About

Name
Alucard
Alias
Vlad III Dracula(original name)
· · ·
Girlycard(by the fanbase)
Race
Vampire
Gender
Male
Age
567 years(Over 2000 in the manga)
Hair
Black
Eyes
Red
Height
6'3"
Weight
185 lbs
Status
Vampire Hunter(Hellsing Organization, Special Disposal Unit)
Quote
"Now I'll show you how real vampires do battle!"
Voice
Crispin Freeman
Debut
Order 01: The Dead
Anime
Hellsing

History

According to Hellsing canon, Alucard was born in the winter of 1431 as Vlad III Dracula, the son of Vlad II Dracul. He later became known as Vlad Ţepeş ("Vlad the Impaler"), and as Kazıklı Bey ("the Impaling Prince") by the Turks. He lived and reigned intermittently as the Voivode of Wallachia until his "death" in 1476, at the age of 45. Alucard recalls "that day" from 523 years ago in chapter 71 Castlevania (2). The circumstances of Vlad's "death" and transformation are shown in chapter 70 Castlevania, but exactly how he became a vampire is unknown. During this flashback, it is revealed that he was captured by the Ottoman Empire when he was a child and sodomized by a high ruler (known best for clenching a cross during the ordeal). When he became the voivode of Wallachia, he launched an all-out war on the Turks which devastated both sides. Eventually, his troops were defeated, his people were killed (many by his own hands), and his homeland was set ablaze. Vlad himself was to be executed. Before he was beheaded, he drank of the blood from the battlefield and became a true vampire. Accepting the powers of darkness, the cross he had always carried with him shattered.

Centuries later, in 1893, the events of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula unfold. Abraham Van Helsing, Arthur Holmwood, Quincey Morris, Jack Seward (Jonathan Harker, another character in the novel, is not mentioned) were able to defeat Vlad (then known as Count Dracula) and kill all of his servants. In the flashback dream sequence of volume 4 (episode 2 of the OVA series), Abraham remarks that Mina had been freed from the Count's grasp, just as she was in the novel. It is at this point where Alucard's backstory begins to deviate substantially from Bram Stoker's book. The Count was staked in the heart, but he was not destroyed. It remains uncertain if he was forced into servitude or if he was willing, but from that point on, the Count became a servant for Abraham and his descendants, serving each successive generation.

The next known account of Alucard's life is during World War II, in 1944. Count Dracula now went by a new name given to him by Integra's father, Sir Arthur Hellsing, which was Alucard. Alucard, along with a 14-year-old Walter C. Dornez, was sent to Warsaw, Poland, to stop Millennium's vampire production program. The results of this mission are largely unknown at this point, as it is recorded in the ongoing prequel to Hellsing, Hellsing: The Dawn. Decades later, in 1969, Alucard was imprisoned in a dungeon in Hellsing manor by Arthur. According to Sir Hugh Islands in chapter 75 Heart of Iron, Arthur came to believe that Alucard was "too powerful a drug to be used as more than the occasional medicine". Shortly after Arthur's death in 1989, Alucard was awakened and resuscitated by Integra's blood when she came to his cell seeking rescue and her shoulder was clipped by a bullet. After just 20 years of imprisonment, Alucard saved Integra (then only 12 years old) from her traitorous uncle, Richard, and became her servant.

[edit] Personality

As he is immortal and invincible, Alucard is very egotistical. He freely taunts and belittles his opponents, often allowing them to inflict seemingly fatal wounds before healing himself and obliterating his enemy. One of his favorite methods is allowing himself to literally be shot to pieces before simply flowing back together. It could accurately be said that rather than killing his opponents, Alucard breaks them. An example can be seen in volume 2 when Alucard fights Luke Valentine. When Luke gains an advantage over Alucard, victory seems within his grasp. The tides turn when Alucard shoots off Luke's legs, telling him to regenerate them and pick up his gun and fight back. When Luke fails to do so, Alucard transforms a part of himself into his hellhound and devours Luke, saying:

"As a vampire you were a pathetic piece of s**t, now you are nothing but dog s**t."

Alucard also expressed deep disappointment that Luke was not a more worthy adversary, and in both the anime and manga he seems to long to fight a truly equal opponent.

However, underneath his cocky, dark, arrogant attitude, Alucard is deeply sad and envious of humans, for they are blessed with the gift of death, while he himself is unable to die and must walk the Earth for eternity. Over the course of his existence, Alucard has come to realize that life needs death to make it precious. Alucard chose to become a monster to obtain power and escape death, and he regrets it. All of these feelings are shown at various points throughout the series, such as when Alucard tells the Queen that she is "that same saucy filly from 50 years ago" and that she is "truly beautiful now", when he becomes infuriated as Anderson stabs himself in the heart with the Helena's Nail in volume 8 (because Anderson is making the same mistake that Alucard made), and when Alucard says that Walter's old, aged body was "a trillion times more beautiful" than his new, vampiric body in chapter 74. His desire for a worthy opponent may be connected to his regret, as well; it could be interpreted as a desire to finally die in battle.

Arthur Hellsing explains it the best in chapter 72:

"For what they all seem to seek is to wage war, and endless desperate, blood-stained, struggles. Things quite close to crying loudly. I don't think they desire those things at all. On the contrary: all of this is their way of shouting and begging for death."

Alucard has expressed extreme disgust with the vampires he's been hunting for the last 100 years, especially when they kill without purpose. In chapter 3 of the manga (Murder Club), he lists the two vampires' pointless killing in his catalogue of how pathetic they are. In the TV version (Club M), Alucard makes his discontent apparent:

"You've gone and taken all those lives, and not even because you were thirsty. Is it fun? Is that what it takes for filth like you to get off?"

Despite this, he isn't entirely against immortality. Rather he believes it is a gift that must be earned and meritable only to certain personalities or perhaps characters of sufficient will which he may believe he lacks. As such he views suicide as the lowest of human will and a fool's way of escaping, being extremely offended when a GATE officer commits suicide to avoid being brutally killed by Alucard. He happily gave Seras immortality despite his self-reflection due to her indomitable will, courage, and unwavering resolve, even when facing off against the ghouls and the vampire priest. He also viewed Walter in the same regard for a time, even indirectly offering him immortality. It can be said that he believes that Walter "took" immortality rather than "earned" it.

Another important aspect of Alucard's personality is his relationship with God. As a human, he was a crusader, a knight who fought against the Muslim Turks in the defense of Christianity. As a warrior, he believed that words alone were not enough; that one must accomplish deeds in order to attract God's attention, a belief shared by his rival, Alexander Anderson. In accordance with this belief, he never asked God for favors, but instead did many great and terrible things. He became famous for punishing evildoers in his own lands and abroad, for waging a war against the Muslims in hopes of bringing down "the New Jerusalem," and for sacrificing his troops and his people to achieve his own goals. When he lost his war and was captured by the Turks, he realized that he had failed. Feeling abandoned by God, he abandoned God in turn. In a moment of perfect despair, he drank up the blood of his scorched and besieged homeland and became a vampire.

It's possible that Dracula's plan in England, which began with invasion and probably would've ended in conquest, was a way of avenging himself against God, whom he blamed for his own mistakes (this is similar to how Count Dracula was portrayed in Francis Ford Coppola's film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, which Hirano has cited as one of his greatest sources of inspiration).

[edit] Powers and abilities

Alucard demonstrates, in various incarnations of the series Hellsing, an astonishing and overwhelming range of supernatural attacks; these include, but are probably not limited to:

* Immortality (which is connected with how many souls he has absorbed).
* Regeneration: Alucard's ability to regenerate is considerably greater than any other vampire's, and may be due to the Hellsing family's experimentation. He has regenerated from a pool of blood and from being blown to shreds by gunfire.
* Superhuman senses.
* Incredible accuracy: Alucard has been known to hit targets at great range using handguns while looking the other way.
* Superhuman strength: extent is unknown, but Alucard can physically rip humans apart with ease.[2]
* Superhuman speed: He can move faster than can be seen.[2]
* Intangibility: The ability to pass through solid objects.[3]
* Invisibility: He seems to turn invisible for a moment when fighting Incognito in the anime.
* The ability to defy gravity to an uncertain limit.[4] He is also seen leaping impossible distances and can run up walls.
* Manipulation of shadows into physical form. (Although vampires controlling shadows isn't unheard of, the artwork sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish between blood and shadows.)
* Shapeshifting: Alucard can transform himself or parts of himself into bats, insects, snakes, hellhounds, a little girl,[5] an amorphous mass of darkness, and many other forms
* The ability to control the weather to an unknown limit, as demonstrated by the fog created when he returned to London aboard the H.M.S Eagle.
* Teleportation.
* Telekinesis: In the TV series, Alucard is able to lift a FREAK chip and was able to load the Jackal and pull its slide mentally. The exact weight of these things is unknown, but Alucard is never seen using telekinesis to move anything heavier than a human being.
* Telepathy: in the anime, Alucard can speak telepathically to anyone he chooses, but in the manga, his telepathy is limited to his fledgling.
* Mind reading: in the television series, Alucard can read the mind of anyone he chooses, but in the manga, he can only read the minds of the people whose souls he has absorbed)
* Mind Control or Hypnosis (fans sometimes call it the "sex beam" after a remark from Pip).[6]
* Summoning familiars, the souls of those whose blood he has sucked in a variety of forms that either sprout from his body or swarm about him as an army numbering in the thousands (these familiars can also include animals such as horses but Alucard can only use this ability when control art restriction system level zero is released. It is suggested that this ability leaves him relatively vulnerable, as it releases the lives of others that he uses to sustain himself). Other familiars include a giant, amorphous hellhound (which Walter calls "Baskerville"), and other creatures such as bats and insects.
* The ability to suck a person's blood and absorb their soul and, consequently, their knowledge and memories. (He learns more about Millennium after absorbing Tubalcain.) He can also absorb blood through his clothes and skin, as he does with Luke Valentine's blood after his hellhound had eaten Luke's body.
* Hibernation: Alucard is able to survive long periods of time without consuming blood, but is able to fight at a usual level of strength after drinking blood.
* Apparent immunity or great resistance to the weaknesses most vampires possess. (Sunlight is not lethal to him. Alucard "simply hates it").
* The ability to sense supernatural activity (In The Dawn Alucard knew the Captain was a werewolf the moment he saw him, and in the OVA, could see the blessings on Father Anderson's bayonetts).
* In addition to his superhuman abilities, Alucard also possess centuries of combat experience. While he usually relies on crushing his opponents with sheer power, he does at times use strategy. When he fought Alhambra, Alucard used shadow duplicates to distact him, allowing Alucard to close the distance between them and deliver the deathblow.

[edit] Weapons

Alucard is an exceedingly lethal combatant even unarmed, due to his extensive supernatural abilities and strength, but he also uses various weapons in battle. These have included swords, machineguns, and traditional vampire-slaying tools such as stakes and crosses. Additionally, Alucard has two signature weapons, a pair of oversized and overpowered handguns named the .454 Casull and the Jackal.

* Hellsing ARMS .454 Casull Auto - The size of this semi-automatic pistol is debated as either 29cm or 39cm in length, but this does in fact depend on sources. In both the anime and the manga, when the Casull fails to kill Anderson, Alucard specifically asks Walter for "something bigger" (however, it must be noted that, except in the case of guns with barrels too small to fully burn the propellant, enlarging the firearm does not affect its power, using the same cartridge). Despite Alucard's displeasure with the Casull's size, however, it is too heavy and unwieldy for a human to use, yet a perfect match for Alucard's strength. It fires custom-made explosive .454 Casull rounds, with the steel bullets bearing a core made from the melted silver Christian cross from Lancaster Cathedral. One estimate places the number of rounds in the magazine to be around fifteen, based on counting the number of rounds fired before reloading was required. For that to be the case, though, the magazine would have to be double-stack which would pose issues stemming from the physical features of the .454 Casull round such as the incredibly large dimensions of the grip and reliably feeding rimmed ammunition from a box magazine which is an issue even with single-stack magazines. In addition, neither the weapon nor its grip is depicted as being particularly wide when compared to the barrel. Thus, the weapon most likely has a single-stack magazine meaning a capacity of 7 rounds as seen in other .45-caliber handguns with single-stack magazines such as the M1911 and SIG P220. However, there is no official magazine capacity. Although Alucard has reloaded it at many points throughout both the manga and anime, Hirano has joked in the back of volume 1 that "They're all cosmoguns that can hold a million rounds". This is also evidenced in the first OVA, where Alucard takes out a large group of ghouls without reloading. One plausible explanation is that as the Casull is clearly custom-made, it would not be unreasonable to assume that it has an enlarged capacity. It can also be argued that he reloads it "off-screen" or too quickly to be seen.
o In the original fan-translation of the Hellsing manga volume 2, the translators incorrectly translated Walter's line referring to the gun, making him call it the "Joshua" even though the Katakana reads "KASURU", which would be the correct Katakana for "Casull". Since then, many fans have perpetuated the name, so much so that ADV (the Official European Distributor for the TV Series) called it "Joshua" on their Official Website, the Special Features, and the booklets on their DVD release. Regardless, this name is incorrect as it never appears in the Original Japanese version of either the Manga, TV series, or OVA, or any official Translations of Hellsing, not even ADV's, as they use Geneon's dub and subtitles.

* Hellsing ARMS 13 mm Auto Anti-Freak Combat Pistol 'Jackal' - With a length of 39 cm (Almost 1' 4"), weight of 16 kg (35.2 lbs), and made of black gunmetal, it is not a weapon a normal man could even hope to wield, but as Walter says, "It was never meant for a man." It fires special 13 mm armor-piercing, explosive, Mercury-core baptized bullets, with casings of Macedonian silver, powered by "Marvell's Chemical Cartridge N.N.A.9." It has six rounds per magazine. It is designed almost exclusively as a weapon to use against Iscariot's Alexander Anderson, who shrugged off the Casull rounds with ease. The words 'Jesus Christ is in Heaven now' are engraved upon it, in mockery of a similar statement on Anderson's gloves. Contrary to popular belief, the weapon does have a pistol slide; however there appears to be none at all since the entire upper assembly is the slide, and moves only a minimal distance (relative to the gun's length). The Jackal has its ejector port at the left-hand position (ejecting towards the left), this probably means that it is meant to be used in conjunction with the Casull and in the manga and anime Alucard is usually shown wielding both guns.
o The Jackal has recently been revealed to have been created by Millennium, and is now destroyed, courtesy of The Dok.