Luke Evans is recounting a conversation he had with King Charles that delved into some “fascinating” royal family history.
In his 2025 memoir, Boy from the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey, the 46-year-old actor wrote about being invited to a Prince’s Trust gala dinner at The Savoy Hotel in London in 2014. Evans had been tapped as an ambassador for the charity (now called the King’s Trust), founded by King Charles in 1976 to help disadvantaged youth in the United Kingdom.
Evans, who said it was the first time he had an opportunity to meet the King, 76, remembered watching the monarch make his way around the room, greeting all of his guests. When the royal reached Evans, the two shared “a good, strong handshake,” and then the King asked what he was working on.
At the time, the Welsh star had just finished filming the action-horror film Dracula Untold, in which he played Vlad Tepes III, commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula. The 15th-century Romanian warlord inspired the 1897 Bram Stoker vampire novel Dracula.
Portrait of Vlad the Impaler.
Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty
Hearing this, the King’s “eyes lit up,” Evans recalled.
The royal then said, “I’ll tell you an interesting story. I’m actually related to Vlad Tepes.”
“To my astonishment, he then proceeded to talk me through his entire lineage, all the way back to the 1400s,” Evans recounted in his book. “He told me he now owns a number of properties in Romania, where Vlad was ruler.”
When the Weekend in Taipei actor told King Charles that he thought it was “the most incredible story,” the monarch replied, “Yes, and not a lot of people know it,” before smiling and walking on.
“I noticed he had stayed a little longer with me than he had with other guests, probably because we had this fascinating thing to talk about,” Evans wrote, before sharing his impressions of the King after that first meeting. (The pair would go on to interact on several more occasions at other King’s Trust events.)
Luke Evans and King Charles at a Prince’s Trust gala at The Savoy Hotel in London in February 2014.
Chris Jackson – WPA Pool/Getty
“Charles makes you feel as if he’s genuinely interested in what you have to say, which is remarkable when you consider he has to do this several times a day,” Evans wrote. “You imagine he’d become robotic, just going through the motions every time, but he really seems to engage.”
He also shared his pride in being part of such “a fantastic institution.”
“When I was asked to become an ambassador, I chose to focus on bullying, an issue that’s obviously close to my heart, and over the years I’ve shared my story with young people from all over the U.K. whose lives had been destroyed by bullying but were rebuilding them with the help of the Prince’s Trust,” Evans wrote.
King Charles previously made the claim that he’s related to Vlad the Impaler in a 2011 TV show promoting his interest in the preservation of forests in Romania’s Transylvania region, per ABC News.
“The genealogy shows that I am descended from Vlad the Impaler,” he said in the program. “So I have a bit of a stake in the country.”
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Evans’ memoir, Boy from the Valleys: My Unexpected Journey, was released in the U.S. on April 22, everywhere books are sold.