I always associated the Three Ladies of Castle Dracula in my mind as ‘Brides of Dracula’ because pop-culture osmosis and/or adults around me specifically referencing Hammer Films, even if that isn’t accurate to the text.
Still, with Dracula being a representation of inversions of the ‘natural order’, we have here a ‘til death do us part’ in which he’s Still Single but he hasn’t let go of his other possessions. He’s a warlord, boyar, master of all, and they’re part of what he owns. He doesn’t just treat employees and guests as property to do with as he wishes, but also the women he apparently once loved. Love and possession are apparently the same thing to him. Messed up.
Given the descriptions of the women, two of them seem to be at least locals, or of the same cultural background as Dracula himself (he did go into great excited detail about his history and his empire before, and the strength of his people, so it wouldn’t be that odd for him to be wife-shopping in the European region he conquered).
On the other hand, we have a woman described in a more Victorian style of beauty, and Johnathan has a ‘dreamy fear’ that he kind of recognises this third woman, the blonde woman. What if he does recognise her, from posters from music halls or theatres that he would have seen as a child? What if this third bride is a famous Englishwoman? An actress or performer who went missing on some tour decades ago? Hence the odd recognition he can’t place - she was a celebrity, and her pictures were around, but a young Johnathan would have no association with her because she was just before his time.
But Dracula had to get the idea to take over London (and then England) from somewhere. What if his new foreign bride wouldn’t stop talking about The Empire Where The Sun Never Sets, and possessive, obsessive Dracula went ‘I want that, too’?
Also, when the women come across Johnathan sleeping, the agreement of who to kiss him first is very quick. ‘Yours is the right’. What if she gets first dibs not because she’s Dracula’s current favourite or best or strongest wife/consort, but because Johnathan is her fellow Englishman? That she misses home so much, and her homesickness has been tainted by her vampirism that she just needs a little taste of home, no matter what that means? And her ‘sisters’ recognise that, and give her the right to kiss first, before they drain him dry?










