Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe, later Florence Stoker, is often footnoted as Bram Stoker’s wife. I think of her as the unseen hand that kept 'Dracula' alive in public memory. When F. W. Murnau’s 1922 film 'Nosferatu' adapted Dracula without permission, Florence, as the Stoker estate’s literary executor, pursued a legal case that ended with a court ordering the destruction of the film’s negatives and prints.

I come from Transylvania, the mythic land people project onto the story. So this portrait is a tribute and a reversal: not Dracula as monster, but Florence as guardian. The scratches and painterly ruptures echo damaged celluloid and rewritten narratives, reminding us that myths survive not only through blood, but through authorship, refusal and fierce protection.