Is it Erzsebet (aka Elizabeth) Bathory? Or would Mary Tudor aka Bloody Mary be a contender?
Elizabeth Bathory, also known as Countess Dracula or Blood Countess, was said to have bathed in the blood of tortured and murdered women for the fun of it.
Historians believe she thought that by doing so she would become more beautiful and attain eternal youth.
Countess Elizabeth Bathory enjoyed power and had a vicious impetuosity that only became stronger in a land with no answerability for nobles and aristocrats.
Because of her bizarre appetites, history has regarded her as a cannibal or vampire. Which in itself is extremely rare because it’s seldom you hear of a female displaying vampire or cannibalistic appetites, especially one considered the most beautiful woman in Hungary at that time.
Countess Elizabeth Bathory was born to a powerful family at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in the early 1560s. Despite being born to a family of the privileged class, life was not easy for her and she wasn’t an easy child.
As a child, it is said she suffered from fits and aggressive uncontrolled rages, which could very well have been some type of brain disorder.
She was also known for her promiscuity. She got pregnant at the age of 14 by one of the peasants and was taken away to be secluded to avoid further embarrassment on her engagement to an aristocrat.
Countess Elizabeth Bathory married Count Ferencz Nádasdy at the age of 15 in order to join two powerful political families, both notorious for savage behavior.
She was surrounded by family members on both sides who practiced alchemy, witchcraft, devil worship, rape, and murder. Her new husband introduced her to new methods or torture and discipline, in which she took great pleasure in doing.
He often sent spells of black magic from his war travels to his wife to try out at home, as a token of his love for her. He also encouraged Countess Elizabeth to beat the servant girls to the brink of death when they were considered out of line.
Starting in 1585, she gave birth to her daughter Anna. Anna was followed by two more sisters, Ursula and Katherina, and her brother’s Andrew, Paul, in 1598, and then Miklós.
Surprisingly enough, Elizabeth is noted as being a very caring and protective mother. Her husband fell ill and died at the age of 51 and leaving Elizabeth, age 44, widowed. This is where her supposed renowned atrocities began.
In the early 1600s, it is rumored, she slapped a maid servant so hard, for pulling her hair while combing it, that she drew blood. The blood got on Elizabeth’s hand and she immediately thought that her skin looked rejuvenated from the freshness of her young maid.
Believing that she’d discovered the secret of eternal youth, she ordered the maid stripped and cut to drain her blood into a huge tub. Elizabeth jumped in and bathed thinking it would beautify her entire body.
From then on, some of the stories go, she was continually provided with fresh new girls for the blood draining rituals. She would torture the girls for weeks or even months.
The girls would be stabbed with scissors or knives, pricked with pins, even hung from the ceiling spurred with burning irons onto spikes in cages to bathe Bathory in a bloody shower.
In total, as witnessed by at least one witness, Countess Elizabeth Bathory killed approximately 612 women and documented their deaths in her diary.
A castle raid on December 30, 1610 ended the bloody terrors of Elizabeth Bathory. A trial was held where she refused to plead her innocence or guilt and she was sentenced to life in solitary confinement instead of execution.
It was against the law to execute her because of her nobility. In August of 1614 she was found dead in her cell, which ironically is noted as being the same torture chamber where she took the lives of all her victims.
It has also been argued that Countess Elizabeth Bathory was the victim of a conspiracy to rob her of her lands and wealth - that as a lone woman she was an easy target for malicious rumors and condemnation. The haste with which her "accomplices" were executed and the fact she never faced trial herself, in some minds, lend this theory some weight.
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