăculești)

I Also kinda want more adaptations that acknowledge HOW he became a vampire I.E. “I used magic that the devil taught me at Dark Magic School (Scholomance)”

[whodefinitelyfucks]

Dracula’s first wife, Elisabetha Cronqvist (Castlevania: Lament of Innocence) fucks, most likely.

Spoilers for a nearly 20 year old game, I guess:

Alucard was the Son of Lisa and Dracula, I don’t think they commented on Elisabetha and Matthias (later known as Dracula, oh spoilers) ever fucking so I will just assume they do because they are married.

Isn’t it it kinda weird that both his wives are basically called Lisa and look very similar? Especially since his motivation for becoming a vampire was to say “fuck you” to god and get his wife back? And then he basically forgets about it and just takes a lady for his second wife who happens to look like his first wife and have almost named the same? Oh well.

[demonfox38]

Source on Ellis wanting to name Godbrand Mathias? Cus fuck, I'm about to fall for the man if he's willing to ignore most of the stupidity and sexism that is Lament of Innocence. Like, keep Leon, but they better never keep that sexist shit that is the origin of vampire killer or the drek that is MaThIaS CrOnQviSt. Dracula is human and his importance should be placed on him by others ("all this for vlad fucking tepes?!") not because he's some immortal chaos god with a sauron ring

I found a reference to this from an October 13th, 2019  Bleeding Cool interview with Warren Ellis:

I found a name in the canon, Mathias Cronqvist, which I kind of liked and wanted to use but was told I couldn’t, at least not in the way I wanted to because Konami see it as their job to stop me going completely insane and trashing their property.  

It’s weird that Konami even used that name, as I think it was taken from Matthias Corvinus (a Hungarian king that held the real Vlad Dracula prisoner for a time.) But, at least somebody’s doing research? Also, someone definitely watched the Coppola version of “Dracula” for “Lament of Innocence.” 

As much as I love “Castlevania,” I wouldn’t exactly call the games pinnacles of feminist work. There’s some strong second-wave energy with what ladies are playable, but there’s also several women that are just sexy trophies, too. But, damned if I let that hold me back when writing. I just have to get a little creative/third-wavey when it comes to filling out cracks in the spackling.

If I were to pick a problem to fix with “Lament of Innocence,” it’d be less fixing Sara’s fate (unfortunate/limiting as it was) and more tackling the text dumping at the beginning of the game. Like, there could have been some training environment early on that was during Leon’s time with Mathias during the crusades. Could do a little more showing and not telling with their friendship. 

[randomnameless]

I finally watched Netflix’s castlevania after having been rekt on SSBU online and, well

It’s uh... weird.

Like, enjoyable.

Not ultra super dope or the second coming of FMAB, and I wouldn’t want every video game animated series to be directed by the same guys, but it wasn’t as awful as I expected when it comes to video game adaptations.

It had a nice animation and even if the pacing is a bit slow it kept me hooked (maybe the pacing issues are due to the fact that it is short for an anime/animated series?).

Annoying stuff though was the depiction of the “Church is evil” pov, we don’t see priests eating babies but we’re nearly there in the first episodes with the dubious priests assaulting Sypha’s grandpapa or being asses to everyone - and the general “they brought this upon themselves” motive of the first season, like those people burnt Dracula’s wife, he let them one year to get the fuck out of their village/city but they didn’t listen so now he sends real baby-eating monsters to “punish” them, but hey, that baby that was eaten somehow deserved it??

I’m glad they decided to get rid of this leitmotiv in the following episodes, especially as Trevor matures and goes from the “they deserved it because they didn’t try to help Lisa as she burnt but hey i’m going to let them die so i won’t try to help them while they burn” to Trevor who assumes his Belmont heritage, as in, it’s not just a name and a shirt.

Sypha’s a good character too. I liked how her empathy manages to bring the two idiots to work together, and she is the one who’s active in the story (in the search for alucard quest) while Trevor just follows because, Trevor. Her magic is badass but she isn’t stupidly broken, in way she reminded me of the traditional mages in jrpgs, they can hit hard and fast, are a bit mobile but don’t ask them to do a backflip to dodge something (that’s alucard’s shtick)

I also liked how despite everything and how determinate he was to save the humans Alucard still mourns for his dead dad.

Carmilla was also interesting, not in her “weak men will never rule Dorne” mindset, but in how she actually planned a coup and successfully managed to execute it, if Sypha didn’t warp Dracula’s castle on top of the Belmont cave.

I was meh about Hector - he sees humans as cattle and thinks Dracula will kill them mercifully without unecessary bloodshed, but then, the guy sees on an everyday basis the results of this war (since he has to rez dead people) so... well, he is supposed to be naive. I wonder what he will turn into.

Isaac is an odd one, and I’ve seen the controversy about his recast but well... Everyone’s a bit deranged in this show, Isaac seemed the most lucid, at least in his deranged pov.

Poor Godbrand you will be missed :’(

Unnamed vampires being unnamed but killed made me sad.

About Dracula though...

Well, I wonder what he ate when Lisa was there, pigs but his bowels were safe? The longest suicide note thing would have been touching, if he didn’t try to kill everyone with him, including his fellow vampires and his own son. Carmilla’s question is left unanswered, why wasn’t Lisa turned into a vampire, if she died of natural causes would he have gone ballistic too?

In the end, and it is sad, the priests who burnt Lisa was right (not about burning her of course!), Dracula is “evil”, in the sense that he can, and did, unleash a horde of monsters to get rid of “brave” humans, and he is a vampire. We’re not in an Ann Rice’s novel or in Twilight, pig blood is mentionned but is it a perfect substitue for human blood? Can vampires stop to hunt humans?

Hell (lel), the bishop/priests mentions that Lisa pleads the “devil” not to harm humans because of what they did, she knew he would take drastic measures to avenge her, like killing all humans in Wallachia? If the guy who smashed Trevor’s nuts pissed on Dracula’s garden, would he take revenge on humanity by eradicating everyone?

and final nail on the coffin (omg), even if i know it’s not connected, we’ve seen Leon Belmont.

So if they go by Lament of Innoncence canon, we should learn about Matthias Cronqvist and Leon’s fiancée.

But at least, when he lost his wife, Matthias decided to shit on God himself and on his best friend Leon due to grief and hatred.

In this animated series, Dracula doesn’t want to shit on everyone, he is fed up and wants to die, so everyone has to.

So yeah, not fond at all of Netflix’s Dracula.

[darthstitch]

You must be new here...

Friendly reminder that Fan Fiction means I put tongue firmly in cheek and chuck canon out the door. Also:

1. It means I can totally pretend that The Last Jedi never existed and Rose Tico is, in fact, a badass mercenary slicer with a heart of gold who will help Finn and Poe at the last edge of your seat popping moment. That Luke, Han and Leia are Not Dead and are awesome grumpy BAMFs. That Rey may possibly be a Skywalker. And that Billie Lourd's character is the youngest daughter of Han and Leia.

2. That I can totally ignore the insanity and retcons of the Castlevania universe and pretend that Vlad Dracula was never some dude named Matthias Cronqvist who somehow changed his name because Coppola Dracula ripoff and not to mention that there is now a continuity where Dracula was orignally a Belmont.

3. That Steve Rogers totally gave Bucky Barnes a breathtaking smooch in Infinity Wars, and totally did not give a shit about their audience.

4. That Thor, Loki, Rocket and Groot are on Road Trip in Benguet.

5. That Sam Wilson's Grandpappy is off hunting vampires with his BFF Abe Lincoln.

5. That I enjoy making my cracky crazy headcanons.

If you want "canon," just go back to the original source material. THAT'S WHY IT'S THERE. FOR ALL YOUR CANON NEEDS.

We Fandom Heretics will just happily play in our ridiculous fantasy pool in peace and quiet.

[sepublic]

So in Castlevania game lore, the novel Dracula canonically exists, and is apparently just fanfiction or whatever about the ACTUAL Dracula AKA Matthias Cronqvist. But at the same time, Quincey Morris (spelled without an E) did exist and did slay Dracula, and die doing so.

Which begs the question, how inaccurate was Bram Stoker's account of events? Or was it inaccurate at all? Maybe Dracula DID resurrect and do all that to the Harkers and Lucy and whatnot. And Quincey eventually managed to kill him, though not before siring an actual son named John.

I kinda want to see a Castlevania version of the Dracula novel; One compliant to the lore. So obviously the rules for Dracula and vampires is changed a little, and maybe he's not so utterly alone this time, given he's usually attended to by an entire army of monsters. Or maybe this resurrection, Dracula came back weaker than usual and couldn't summon any of the typical lackeys like Medusa or Death. Maybe he DOES have some minions and they just take a backseat in the roles of the peasants Dracula hired.

The fact that Quincey has John means that he must've fallen in love with someone other than Lucy; So maybe he never proposed to her, or he had a one-night stand sometime between the rejection, and his blood donation. We also know there was a Lucy Seward in Castlevania canon, who was Eric Lecarde's fiancee until Elizabeth Bartley (Erzsebet Bathory) turned her into a vampire and Eric had to mercy-kill her.

This is obviously conflicting with Lucy Westenra and how her story went... And given Eric's own age in the timeline, I wonder if this could be reconciled with the revelation that after Quincey's death, Jack Seward had a daughter he named Lucy in honor of his lost loved one, only for her to tragically suffer the exact same fate, whoops I think I tempted fate right there.

There's also Castlevania Netflix's continuity, which definitely can't use Dracula as the villain because he took a major chill pill at the end of the first series. Now I'm kinda curious to see Castlevania Netflix actually adapt Quincey Morris' story, and it's blatantly the novel Dracula but with a few changes here or there to be canon-compliant; In particular, Dracula is replaced with another vampire who is identical in all but name and maybe appearance.

Because wouldn't it be funny if we got Quincey's story for either the game or show continuities of Castlevania, and despite the lore changes, it unironically ended up being a more accurate Dracula adaptation than all of the other actual Dracula adaptations??? I say this because the Castlevania games kinda get the meaning and sentiments of the novel better than the proper adaptations, somehow.

[krystanadrew]

Game: Castlevania: Lament of Innocence

Mathis Cronqvist is most likely named after Matthias Corvinus, the Hungarian king who was a tentative ally of Vlad Tepes', and once had him imprisoned in a royal tower.

[miserable-pile-of-lies]

I really wish we would have gotten more banter between Trevor and Alucard that wasn't downright hostile so that their friendship could mirror Vlad and Leon Belmont's friendship before everything went to shit after Vlad sacrificed Leon's wife and blasphemed against God. I was really hoping the spin off would focus on the events of the game Lament of Innocence. As much as I love Richter and Maria, I really wanted to see Vlad's life as Mathias Cronqvist (his human life) since they had teased it so much with Leon's portrait as well as Lisa being the reincarnation of his first wife which I'm so sad that the show didn't highlight.