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| | Agni Online |
 | | In the Middle Ages, when Transylvania was at the perimeter of the Hungarian Kingdom, many peoples settled there to fortify the land against invasions from the east; in the Renaissance, many other peoples found in Transylvania a fertile home rich in resources and safe from the upheavals and persecutions elsewhere in Europe. |
 | | By the seventeenth century, Transylvania was inhabited by Hungarians, Romanians, Germans, Jews, Gypsies and many smaller ethnic groups; and although it was by turns a part of the Hungarian, Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Austro-Hungarian empires as well as an independent principality, its rulers were never able to give equal political power to all its peoples. |
 | | Ironically, it was probably not its vampire lore but the notorious instability of Transylvania in the Victorian era that prompted Bram Stoker to send his protagonist there: in the twilight days of the British Empire, the ethnic turmoil embodied in Count Dracula may well have been more horrifying than any of his unusual appetites. |
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