The Dracula household’s journey to Buda

The Dracula household’s journey to Buda is both a relocation and an act of calculated concealment: Vlad moves Glynis Wright toward the brother she longs to see while arranging the encounter to keep Andrew from learning what she has become. Recorded in Glynis’s journal, the journey shifts her from the closed world of the castle into a city associated with her mortal happiness, but its promised freedom remains conditional on Vlad’s command.

Causes and Conditions

The journey is set in motion by news that Andrew is coming to Buda with an English physician to examine Glynis and determine whether she can travel to England. Vlad refuses to take Andrew to the castle. Instead, he decides to meet him in Buda and have Sir Stephen arrange for Andrew to stay elsewhere, keeping the brother and sister apart from Vlad’s home and its vulnerabilities.

The explanation Vlad gives is practical as well as deceptive. He says that his Buda house is undergoing renovations, including additions intended to protect it from vampire hunters, and that Andrew should be told the household cannot accommodate guests. Vlad also means to represent himself and Glynis as married, with Glynis presented as Countess Dracula of Wallachia. The visit is therefore organized around a false account of her condition and their relationship, not around an honest reunion.

Vlad dictates the details of Glynis’s appearance as part of that concealment. She must bring no dress or jewelry Andrew would recognize, since Vlad has told him that everything was lost in the accident. Instead, she is to wear dresses her mother bought in Paris and jewels belonging to Erzsébet Dolingen. Vlad also plans to have a veil made to cover Glynis’s face around Andrew. These instructions turn clothing and adornment into tools for managing what her brother can know: even the familiar signs of her former life must be selectively replaced.

Departure and the Promise of Freedom

On 5 March 1820, Glynis records that the party has departed for Buda and that her excitement is difficult to contain. The prospect of seeing Andrew gives the journey an emotional pull that Vlad’s plans cannot entirely govern. Yet the reunion is also a source of fear: Glynis knows Andrew may be in danger if Vlad’s temper turns against him, and she does not want her brother to see her transformed state.

Vlad frames the move as a conditional enlargement of Glynis’s liberty. In Buda, he says, she will be allowed to hunt on her own and learn the powers of the night. He expects her to demonstrate loyalty and casts the journey as preparation for her becoming his true or first bride when he establishes himself in England. The offer has two faces: Glynis is to receive more room to act, but that freedom is granted by Vlad, tied to obedience, and folded into his larger plan.

That tension is sharpened by Glynis’s earlier experience of castle life. She describes herself as Vlad’s slave, resents being made to exchange her own clothes for an outfit she finds degrading, and regards the castle as a new enclosure after the restrictive society from which she once wanted to escape. The departure thus matters not because captivity has ended, but because its setting and terms are changing. Buda offers movement, a brother’s presence, and the possibility of independent hunting; Vlad still controls the summons that can call her back to him.

The Road Through the Carpathians

Glynis’s account contrasts her inward journey with Vlad’s silence. She loses herself in memories of mortal life in England: tea parties, balls, shopping expeditions, her siblings and parents, friends, and the country she remembers with affection. Vlad remains still and reflective, watching the terrain. Glynis wonders whether he is remembering his own former life, but records no answer from him. The same carriage therefore carries two different relations to the past: her longing for a lost family world, and his unreadable attention to the road and whatever history it recalls.

The passage through the mountains becomes physically perilous. A violent storm breaks over the carriage as it crosses a treacherous pass. Lightning exposes the route, the carriage groans, and Glynis grabs the safety straps as it swerves sharply around a turn. Vlad, by contrast, looks at the thunderheads without apparent concern and calls the night lovely. The contrast places Glynis’s bodily alarm beside Vlad’s composure, making the natural danger another measure of the unequal conditions in which they travel.

The account then reaches Bistrița in the early hours, before sunrise. Mist obscures the town’s ancient buildings, and the air is crisp as the driver brings the carriage to the Golden Krone Hotel. The proprietor hurries out to welcome the travelers as Count and Countess Dracula; porters in traditional dress come to unload their luggage. The welcome gives public form to the identity Vlad intends to perform in Buda. Glynis is received not simply as herself, but under the married title that will help sustain his account to Andrew.

Arrival in Buda

On 9 March 1820, Glynis records the party’s arrival in Buda, Hungary. The moon shines on the Danube as the carriage crosses the pontoon bridge linking Buda with Pesth, then climbs the cobbled streets toward Vlad’s estate in the hills. The city is not an unfamiliar refuge: Glynis identifies it as the last place where she was happy in mortal life. Its streets and remembered landmarks bring a lost life close enough to feel almost restored, even though she approaches them as an undead woman under Vlad’s control.

Vlad appears to relax once they reach the city and points out landmarks, including the Royal Palace. Glynis welcomes the return to a modern city after the journey through the mountains. But arrival does not undo the conditions imposed before departure. Soon after reaching Buda, Vlad sends for a dressmaker to make veils that will hide Glynis’s beauty from Andrew, and insists she wear one whenever her brother is near. Glynis finds the heavy veil frustrating; as Andrew’s arrival approaches, she realizes that its layers of organza and lace will obstruct her own view of him. She finally tears it from her face and throws it onto the bed.

Significance of the Journey

The route from castle to city changes Glynis’s surroundings without resolving the conflict between freedom and possession. Buda is at once a place of remembered happiness and the stage Vlad selects for deception. His plans preserve the appearance of a conventional marriage while separating Andrew from the castle, controlling Glynis’s dress, and determining what she may reveal. The journey’s practical arrangements—where Andrew will stay, which clothes Glynis may wear, and how her face will be covered—make the larger coercion visible in ordinary details.

At the same time, Glynis’s excitement, memories, and resistance keep the journey from being merely Vlad’s operation. She anticipates seeing her brother, fears for his safety, and later rejects the veil that is meant to regulate her appearance before him. The carriage carries her toward a reunion she wants but cannot freely shape. Its arrival in Buda is therefore a threshold rather than a release: the geography opens up, while Vlad’s power continues to define the terms on which Glynis may move, hunt, and be seen.