Who is Alucard?
Yes. Alucard is Dracula, and the manga only pretends otherwise for seven volumes.
Spell the name backwards and the secret is out: Alucard is Count Dracula, the vampire of Bram Stoker’s novel, defeated by Abraham Van Helsing a century before the story opens and bound to serve the Van Helsing family ever since. Volume 8 of the manga drops the hints and shows his human life outright: Vlad III of Wallachia, the prince history calls the Impaler.
THE IDENTITY
Dracula, in serviceThe anagram
Alucard is Dracula reversed. The manga seeds the answer from the first chapter and confirms it in volume 8, whose flashbacks show his life as Vlad Tepes and the arrival of his ship, the Demeter, out of Stoker’s novel.
The defeat
In Hellsing’s version of Stoker’s events, Van Helsing staked Dracula but did not destroy him. The Count was taken, bound, and put to work: the family’s prisoner became its weapon.
The new name
The name Alucard was given to him by Arthur Hellsing, Integra’s father. The vampire hunter’s descendant renamed the vampire, and the servant has answered to it since.
The seal
His power is held under a restriction system controlled by his master’s command. The drama of the character is the leash as much as the strength: he is at his most frightening when Integra lets it out.
THE DESIGN
Why he looks like thatBuilt for gunplay
Hirano wanted a story centred on gunplay and decided a traditional vampire would be incompatible with firearms. So Alucard was redesigned: the wide hat, the long red coat, a silhouette built to hold a gun in each hand. His two pistols even have names, the Casull and the Jackal.
The Vash problem
Readers compared the design to Vash the Stampede from Trigun, which ran in the same magazine. Hirano has said he came to regret the sunglasses for exactly that reason.
Two voices
In Japanese he is voiced by Joji Nakata; in English by Crispin Freeman, for whom Alucard was the first big role of his career. Freeman has said the television Alucard and the Ultimate Alucard feel like nearly different men.