Read the illustrated Moore book last night. Why does she wear a scarf? The (Moore) book doesn’t say.
And what is this big hush, hush scandal she was involved in?
There’s a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen trivia account here:
Annotations to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:
http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Jess%20Nevins/League%20of%20Extraordinary%20Gentlemen/LoEG%20index.htm
Mina Murray (Harker) was, of course, Jonathan Harker’s finacee then bride in Dracula. One suspects that she’s hiding bite marks, especially since the current movie shows her as a vampire, apparently. (This might be in the second series, which I haven’t read. I’ve avoided the notes on it, too.) It’s a little odd, since IIRC, Mina wasn’t bitten, but forced to drink Dracula’s blood, a scene described twice in the Stoker novel. But Moore likes to change things around, as you may have noticed.
If Mina had become a vampire, it might put a strain on her relationship with Jonathan. Note that in Bram stoker’s novel, vampires can walk about in daylight. The first instance of vampires expiring in sunlight that I know of is the film Nosferatu.
My guess on the scandal: shortly after her marriage she got mixed up with this older Romanian chap, cohabited with him for a bit (during which they may have engaged in things proper folk don’t speak of), and subsequently got a divorce from her boring solicitor husband.
Yup.
In the first series, first issue, Mr. Bond remarks about her having been “ravished by a foreigner.” Mina’s remarks later would seem to confirm this.
She later proves to be the only person who can get the berserk Mr. Hyde to behave… because she isn’t afraid of him. He later remarks that he believes that this is because Mina has, at some point, met someone WORSE than him… to which Mina replies “yes,” and unconsciously touches her neck.
In the second series of the comic, we get a look at her neck without the scarf in the fourth issue.
It ain’t just two neat little pinpricks.
Oh, and it is also implied that she and Jonathan divorced because he couldn’t handle the shame of it all… his wife being an “impure” woman, that is… although it is also implied that he didn’t much like Mina’s independent ways, and felt that she should shut up and get meek after they were married… which she apparently did not.
There’s also some foreshadowing in Volume I, Issue 3 of the comic, wherein Allan Quatermain, frustrated with Mina, makes reference to her “bloody scarf.” Voume II, Issue 4, makes sense of the reference.
In short, yes, it’s covering up Dracula’s bitemarks.
Van Helsing and Co. kill Dracula at dawn in the Borgo Pass.
Not at all what I meant – I meant that the image of the vampire dissolving under the influence of sunlight doesn’t appear before Nosferatu, although it’s now part of the Vampire “Legend”. In the novel Dracula, he walks around London in broad daylight. One of the things Coppola got right in his film version.
I stand (or lie) corrected. It is sundown.
http://www.classicnote.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/dracula/fullsumm.html?study
Wearing sunglasses, if I recall.
Why was he traveling in the coffin in daylight, and they able to surprise him at the pass?
While Dracula can go out in daylight, it’s not his natural time & the old boy does need his rest. Van Helsing used his mind/blood-link with Mina to follow his movements while not telling Mina what course the Company is taking to Dracula can’t read it from her mind.
I haven’t read TLoEG, but I do know my Dracula.
First, Mina Harker (nee Murray) was bitten by The Count. He also forced her to drink his blood while she was in a trance. Mina and Dracula never “cohabited”, though.
No one in Dracula ever mentions vampires being unable to withstand sunlight, not even Van Helsing in his rundown of their strengths and weaknesses. However, it seems that Dracula’s powers are stronger at night. According to Van Helsing, the only times during the day when Dracula can change his form are at the exact moments of sunrise, noon, and sunset.
Given that even vampires need to sleep and that he’s not much of a supernatural badass during the day, Dracula generally chooses to rest during daylight hours. But Stoker does give us one scene in which Dracula is out and about before the sun has set in order to oversee the transfer of his boxes of earth onto a ship. The sailors later report to the vampire hunters that the strange man was wearing a big hat that didn’t suit him or the season, so it may be that sunlight irritates The Count. It is not, however, fatal to him.
CalMeacham is correct that, prior to the film Nosferatu, there was nothing in folklore or literature to suggest that vampires could be killed by sunlight. They might not like it (the title character in J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla didn’t get out of bed until past noon), but it didn’t seem to pose them any real threat. Even in Nosferatu it isn’t clear that sunlight alone would do the job. I’m uncertain as to whether all that business about the self-sacrifice of a pure-hearted woman was an essential component of the vampire slaying or if it was just the only thing that could distract Count Orlock enough to keep him up until sunrise.
carnivorousplant
For answers as to why The Count was in his coffin, and was able to be “surprised” at the pass, please read Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape, which gives us Vlad’s version of the events of the novel.
The poor guy; despite all his efforts to be accepted in cosmopolitan and sophisticated London, he is hounded out of the contry by the ignorant superstitions of Van Helsing and Company. The timing of his last minute escape from the lunatics (while playing to their fairy-tale beliefs to convince them that they had triumphed) is an exciting tale of an intelligent man using his natural abilities to best advantage.
Saberhagen’s version is outstanding, along with Thorn, Holmes-Dracula File, and my favorite, An Old Friend of the Family.
If you want another interesting “take” on he Count (and his interactions with Holmes), read Loren D. Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula: The dventure of the Sanguinary Count. As you’d expect, it starts with a quote from The Adventure of he Sussex Vampire. For a really different take, read Nicholas Meyer’s The West End Horror (by the author of The Seven per Cent Solution), in which Holmes encounters Bram Stoker, and reads Dracula in manuscript form.