The dark and twisted have always served as inspiration to artists, even if sometimes “dark” means inhumane crimes and murders. An example is the notorious case of Elizabeth Báthory, the so-called Hungarian “blood countess,” who seems to have inspired the conceptualized music authored by the British extreme-metal band Cradle of Filth. One of their studio albums, Cruelty and the Beast, released in 1998, was based on the sick legacy of the blood countess.
Cruelty and the Beast is not the only artistic output based on the stories of the countess' gruesome killings. The album itself incorporates narrative bits from the 1971 film Countess Dracula, a British horror film that explored Báthory's wrongdoings.
As much as one may wish that Elizabeth Báthory was pure myth, she was a real person, born in 1560, in Transylvania. She was raised in a wealthy household, and her family was well noted in the region for having produced a dozen prominent people, kings and nobles included.
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