YMMV / Count and Countess

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Both Vlad Tepes and Elizabeth Bathory were pretty unsavory characters, by all historical accounts. The novel amps this up to eleven, if anything, but suggests it was their childhood (Vlad as a Child Soldier, Elizabeth as a cripple and a disgrace to her family name) that made them so cruel. Both Vlad and Elizabeth seem very moral in childhood, even kind, until life just says no.
• Moral Event Horizon: Vlad seems like a very nice, albeit unhinged, young boy, until he kills the Turkish couple who tried to give him shelter and food.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Because both main characters are very young when they first begin correspondence, it can easily read as middle-grade fiction... at first.

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