Luke Evans is recalling a moment with King Charles.
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.
Luke had been named an ambassador for the charity, which is now called the King’s Trust, founded by the now King in 1976 to support disadvantaged youth in the United Kingdom.
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Luke recalled the royal make his way around the room, greeting all of his guests, and the two eventually shared “a good, strong handshake.” The King asked what he was working on, per People.
At the time, Luke had just finished filming Dracula Untold, playing Vlad Tepes III, also known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, who inspired the 1897 novel Dracula.
The King’s “eyes lit up,” Luke wrote.
“I’ll tell you an interesting story. I’m actually related to Vlad Tepes,” he went on to say.
“To my astonishment, he then proceeded to talk me through his entire lineage, all the way back to the 1400s,” Luke wrote. “He told me he now owns a number of properties in Romania, where Vlad was ruler.”
When he 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,” Luke wrote.
“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. 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,” he wrote.
There have also been ongoing rumors of rifts in the royal family for years and years, and now, there appears to be an update.
