Well, his monstrous reputation precedes him in any context, even if you leave out the vampire pop culture. He was famous for killing some estimated 40.000 people, 14.000 being in war, the rest publicly executed and tortured. And their corpses stabbed on a pike until gravity took care of the rest. Misunderstood, sure. But I'm not certain anyone would really consider him a "hero"
That's why I was surprised.