Though the character of the Countess Dolingen of Gratz does not appear in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, she is featured in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” a presumed unused chapter of his seminal work. In it, the countess is presented as the suicided yet somehow “beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier” of the sole mausoleum in a snow-covered cemetery in or near Munich. In my novella series Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance, she is named Ilse in homage to “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Báthory and serves as a substitute composite for Dracula’s three “weird sisters” or so-called wives. And like these unnamed young women, my Ilse is both alluring and dangerous.
"Dracula/Harker: A Gay Gothic Romance Inspired by Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'" by Mark Zidzik 