Hungary functions as more than a backdrop in the narrative: it is the territory through which Glynis Wright moves between confinement and apparent freedom, between a brother’s living world and Vlad Dracula’s undead court, and between imposed feminine display and attempts at self-definition. Its most important associated setting is Buda, where Vlad Dracula relocates his household and presents Glynis as Countess Dracula, before bringing her back to Dracula’s Castle under the continuing force of the beckoning.

Setting and Narrative Function

Hungary is the national setting named for Buda, the city where Vlad Dracula establishes the Dracula Estate and brings Glynis Wright out of the castle’s immediate confinement. The move does not free Glynis from Vlad’s authority, but it changes the form that authority takes. In Buda, she is promised opportunities to hunt alone, to learn the powers of the night, and to occupy the position of Vlad’s true bride when he eventually moves to England. The country therefore becomes a transitional space: less enclosed than Dracula’s Castle, yet still governed by the same master–bride blood bond and by Vlad’s demands.

The Hungarian setting also carries the contrast between aristocratic spectacle and hidden supernatural control. Glynis arrives at the Dosza Palace for an opera evening in an elaborate black-and-gold dress, standing beside her living brother Andrew Wright and the dark figure who claims to be her husband. The public world of Hungary allows Vlad to display her as a countess, but the display conceals the coercion beneath it. Her title, clothing, jewelry, and veil make her status visible while hiding the fact that her movements and appearance remain regulated.

Buda and the Politics of Appearance

In Buda, Vlad orders a dressmaker to create special veils so that Glynis’s “ethereal beauty” will not be recognized by Andrew Wright. The veil is not simply a garment; it is a device of concealment that protects Vlad’s false account that Glynis was lost in the carriage accident. Vlad also instructs her not to take any dress, piece of jewelry, or other possession that Andrew would recognize. Instead, she is to wear dresses purchased by her mother in Paris and jewelry belonging to Erzsébet Dolingen. Her visible identity is thus assembled from displaced objects: family clothing, another woman’s jewels, and a title supplied by Vlad.

Glynis experiences the veil as an irritating physical sign of her lack of control. Before Andrew’s arrival, she struggles with the organza and lace, realizing that the covering will prevent her from truly seeing him. Her frustration culminates when she rips it from her face and throws it onto the bed. The gesture briefly reverses the imposed performance, but it cannot undo the larger deception surrounding her visit. Even in Buda, the possibility of reunion with Andrew is inseparable from concealment and danger.

The clothing required of Glynis also connects Hungary to the gender politics that shape her transformation. Before entering the vampire world, she and May Wright speak of the desire to live as a woman with the freedoms conventionally reserved for men. After her transformation, Glynis first finds relief in dressing herself without a corset and in wearing a favorite gown of fine Italian silk. Yet the freedom is immediately compromised when the castle’s rules force her into clothing she regards as degrading and sexually objectifying. Hungary continues this contradiction: fine dresses and the title of Countess Dracula make her appear powerful, while the veil and Vlad’s orders expose her dependence.

Buda as Temporary Freedom

Vlad presents Buda as a reward for Glynis’s loyalty. He tells her that she will have a freedom unavailable to her at the castle, that she will hunt independently, and that she will be trained in the powers of the night. He also makes clear that this freedom is conditional. When Vlad calls her through the beckoning, she must come to him, and her promised elevation to first bride depends on her obedience. Buda therefore enlarges Glynis’s range without removing the structure of servitude that governs her.

The city briefly allows Glynis to inhabit a more convincing public identity. At the opera, she descends the stairs in a sumptuous black-and-gold dress and feels radiant, alive, and every inch the Countess Dracula, despite knowing that she is undead. Andrew Wright represents “light and goodness” in her perception, while Vlad Dracula carries a dark and menacing atmosphere. Hungary makes it possible for these two figures to stand together before her, turning the location into a stage on which Glynis’s divided loyalties and divided nature become visible.

The setting also becomes a place of threatened revelation. Glynis longs to see Andrew but fears for his safety because Vlad is temperamental and dangerous. Her presence in Buda is sustained by a cover story and by the manipulation of what Andrew can see. The city’s social grandeur does not dispel the Gothic secrecy; it gives that secrecy a more elaborate costume.

Return to Dracula’s Castle

Glynis’s Hungarian trajectory ends with a return to Dracula’s Castle. She and Vlad travel back on a clear night beneath glittering stars, and the journey restores the castle’s psychological presence even before they arrive. Buda had begun to feel like a different life, filled with flowing gowns and heavy jewelry, whereas the castle had become remote and surreal in memory. The return reverses that distance and places Glynis once more within the architecture of Vlad’s power.

Vlad’s appearance during the return emphasizes the connection between Hungary and his historical identity. His hair has grown out, his mustache is thick, and his rural traveling clothes reveal the old-world warrior beneath the aristocratic presentation. He is quiet, guarded, and marked by dark fires in his green eyes. Glynis, dressed in traveling clothes and nervous about the castle, wonders whether Vlad will again require her to dress as part of his harem. She suspects that their relationship has moved beyond those earlier roles, but the uncertainty itself shows that Buda has not dissolved the underlying hierarchy.

Symbolic Significance

Hungary marks the unstable middle ground between Glynis’s former life and her completed vampire existence. In England, she had associated womanhood with social restriction and imagined freedom through the ability to act like a man. In Dracula’s Castle, she becomes trapped in a supernatural version of the same unequal order. In Buda, the contradiction becomes especially visible: she receives elegant clothing, a noble title, new hunting privileges, and proximity to her brother, yet every benefit is mediated by Vlad’s control.

The country’s function is therefore transitional rather than liberating. Buda gives Glynis movement, spectacle, and a temporary sense of vitality, but it also demands disguises, borrowed symbols, and obedience. Her nightmares about the sisters after Vlad’s return show that the supernatural conflict remains active even while she is in Hungary. The eventual journey back to Dracula’s Castle confirms that geographic relocation cannot by itself break the blood bond. Hungary becomes the place where Glynis most clearly experiences the difference between appearing free and possessing freedom.