Wallachia is a province of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria. Walachia was founded in 1290 by a Transylvanian named Radu Negru, or Rudolph the Black. It first emerged as a political entity during the late thirteenth century from the fall of the East Roman Empire. The first prince of Wallachia was Basarab the Great (1310-1352), an ancestor of Dracula.

Dracula's grandfather, Prince Mircea the Old, reigned from 1386 to 1418. However, by the late fifteenth century the House of Basarab had split into two rival clans; the descendants of Prince Dan and those of Prince Mircea the Old (Dracula's grandfather). Mircea had an illegitimate son, Vlad (the father of Dracula), born around 1390, who was educated in Hungary and Germany. Vlad served as a page for King Sigismund of Hungary, who became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1410. His son, Vlad Tepes (Dracula) was born sometime between 1430 and 1431 in a Transylvanian town called Schassburg (aka Sighisoara).

Soon after his birth, Vlad Dracul, joined the Order of the Dragon and took an oath that he and his family would be dedicated to fighting the Turks, who had begun an attack upon Europe. The Order of the Dragon, founded by Sigismund of Luxembourg (king of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, and Holy Roman Emperor) to uphold Christianity and defend the Empire against the Ottoman Turks. He was then appointed the post of military governor of Transylvania, a post he held from 1431 to 1935.

Either because the people believed the dragon to represent the devil, or of the fact that the Romanian archaic word for dragon was "drac", his subjects called him Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Devil). In archaic Romanian the ending -ulea meant "the son of". Vlad III thus became Vlad Draculea, "The Son of the Devil" (or "of the Dragon").
Dracula learned all the skills of war and peace that were deemed necessary for a Christian knight. His first tutor in his apprenticeship to knighthood was an elderly boyar whom had fought under the banner of Enguerrand de Courcy at the battle of Nicolopolis against the Turks.

Dracula's father was not content to remain a mere governor forever.. During his years in Transylvania, he gathered supporters for his plan to seize Walachia's throne from its current occupant, a Danesti prince named Alexandru I. In late 1436, Vlad Dracul killed Alexandru and became Prince Vlad II, ruler of Walachia.
In 1442 Turkey invaded Transylvania. Vlad tried to stay neutral, but Hungary's rulers blamed him and drove him and his family out of Walachia. A Hungarian general, Janos Hunyadi (who may have been the illegitimate son of Emperor Sigismund) made a Danesti named Basarab II the prince of Walachia.

The following year Vlad regained the throne with the help of the sultan of Turkey. In 1444 he sent his two younger sons to Turkey to prove his loyalty. Dracula was about 13. He spent the next four years in Adrianople, Turkey as a hostage.