Icons of Misbehavior: Elizabeth Bathory Edition

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Misbehavior is probably not the right term. Elizabeth Bathory was more of an icon of 16th Century Transylcanian true crime, serial killing, and one the most gruesome GRWM routines throughout history. But it’s spooky season, so buckle up.

Bathory was born into a powerful aristocratic family in 16th century Transylvania. At a time when many women weren’t even literate, Elizabeth was highly educated and could speak and read Hungarian, Latin, Greek, and German. 

She got married at the ripe old age of 15, and her husband Ferenc spent most of his time away from home engaged in battles at their turbulent borders. Elizabeth being well-educated and savvy, Ferenc trusted her to run their estates largely on her own. Thus, Elizabeth was often left to her own devices, and she began to develop a penchant for torturing the female help. 

And people say women don’t have hobbies.

She likely acquired her taste for pain through through administering unusually harsh discipline to disobedient servants (à la Emily Gilmore). But her sadism progressed and eventually escalated into to maiming, torturing, and murder. 

In order to scale up her operations, Bathory started hiring a new type of servant— those with similar predilection for hurting people. One of these servants, an elderly woman named Darvulia allegedly instructed Bathory in increasingly creative sadistic techniques (and Darvulia supposedly continued her tutelage even after she went blind). 

It’s likely that Bathory also got assistance from her husband in her gruesome escapades. He was famously violent in battle and likely knew a thing or two about how to disassemble a body. This theory is supported by a letter from a clergy member at the Bathory local church in 1602 that criticized the pair and Darvulia for their shared cruelty.

Allegedly, after her husband died in 1604, she doubled down on her extracurricular activities and hired more torturer-slash-servants. Together, they’d whip, burn, and stab other female servants— and Bathory was said to enjoy biting her victims until they bled (it’s giving Dracula). Other stories report a woman being repeatedly doused with ice water and left exposed in the cold to freeze to death, a woman smeared with honey then tied to a tree to be eaten by bugs, and women locked in spiked cages while getting stabbed at with spears as Bathory talked dirty to them. 

Apparently the screams coming from the Bathory house made it hard for the next-door-neighbor clergymen to sleep at night. 

As if this weren’t enough, Bathory is most famous for allegedly bathing in the blood of virgins in hopes that it would make her look younger. According to legend, she once hit a servant and then noticed that where the girl’s blood had touched her, she saw improved texture. This inspired her to cut the girl’s throat and bleed her out over a tub, which Bathory then bathed in. The legend continues to say that Elizabeth thought the results were mid, so she decided to upgrade to the blood of noble virgins instead (for the record, I don’t get the sense that this worked either, so don’t get any big ideas). 

The rumors about her creepy self-care regimen don’t really show up until the 18th century so they may be totally false, but we do know that during her own time, people began to report a lot of mysterious deaths at the Bathory house. Deceased female servants with strange wounds began showing up in such unusual numbers at the local churchyard, the clergymen actually refused to bury anymore of them. When questioned about it Elizabeth said, “Don’t ask how they died, just bury them.”

People finally had enough of Bathory’s bloody hobby when daughters of the aristocracy began disappearing. Bathory and her clique of sadistic henchmen were convicted, and Transylvanian justice sentenced her servants to being tortured and burned alive while Bathory was simply put under house arrest in a small room in her own castle.

Some people question whether any of this stuff is actually true, because there were political reasons to want Bathory out of the picture. Could these all have been rumors just to eliminate a powerful enemy? 

Maybe. But there are pretty vivid court documents from the time with hundreds of witnesses sharing accounts of her crimes and the number of victims is estimated between 40-600. But perhaps it only became useful to call her out on when she became politically inconvenient. 

Happy Halloween. 

Source consulted: Absolute Power: The Real Lives of Europe’s Most Infamous Rulers by C.S. Denton

Skincare:

Bumble and bumble Seaweed air dry cream*

Dieux baptism cleanser*

Nuface

Dieux Auracle eye gel + forever eye mask*

Dieux Air angel gel cream*

Trader Joe’s daily facial sunscreen 

First makeup look: 

Huda beauty easy blur primer*

Huda beauty easy blur airbrush foundation in color, vanilla*

Armani luminous silk cheek tint in 62*

Natasha Denona concealer in Y1

Fenty contour in amber 01

Huda beauty, cherry blossom cake powder*

Natasha denona “I need a nude” palette, using colors, fair, mesh, tender, whisper, sheen

Maybelline the falsies surreal

Fenty traced out in thugz blush too

For Botox: Dr. Michael Kim

*Gifted to Hannah

Second makeup look:

Bumble and Bumble hairdresser’s invisible oil*

Milk hydro grip setting spray

Charlotte tilbury flawless filter in shade 1

Huda beauty easy blur airbrush foundation in color, milkshake*

Fenty contour in amber 01

Natasha Denona concealer in Y1

Huda Beauty blush filter in shade black cherry*

Huda beauty, cherry blossom cake powder*

Rare beauty highlighter in shade enlighten

Armani liquid eye tint in shade 70 M*

Natasha denona retro glam palette

Tarte tarteist pro amazonian clay palette

Rare beauty perfect strokes in shade true black

Sephora brush tip liquid liner in black

Make up forever lipstick Note: The shade I used (m500) is discontinued but there are some other very bold colors found on this link.

Maybelline the falsies surreal mascara in blackest black

*Gifted to Hannah

Bloodbath Black Manhattan

Ingredients:

• 3 oz Frozen Black Cherry-Infused Wild Turkey 101
• .75 oz Averna
• .25 oz Tempus Fugit Creme de Cacao
• 2 Dashes Orange Bitters
• Blood Orange Twist, for Garnish

Instructions:

Stir 50 times in a frozen mixing glass ¾ full of ice, double strain into a frozen coupe, garnish, and serve.

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