The “Blood Countess” was called the world’s deadliest female murderer, but researchers have a new theory.

More than 400 years after her death, the truth about the “Blood Countess,” the Hungarian woman who was allegedly the world’s most prolific serial killer, remains unclear.

In her palace on a high peak in what is now Čachtice in western Slovakia, Elizabeth Báthory is alleged to have tortured and killed about 650 virgins and girls, giving rise to gruesome legends that she enjoyed washing the blood of her victims out of belief. it would help him keep his youth.

Rumors of Báthory’s cruelty spread throughout the Hungarian Empire in the early 17th century, and after a royal inquiry, four of her servants were found guilty of murder and brutally executed. The Blood Countess was arrested and imprisoned within the walls of her castle until her death in 1614.

Báthory’s macabre story has captured the imagination, and invited speculation, for centuries, spawning books, films, television series and local folklore. But some researchers have questioned whether she was really responsible for this alleged violence and suggested that as a wealthy and powerful woman in late Renaissance Europe, she may have been the victim.

“Was Báthory a serial killer who abused and tortured 650 young women for no pleasure?” asked Annouchka Bayley, a British author and academic who recently published a novel about a rich man. “I am very sure that, as we put it in England, it is a tailor’s work.”

Bayley, author of “The Blood Countess” and associate professor of art and creativity at Cambridge University, says the popular narrative of Báthory as a serial killer relies on a “woman as a monster” that is not supported by available evidence.

Rather than a murderer, he argues, Bathory may have been a revolutionary who was a threat to the state’s power structure, especially given the evidence that she taught many young women to read and may have owned a printing press – radical actions during her time.

“You have to remember, these are the years of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation when people were burned at the stake for their heretical beliefs. The printing press, which had begun to flourish throughout Europe, gave people access to a wide range of information. , and this proved to be very dangerous,” said Bayley.

“That’s enough, I’m going to go, hold on a little longer. Let’s stop here and investigate.”

Báthory, born into an aristocratic family in 1560, married a wealthy Hungarian nobleman, Ferenc Nádasdy, in 1575, and the couple controlled vast wealth and estates. Nádasdy was a prominent soldier and a key figure in seizing control of many Hungarian lands that had been taken over by the Ottoman Empire.

But after Nádasdy’s sudden death in 1604, Báthory inherited his land and wealth and commanded a “Jeff Bezos-style fortune,” according to Bayley.

It was that fortune and position of power that Bayley and other scholars have pointed to as a possible motive for some powerful people of the time to seek to destroy Báthory and take her fortune.

Báthory’s refusal to remarry after her husband’s death, and her activities to educate young women “will send alarm bells ringing to anyone in power,” Bayley said.

Doubts about Báthory’s case are not limited to academics – the question can be divided into the Slovakian region, Čachtice where the atrocities allegedly took place. Uncertainty about where Báthory is buried has also given rise to speculation. He is thought to have been buried in a vault under the local church, but there have been rumors that his body was later removed, and the church did not allow the exhumation.

The local museum dedicated to the countess in Čachtice, and the groups of tourists and residents who climb the rocky hills to the castle above the town are proof of the power her legend still has over the region.

But Ivan Pisca, a local farmer, said the power of Báthory’s story may diminish as generations pass.

“There are legends about Elizabeth Báthory, who loves blood compared to the little girls she abused and killed,” he said. “Old people believe these myths, but young people may know little about them.”

Bayley believes that popular culture over the centuries has held an undue fascination with gruesome and violent stories, and that history often discriminates against strong women.

By “retelling the counter-narrative” of Báthory’s story, he said, he hopes to provide a measure of justice for her and all others history may have unfairly condemned.

“You deserve better, we all deserve better,” Bayley said. “Is Báthory’s justice 500 years later, ‘She didn’t do it’? Or is Báthory’s justice actually a reversal of the monster trope of all women and all men?”