Characters / Assassin's Creed: The Templars

Main Character Index

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This character page is for Templars in the modern day storyline, as well as historical Templars who don't fit into the time periods of the games, comics, or film.

Be aware that this page WILL contain some unhidden spoilers!

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The Templar Order

The Templars' Insignia

"May the Father of Understanding guide us."

Also known simply as the Knights Templar, the Templar Order is a monastic military order-turned-mythical shadow government who in modern times, founded and control a multinational corporate conglomerate called Abstergo Industries. Before its official founding as a knightly order, they were known under various names, including the Children of Cain and the Order of the Ancients. The Templars seek to create a perfect world, although their interpretation thereof directly contrasts with the ideals of their sworn enemies, the Assassin Brotherhood.
Whereas the Assassins assert that utopia can someday be achieved through a gradual process of learning tolerance and mutual understanding, Templars classically insist that human nature is too prone to corruption for this to be a possibility. Key to their dream is the imposition of a New World Order, and they envision that true peace can only come when all of humanity is shepherded by an enlightened society of people—in their eyes, them.
Because of this conflict in ideology, the Templars became involved in a covert war against the Assassins, spanning millennia and continuing into the modern era. The Templars have also become enemies with the Instruments of the First Will, a cult who have sworn their lives to restore Isu rule over humanity.

The Order as a whole

An ancient order founded by Smenkhkare in 1334 BCE during Egypt's 18th dynasty for the purposes of obtaining Isu technology, they have warred with the Assassin Brotherhood throughout history over control of the Pieces of Eden, in the hope of establishing a One World Order that would eliminate The Evils of Free Will, while also putting them in charge of the planet. They have operated under many names, including the Order of the Ancients, SPQR, the Château Clique, the Secret Chiefs, and Abstergo Industries in the 20th and 21st centuries. During their eternal war with the Assassins, they have been both forced into hiding or dominant, with the Templars currently holding the upper hand in 2012, with the Assassin Brotherhood scattered and being systematically hunted down.

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• Ancient Conspiracy: They are not only related to a prior cult that worshipped Cain and borrowed its symbol as their official insignia but the organization's original incarnation was created by an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh to secure Lost Technology from an Isu vault but quickly evolved over millennia to have members from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and further afield in the rest of the world.
• Anti-Villain: Many of them are Type IIIs.
• Arc Words: "May the Father of Understanding Guide Us" is the oath taken by Templar initiates on joining the Order and which they repeat after every meeting. The phrase goes to Jacques de Molay's book, "Codex Pater Intellectus" (Latin for Codex Father of Understanding).^{From History} Historically, Father of Understanding is one of the many theories on the meaning behind the true origin of "Baphomet" (Abu fihamat), the neo-pagan deity that King Philip IV accused them of worshipping in their heresy trial.
• Arch-Enemy: To the Assassin Brotherhood.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Their belief that the mass of humanity needs the guidance of the wise (naturally, themselves) to shepherd them leads many of their initiates to draw from the upper classes of the given societies, or rather the leaders, with low-level Templars at the bottom of the pole being underworld types like Thomas Hickey or the Orsinis who have no worldview bigger than their pocket. In a democratic society, their members are the equivalents of aristocrats, titans of industry and commerce like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.
  • This shift is somewhat alluded to in Unity, in which the Templars undergo a schism of sorts. The actual aristocrats, who have become much more moderate, are usurped by their lower-class members, who prove to be capable of just as much bastardry. Unity is set during the French Revolution.
• Asshole Victim: The Templars that players must assassinate typically demonstrate a good reason why they must die.
• Assimilation Plot: The Assassins believe this is the ultimate goal of their Piece of Eden-powered satellite, but Abstergo documents given to inductees deny this claim, stating that the satellite is for surveillance and to help locate "exceptional individuals" for recruitment into their ranks.
• Badass Longcoat: Many historical Templars tend to wear mantles, and many of them are skilled warriors.
• Bad Boss:
  • Many high Templars who hold a degree of authoritative power tend to abuse whoever who are working beneath them such as killing those who fail them or taking credit for their accomplishments.
  • As Abstergo Industries, they're really aren't any better than their predecessors. Being a lower level flunky for them sucks since Abstergo uses all manner of insane corporate loopholes that allow them to do whatever they like with their employees, and the Templar higher-ups make harsh demands of them that make no sense.
• Big Brother Is Watching: As Abstergo, they've got spy-tech just about damn near everywhere. One of the rifts in Brotherhood shows them listening in on phone conversations, and another has a man complaining about finding a hidden channel on his TV listing all his vital statistics. After a few minutes, Abstergo sends a man 'round to have a "talk" with him...
• Big Bad: The Templars are the main antagonists for the entire franchise since they continually hunt down the Assassins and work to achieve world domination.
• Bird vs. Serpent: The Templars, whose predecessor organization, the Order of the Ancients, was referred to and represented collectively as a snake, fight against the Assassins/Hidden Ones, represented by the eagle.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Abstergo Entertainment is ostensibly a civilian company that taps their harvested memories to make public products but is actually their propaganda division where they resort to manipulating and diluting actual historical record to align with their ideology, which extends to giving an in-universe Historical Hero Upgrade to Rodrigo Borgia and others.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Occasionally the black to the Assassins' gray especially among the more despicable members of the group.
• The Chessmaster: The Templars use their connections to aristocrats, titans of industry and figures of authority to manipulate world events to achieve their goals.
• Color Motif:
  • The Templars' primary colors are white and red just like the Assassins.
  • As Abstergo Industries, they use the colors of grey, light and dark. Pretty much everything in the Abstergo compound in the first game is some variation of grey, contrasting against the generally brighter colors of the Levant.
• Corporate Conspiracy: The Templars use Abstergo Industries to dominate the world economy and spread its influence across the globe.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Templar-run Abstergo is a multinational corporation that subverts elections and rigs the Presidency of the United States and commits a host of environmental and corporate crimes across the world with impunity. The Truth videos from Brotherhood even claim that capitalism is the Templars' new method of controlling the masses.
• Corrupt Church: Christianity and Templars often go hand in hand, with several Templars throughout history serving as either missionaries, priests or high-ranking members of the Catholic Church.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front: They use many fronts to cover their true activities, with Abstergo being the biggest one in the modern day.
• Create Your Own Hero: Nearly every playable Assassin's journey begins when the Templars kill their love ones. In fact, it was the Templars themselves who created their arch enemy in 47 BC via Flavius killing Bayek and Aya's son Khemu by deflecting Bayek's blade into him.
• Democracy Is Bad: Their great belief is this. They aspire to a plutocracy of the wise directing the undisciplined and uninformed mass to a utopia founded on "order, purpose, discipline". In Assassin's Creed III which deals with The American Revolution, Haytham Kenway, Grand Master of the American Templars, claims that the Founding Fathers function in the same way despite their democratic pretenses^note Pointing out that they are composed of wealthy, white landowners, many of whom who own slaves (including Washington and Thomas Jefferson) but talk of freedom and liberty. but the Templars are looked down upon by the Assassins, because they admit it openly.
• Due to the Dead: Played straight with their own, but averted with their enemies. If an Assassin kills a Templar, they'll be in for a peaceful farewell, and a proper burial if possible. If a Templar kills an Assassin, they'll simply dump the body in a river or any other convenient spot, and potentially use any recoverable genetic material for their own purposes.
• Dysfunction Junction: The Renaissance Templars; for all their talk of "order, purpose, discipline" their members show a remarkable lack of either of the three traits, having glaring personality flaws which hinder any effective implementation of their vague plans. The Assassins by contrast are bound by loyalty and goodwill and are more cohesive, though ultimately less successful. After the Borgia fiasco the Templars got their stuff together and have been significantly more effective since.
• Enemy Civil War: The biggest reason they fail to capitalize on any major success over the Assassins. Anytime they rise to significant power and prestige, it's practically guaranteed they'll turn on each other. If Robert and Al-Mualim could have cooperated, they would have gotten the Apple before the first game even began. If the Borgias didn't kill each other, they could have actually killed the Auditores. And then there's Haytham and his new-world Templars, who betray each other and effectively wipe out the old English group from which they spawned (not to mention pissing off Connor as early as five years old). In Unity, there was Elise and her campaign of vengeance against Germain's faction for the death of her father, the former Grand Master. It's also why the Modern Templars are highly successful in today's Era, they work together quite well.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Templars as a whole recruit people from a variety of races and backgrounds, though individual Templars can be prejudiced. Though this is something of an Informed Ability since the leadership in most instances and even in modern times seems to be predominantly white, wealthy, and male. The middle management and field agents are significantly more diverse, and in more racist times it might have been a PR move to have the big bosses appear palatable to the general public by making them stereotypically powerful people and make sure the real agenda is not figured out. By the modern day, it seems to simply be coincidental as there are multiple non white Inner Circle members.
  • Taken to the extreme when modern Templars are explicitly offered any man or woman they desire as part of a series of great employment benefits.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Assassin Brotherhood. Both groups are secret societies founded in Ancient Egypt that work behind the scenes to influence well-known rulers and other important figures throughout history to bring peace on Earth. However, the Assassins desire free will whereas the Templars want absolute control so they can establish a one world government.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Modern day Templars are disgusted by the state of the Order during the Renaissance since most of the members then were only out for personal power and had abandoned the original Templar ideals. Of course that doesn't stop them, in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, from spreading misinformation that Rodrigo Borgia was "a progressive and bon-vivant who stood up for family values".
  • Many Templars oppose slavery, due to a combination of Pragmatic Villainy and Equal-Opportunity Evil; they recognize that level of oppressive control is counter-productive in the long run. Governor Torres in Black Flag espouses "A body enslaved inspires the mind to revolt. But enslave a man's mind, and his body will follow on naturally."
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family:
  • Usually played straight; the Templars of any historical period will work together regardless of origin or motivation, with little or no in-fighting, but there are exceptions. Reginald Birch, for example, was massively unpopular with all his underlings, and eventually murdered by Haytham Kenway.
  • In the modern day, the Templar higher-ups often having conflicting goals, ideas, and methods. According to Syndicate, it was only because of Warren Vidic that they were able to keep everything together. And then Desmond Miles went and killed him.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • For all their high sounding talk of greater purpose and order, their number one way of dealing with Assassins is to attack their family and loved ones. Even Prince Ahmet, a gentleman and a charming guy resolves to kidnapping Ezio's girlfriend who he was deliberately trying to keep out of the conflict, who had no idea what was going on and is a simple bookseller who's harmless^note though unbeknownst to her, she was helping Ezio decode encryptions for more Masyaf Keys.
  • They also have a weird set of Skewed Priorities, in-between wanting to save the world; in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag they decide to help out Mathew Hague, the son of a Templar, who lost the girl he loved to Edward Kenway, a poor farmer's son. The Templars decide to intimidate Kenway by burning his family's farm down and shutting down their business for no other reason than the pure gangster-motive of intimidation and loyalty to one of their own, who basically... got dumped by a girl.
• Evil, Inc.: As Abstergo Industries, they use the Animus to create products that demonize the Assassins and paint themselves as the heroes by harvesting the memories of various individuals that participate in their experiments, whether they agree to it or not.
• The Evils of Free Will: Their main contention point against the Assassins' Anti-Nihilist.
• Eviler than Thou: Some Templars such as Reginald Birch and Flavius Metellus are viler than others.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Whenever the Templars took full control of an area in historical times, they tended to run it into the ground due to their "keep the people weak" policy weakening the nation as a whole, making it extremely difficult to achieve their Utopia. Rome at the beginning of Brotherhood is a prime example; if you so choose, Ezio can basically become the sole benefactor of the entire city.
• Fictional Counterpart: The Templar-run Abstergo Entertainment can be seen as a self-deprecative parody of Ubisoft since they develop video games based on the Assassin Brotherhood. Oddly enough, Ubisoft itself exists in the Assassin's Creed universe as the co-developer of Liberation.
• For Science!:
  • The entire group was founded by Smenkhkare of Egypt's 20th Dynasty for the purpose of conducting research on newly acquired Lost Technology from a hidden Isu vault located along the Nile.
  • The Abstergo Files and Warren Vidic boast that the Templars have driven scientific evolution across the centuries, which Desmond notes with amusement is a "Tall claim". In truth, while some of their Order are scientists, they have in practice impeded and bullied talented innovators and real geniuses.
  • Nicolaus Copernicus quit the Templars when they refused to let him publish his ideas and then sent hitmen to stop him from speaking out and spreading knowledge to the public, which is the duty of any scientist. (Ironically, the Templars privately admit that situations like this were part of their In-Universe Old Shame, to the point of official documentation conceding that during the Renaissance these scientists were doing what the Templars themselves should have been doing.) Nevertheless, through history the Templar leadership tended towards wanting to control the flow of knowledge for their own selfish ends.
  • Likewise Thomas Edison was a Templar and as in real life, his real talent was in business and publicizing inventions which he stole from others and discredited real geniuses like Nikola Tesla.
  • Alan Turing's tragic end was also masterminded by the Templars according to Subject 16 puzzles in Brotherhood while the Subject Zero audio files in Black Flag reveal that Vidic's No OSHA Compliance Animus technology was driven by the sabotage of a more radical surrogacy initiative by Dr. Aileen Bock which became the upgraded post-III Animus used in that game which doesn't require direct ancestry to access genetic memories, allowing Desmond's genes to remain useful to Abstergo despite his death in the previous game.
  • On a broader note, the Templars have access to powerful objects and technology that could actually revolutionize the world and certainly advance the cause of archaeology and history and higher learning at the very least. Instead they keep the stuff for themselves and use it to make lame-o virtual movies and games that distort the truth and ensure that history is Written by the Winners.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: What they usually are to the Assassins. It should be noted that the Assassins are almost always A Lighter Shade of Grey to them.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In real life, the Templars were people who gave up material lives to aid pilgrims in the Holy Land (and, as the name would imply, many of them were knights, and thus were giving up a pretty decent life), and were unfairly persecuted when the King of France perjured against them to the Inquisition to get out of paying a debt. Then again, that could be what they want you to believe...
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Abstergo's use of the Animus on Assassin descendants as of late seems to be hurting them far more than they anticipated. While it has helped them track down Pieces of Eden, the Bleeding Effect has caused many of their subjects to become significantly stronger, many of whom escape their clutches and then come back to throw a wrench in their plans.
• Humans Are Morons: Many of their members tend to think humans are mostly idiotic or irredeemably evil without their guidance, in contrast to the Assassin's general belief that Humans Are Flawed but ultimately worth saving.
• Hypocrite:
  • The Templars claim that what they are doing is in the name of peace, but abuse their power to control the weak. It's lampshaded by Ezio in Revelations:
  Ezio: Templars are always quick to talk of peace, but very slow to concede power.
  • They also berate the Assassins for being involved with things that are beyond their understanding or stealing what was not theirs such as the Pieces of Eden, when they're just of guilty of the same.
• The Illuminati: They're basically this with a different name, being a millennia-old conspiracy that pulls the strings behind historical events.
• In It for Life: Once someone swears the oath of the Templars, they're expected to serve and obey until they die, "no matter the cost". Naturally, resignations are not accepted.
• Internal Affairs: The Black Cross, whose job is to make sure their Rite's Grand Master stays in line with the Templar Oath, and kill them if they don't.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While rarely acknowledged by the (Assassin) main character, a Templar might have sound arguments. Talal and Garnier de Naplouse in Assassin's Creed note that as extreme as their methods are, they did a far better job of helping the mentally ill rather than simply leaving them running blindly in the street which is what happens when Altaïr kills them both. Haytham Kenway also makes similar arguments in III and even Warren Vidic has a point in noting that simply killing a few bad guys won't solve corruption on a large scale. This of course is coloured by Never My Fault below, since while Assassins will admit to doubts and mistakes, Templars are always sure and full of themselves.
• Knight Templar: The group is figuratively and literally Knight Templars. They wish to establish a one-world government to bring peace on Earth through extreme methods.
• Light Is Not Good: Contrasting the Assassin's Light Is Good, the Templars not only originally wore white with a red cross, but many were also devoutly religious. However even the religious members like Rodrigo Borgia, used it as a crutch to gain supreme power. Others like Cesare Borgia, may look like the Knight in Shining Armor, but he's far from it indeed.
• Manipulative Bastard: Just about every Templar is a schemer (however well-intentioned) that will dupe innocent people to do things that will benefit them in the long run.
• MegaCorp: The Templars use Abstergo as the modern day front for their goals and clandestine operations while putting on the facade of a pharmaceutical company to the public. Lucy Stillman mentions that her inability to be taken seriously after she finished college — and thus her inability to find a job until she was approached by Abstergo — was likely a series of failures specifically designed by them so she would have nowhere else to go for employment. She further assures Desmond that while this may sound ridiculous, they can do it. They also trace Desmond via his motorcycle's registry, apparently without going through the police. This is taken even further in the sequel, where through a series of mad revelations, you gradually find out that Abstergo, under one name or another, has been manufacturing all important technological or political progress for centuries.
• Motive Decay:
  • The earliest known version of the Templars, the Order of the Ancients, was essentially a transhumanism cult founded by an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh to study the Isu. In Valhalla, Rebecca Crane notes that in terms of attitude they were more like Juno's followers than their antecedents. Somewhere between their founding and as early as the 400s BCE, their goal had mutated into power and control.
  • By Assassin's Creed II, the Renaissance Templars had become vicious, power-grabbing sadists whose only motivation was Greed, and are later denounced by Abstergo as "The Dark Age of the Templars".
  • In general, the Templars often get sidetracked from their goal of maintaining order and peace because they're so obsessed with killing the Assassins, almost as much as the Assassins are with them. They also take to extreme, often genocidal ways to obtain what they want or make their plans come to fruition; the mark of Well Intentioned Extremists is that their actions, no matter how cruel, are done only to get them to their objective. The problem is that they never feel they have enough power and control over the population to achieve said goal, which leads to their seeking a Piece of Eden.
• Multi National Team: Just like the Assassins, the Templars have members from all over the world with individual chapters known as Rites with the name of their respective countries.
• Never My Fault: While Assassins tend to be self-critical and introspective and even willing to admit to their flaws, we have yet to see a Templar not ascribe his failing to society, to the Assassins or to some traitor or the other. No one is willing to consider that there might be a problem with their ideology and how they practice it. Their last words dying confession is full of self-justifications, Jerk Justifications and Freudian Excuse. The closest to sympathetic a Templar figure has come is probably Bastienne Josephe from Freedom Cry, who prioritizes the safety of Saint-Domingue's slaves over whatever Templar responsibilities she may have. Near the end, she admits to underestimating Governor de Fayet's cruelty and regrets that she allowed him to sink a slave ship and kill hundreds of people.
• One World Order: Their goal is the world under their control alone.
• Old Shame: In-Universe, the Renaissance-era Templars, who were focused entirely on their own greed as Card Carrying Villains and didn't care about the organization's Well-Intentioned Extremist goals. The Borgia rule (that era) is actually called the "Dark Age of the Order" by the Templars, emphasizing how bad it was.
• Order Is Not Good: They seem to be the "Order" to the Assassins' "Chaos," but the difference is that the Templars tend toward an approach that is Fascist, but Inefficient, but also brings up The Evils of Free Will.
• Order Versus Chaos:
  • They see themselves as the Order to the Assassins' Chaos. Too bad their "order" always equals something along the lines of Fascist, but Inefficient, at least in Historical Times.
  • In Unity during the Revolution, they change their tactics by co-opting the popular movement and radically drive it to violence in the September Massacres and the Reign of Terror, giving such an image of Democracy Is Bad and The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized that people will no longer think of Revolution as peaceful or that Rousseau Was Right about the people. The Templar grandmaster sees this as driving people to Order by creating chaos, which is probably the best definition of Templar methods and ends.
  • By Syndicate they've integrated themselves into the makeup of society so thoroughly that Jacob's assassinations end up doing a lot more harm than good for the common people.
• Path of Inspiration: Christianity is generally treated as just another way for the Templars and their ilk to control the masses. While the common priest might be simply just that, missionaries or anyone higher up are likely Templar agents with their own agendas.
• Playing Both Sides:
  • A major part of their modus operandi and the Plot Twist in the first Assassin's Creed is that in any conflict, they operate on both sides. During the Crusades, where the Templars went public, Altaïr initially assumes that the Saracens and non-Templar order Knights he fights are separate only to discover that a Templar is an idea more than a single institution, one that can exist in any faction, including, as Altaïr finds out, the Assassin Brotherhood, namely Al Mualim who was Evil All Along.
  • This theme continued to be developed in the later games, especially in Assassin's Creed: Revelations where it turns out that the Byzantines are in fact led by an Ottoman Prince and in Assassin's Creed III where the Templars are on both the Loyalist and Patriot fronts of the Revolution seeking to manipulate the outcome so that they are both on top either way. For example, John Pitcairn leads British Redcoats at Bunker Hill — though he tells his Assassin killer that he really did want a formal parley with the rebelling colonists' leaders to stop the war — while in the meantime Charles Lee would vie on the Continental side to usurp George Washington as commander-in-chief.
  • In the lore and backstory unearthed in Assassin's Creed II by the Subject 16 puzzles, the Templars orchestrated World War II and events like the Holocaust and the dropping of atomic weapons with the express intention that the post-war period be wide open to shape into the One World Order they longed for.
• Pride: Their greatest fault, as shown by their tendency to resort to Never My Fault and their Motive Decay over the centuries. Their original purpose was to use the Pieces of Eden to bring world peace - by enslaving humanity with the privileged few ruling over the world. They believe their organization to be composed of the wisest, most qualified leaders the world has ever produced. Many of them are simply ambitious tyrants who kill the previous Grand Master, or get elected by promising power and prestige to supporters. They're also terrible leaders, using underhanded tactics to gain power and keep the populace weak rather than using democracy in their favor.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The corrupt yet orderly Blues, to the rebellious, law-breaking Assassins' Red.
• Research, Inc.: As Abstergo Industries, they develop new technology such as the Animus for the purpose of not only researching the past but they utilize it to create video games that paint the Templars as the heroes and Assassins as the villains.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: They would like to see themselves as part of the Enlightenment, at least in so far as it rests on a plutocratic and technocratic vision of unlocking man's potential and becoming godlike. The Assassins for their part are also on the side of the Enlightenment - the part that emphasizes individual rights, freedom of speech, social transformation and skepticism.
• Shadow Government: It's implied that most of the world leaders from the past until the 21st century are either pro-Templars or were Templar members, acting on their behalf. Even when most locations and eras set in the games are under full authoritarian rule under the Templars, their big end-goal is to take it one step further and use Ancient Artifacts to undo The Evils of Free Will all-together.
• Shoulders of Doom: The Templar field agents have prominent shoulder pads. Especially apparent in the case of Juhani Otso Berg and the 18th and 19th Century Templars of Rogue, Assassin's Creed III and Syndicate. The design team of Rogue noted that for Assassins they favored angular motifs on shoulders to better highlight the triangle motif of the Assassins (and the A of the logo), while Templars represent rectangles and order.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • They appear to flip-flop on this issue. Some Templars in the 18th Century such as Laureano Torres of Havana, and later the English Templars who kicked out Woodes Rogers, were opposed to slavery but others such as Lawrence Washington remained high ranking members despite being slave-owners.
  • However, as noted in Initiates, Maximilien Robespierre's government abolished slavery for the first time in world history and in Unity he's revealed to be a Templar. The Assassin Mentor Mirabeau had earlier campaigned for abolitionism but his pragmatic approach meant that he could never muster enough support for the issue and was killed, by his fellow Assassin, before he could progress further. The Haitian Assassins who led the Slave Revolt of Haiti had pushed the French government to take such a stand, but their movement gets derailed thanks to Napoleon who came to power as a consequence of Assassin negligence and who reversed the abolitionist decree and brought slavery back to the French colonies that had not been liberated during the Revolution.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism:
  • The cynics to the Assassin idealists. As per Haytham Kenway, they hold the belief that they merely need the world to be as it is.
  • However one can see that many of them are idealists in their way, believing in a higher goal than mere money and fame. Many Templar initiates find a level of comfort and optimism in their belief that they are working for a better future and that despite their origins, they are part of something bigger. For Abul Nu'quod, a homosexual in a deeply conservative society and appalled at the opulence wielded by the citizens who fund Saladin's war machine, the Templar ideology allows him to Take a Third Option. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it unfortunately leads its members to delude themselves that their actions are justified because of their superior intentions.
  • In the 18th Century, during The Enlightenment, Templars include idealists such as Torres, a sincere believer in utopian dreams of universal peace and progress (while also ending evils such as slavery) by searching for First Civilization artifacts. On the other hand, we have pragmatists such as Haytham Kenway who are skeptical of the use or need for unreachable artifacts and merely seek to establish a new nation based on benign dictatorship via a Staged Populist Uprising during The American Revolution which eventually becomes a real revolution and gets out of his control.
• Sigil Spam: They like putting their symbol on everything. Any building of theirs will have their three-sided symbol plastered all over the side.
• Staged Populist Uprising:
  • Both The American Revolution and The French Revolution are shown as this for the Templars.
  • Thanks to Connor they lose control of the American independence movement very fast which was originally supposed to install a puppet dictator in the form of Charles Lee, whereas Connor allows it to take its natural course even if it comes at the cost of the security of his own tribe.
  • As a result of the above failure, the Templars create a master-plan to start their own revolution which would co-opt the French revolutionary movement, the normal support base of the Assassins, while the French Assassin Council are committed to a moderate Revolution and a brief unity with the moderate Templar Grand Master Francois de la Serre. They drive the Revolution to excess to achieve their aims and support as well as permanently tarnish the romance of revolution in the eyes of the world, to prevent future results against their order.
• The World Is Not Ready: They suppress any knowledge about the Isu in the belief mankind won't be able to take it. The fact a few of their members have had severe reactions to learning this truth over the millennia might back this up a little.
• Transhumanism: The Templars regard humanity as weak and aspire to unlock mankind's true potential which is the First Civilization DNA, so that man may finally be equal to gods.
• Token Evil Teammate: While the Templars aren't exactly good guys (generally speaking), most members are Well-Intentioned Extremists that want to bring order and peace through a one-world government that would have absolute control over the Earth. That said, there are some genuinely evil bastards within the Order that make the other members look like saints in comparison:
  • Majd Addin is a sadistic murderer whose only motivations are his delusions of godhood and the power he has to inflict death and suffering on others. He explicitly denies any noble intentions unlike his brothers and proudly admits to Altair that he had people executed for the feeling of power it gave him.
  • Rodrigo Borgia / Pope Alexander VI, the leader of the Roman Rite of the Templar Order is not only responsible for the murder of Ezio Auditore's father and two brothers but he poisoned entire dinner parties, killed his enemy's prepubescent son for the pettiest of reasons and implied to have raped his own daughter. On top of it all, he joined the Order purely out of greed which disgusts even the Templars themselves.
  • Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada a personal friend of Rodrigo Borgia and spiritual advisor to Queen Isabella I of Spain would not only execute non-Christians and Assassins but he would burn the city of Granada to the ground and kidnap Sultan Muhammad XII's son just to get a Piece of Eden during the Spanish Inquisition.
  • Reginald Birch and Edward Braddock, two members of the British Templars who have done some extremely unpleasant things at home and abroad. The former was responsible for the death of Edward Kenway, sold Jennifer Scott into Ottoman sex slavery and corrupted the young Haytham Kenway into becoming a loyal Templar in the American colonies. The latter oversaw the annihilation of Native Americans and French soldiers during the Seven Years War, even those who offered a truce to him and his men.
  • Flavius Metellus / The Lion stood out from the rest of the proto-Templar Order of the Ancients for his brutality and lust for power. He was the man responsible for causing Bayek to accidentally kill his son Khemu while inside a temple containing Isu technology in the Siwa Oasis which allowed him to secure his position as leader of the Order. Afterwards, he would kill Bayek's best friend Hepzefa alongside his Gabinani second-in-command Lucius Septimius / The Jackal to secure a Piece of Eden which he would use to satisfy his god complex to cause innocent people in Egypt to slaughter each other or burn themselves alive just for his mere amusement.
  • Gaius Julius Rufio is a Roman member of the Order much like Flavius and he's just as bad as him when he enslaves the entire population of the Sinai Peninsula to work in appalling conditions before killing them, via crucifixion, once they are no longer useful for his conquest of Egypt.
• The Unfettered: The Templars, in contrast to the Assassins, seek Order/Law rather than Freedom/Chaos, yet have absolutely no moral restrictions on their behavior (as opposed to the eponymous Assassin's Creed) and are free to use any and all means (up to and including mass murder and genocide) in pursuit of their goal: this leads to quite a few ironies. Ultimately, both the Assassins and Templars believe in the phrase "Nothing is true, everything is permitted". But to the Assassins the phrase is descriptive, whereas to the Templars it's prescriptive.
• Unreliable Narrator:
  • Their desire to control information and protect their side of the story is a Rose-Tinted Narrative and their tall claims of having defined scientific advancement and achievement through the ages, while perhaps not devoid of merit, ought to be taken with a great deal of salt as well as their present claims to control the world. They have, in the past, discredited and held back scientific advancement by trying to kill Copernicus and forcing Leonardo da Vinci to build WMDs for them for no pay and discrediting Nikola Tesla and driving Alan Turing to suicide.
  • Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Abstergo Entertainment's first (in-universe) video game product, features a story devoid of any explicit mention of the Templars, and depicts Aveline as a very conflicted Assassin who takes orders from a very distrustful Mentor and is raised by a benevolent stepmother when outside of her Assassin duties. In-game "hacks" courtesy of Erudito reveal the truth that Aveline's loyalty to the Brotherhood never wavered, and that her own stepmother was the Company Man leading the Templars she's been assassinating the whole time.
• Unwitting Pawn: Some historical figures like Benjamin Franklin and James Cook end up advancing Templar interests without quite knowing about the Order and their true activities. Occassionally, the Assassins also serve as this for the Templars.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: What the group hopes to achieve, or at least what they claim. Later Templars, such as Haytham model it on more realistic lines as "order, purpose, discipline" which leans towards an enlightened plutocracy or benign totalitarianism.
  Clay Kaczmarek: That's the trouble with the Templars in general, I think. Their philosophy is just so damn simple, so tantalizing, offering easy solutions to complex problems. Just do X, Y, and Z and all your problems disappear.
• Written by the Winners:
  • Why they're so successful in the present day. Since Abstergo is in control over absolutely everything, they have all the creative liberty they want to shape history to their liking. So they write out that their Grand Masters were paragons of virtue and humanity while vilifying the Assassins as bloodthirsty murderers intent on keeping the world in a dark age. Basically, because they write the history books, their truth goes unopposed, and we accept it as the truth. In Unity, the Assassins describe the Helix home-made consoles specifically as Abstergo Propaganda that presents a highly one-sided view of history.
  • Of course this is the image Abstergo largely presents to itself. Several famous Templars such as Charles Lee, Rodrigo Borgia, and Maximilien Robespierre remain widely disliked and notorious figures^note though admittedly the games themselves severely flanderize these portraits but the Templars seem unwilling to mention their Hidden Depths in their internal memos as well despite their best efforts. In fact, within the games, the most famous scientists, artists, philosophers and historical figures tend to be either Assassins or allied with them, so the most Templars seem to do is remove any mention of Assassins from history, which seems to suit the Assassins just fine.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Say what you want about the Templars, but for most of history, they have played an active role in trying to shape events, with Assassins correcting some of their wrong choices and doing damage control when their plans start spiraling out of control.
• Villain Has a Point: The more reasonable Templars at the very least. While a good many of them are jerkasses or power hungry tyrants at worst, that doesn't stop some of them from raising valid points about the state of humanity, and how the Assassins can wind up doing more harm than good.
• Villainous Valour: They are not beyond displaying guts and chutzpah, with Haytham Kenway being noble and bold in particular, while Jacques de Molay allowed himself to be martyred and burnt at the stake despite being the leader, holding the cause to be greater than him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: What most of them like to think and portray themselves as, people willing to do things considered immoral in order to create a better world, although many are just in it for the power and claim good intentions as an excuse.
• Would Hurt a Child: To the Templars, not even the lives and dignity of innocent children are spared from being expendable resources in the name of "order" and "progress":
  • They despicably endorse and enforce child-slavery in the lethally-dangerous (even to adults) factories of Victorian London in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
  • During the Great Purge of 2000, not even the children were spared in the Assassin bases the Templars overran.
• You Cannot Kill An Idea: As Altair discovered, Templars can be anyone, even Assassins. As long as people believe the world must be controlled for there to be peace, the Templars will never die.
  • Haytham Kenway explicitly states this when fighting with Connor.
  Haytham: Even when your kind appears to triumph, still, we rise again. And, do you know why? It is because the Order is born of a realization. We require no creed! No indoctrination by desperate old men. All we need is that the world be as it is. And this is why the Templars will never be destroyed!
  • Altair in his Codex also reflected on this, and realized how and why the Templars function and will keep recurring forever (and also why the Assassins will never die out either):
  Altair: [The Templars] recognize there is no such thing as an absolute truth – or if there is – we are hopelessly under-equipped to recognize it. And so in its place, they seek to create their own explanation. It is the guiding principle of their so-named "New World Order"; to reshape existence in their own image. It is not about artifacts. Not about men. These are merely tools. It's about concepts. Clever of them. For how does one wage war against a concept? It is the perfect weapon. It lacks a physical form yet can alter the world around us in numerous, often violent ways. You cannot kill a creed. Even if you kill all of its adherents, destroy all of its writings – these are a reprieve at best. Some one, some day, will rediscover it. Reinvent it.

Modern Templars

General of the Cross

The General of the Cross

The true leader of the Templar Order, the General of the Cross approves or refuses decisions made by the Guardians. The currently serving General of the Cross is anonymous to the vast majority of the Order, to the point that no one outside of the Inner Circle is aware of their gender identity.

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• Ambiguous Gender: We have no idea what gender they are.
• The Ghost: Their existence is only known from a single memo in Unity.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The biggest in the series apart from Juno, as they lead the Templar Order but outside of the Guardians and Inner Sanctum no one else in the Templar Order knows of their existence, or even what they look like.

Inner Sanctum

Dr. Warren Vidic

Doctor Warren Vidic / Subject 2

Voiced by: Phil Proctor (English)^note Other Languages:Alexander Kotov (Russian)

"Corruption is no different than cancer. Cut out the tumors, but fail to treat the source and... well, you're buying time at best. There's no true change to be had without comprehensive, systemic intervention."

A Templar scientist and the presumed creator of the Animus. He is in charge of experimenting on the various Animus subjects and related projects. Desmond escaped his "care" at the beginning of the second game, and Vidic is understandably pissed.

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• Absent-Minded Professor: See Brilliant, but Lazy below.
• Affably Evil: Mainly in the multiplayer videos in Revelations. When it comes to Desmond, his affability is decidedly fake.
• Anti-Villain: Type III, though his demeanor undermines it completely.
• Asshole Victim: He finally gets his comeuppance in Assassin's Creed III.
• Big Bad: Is the face of Abstergo for the player (if CEO Alan Rikkin isn't), and responsible for most of Desmond's problems.
• Boom, Headshot!: By an Abstergo guard through the influence of Ezio's Apple of Eden wielded by Desmond Miles.
• Brilliant, but Lazy:
  • He's a high-ranking Templar and a pioneer in the whole "genetic memory" thing, but is too lazy to properly punctuate his emails... despite critiquing Lucy's formatting and writing of the Animus 1.0 operating manual (aka the Assassin's Creed manual).
  • He's also too lazy or apathetic to be careful with the Animus sessions, with the result being Subject 16. His answer seems to just to dig up another test subject — as if there were an unlimited amount of descendants of Altaïr Ibn La'Ahad — and start again.
  • One of the Assassin's Creed e-mails from Lucy has her criticizing him for once again losing his pen (doubling as an access key) in a parking lot after leaving it hanging off of his lab coat, which could have caused a lockdown (thus further delaying the work with the Animus) had Abstergo security personnel found it before she did (later on when he left it unattended again, Desmond was able to outright pickpocket it). A series of emails also reveals that he couldn't even keep track of his own pass codes, with Lucy and the security desk having to e-mail him them.
  • Of course, all of these instances are revealed to be planned by Lucy as ways of gaining Desmond's trust and making him underestimate Vidic.
  • Audio-tape snippets found from hacking Abstergo computers in IV depict him as a brash, arrogant scientist who bugged his colleague Aileen Bock's lab and office and relentlessly kept her under pressure from their bosses, making sure that he took credit for Aileen's successes.
• The Cameo: In one or two of Brotherhood's The Truth puzzles, and acts as Mission Control during the multiplayer tutorial.
• Cool Car: During Desmond's escape from Abstergo, look carefully and you'll see he owns a Lamborghini.
• Evil Genius: As the most prominent pioneer of Animus technology.
• Evil Mentor: To the Templar agents in the multiplayer storyline of Revelations.
• Evil Plan:
  • Using ex-Assassin Lucy to manipulate Desmond, gain secrets about the order and eventually wipe them out for good. The plan is named "Project Siren". It just so happens in the end the only impossible means of foiling it was the reason it failed.
  • He had another one using Daniel Cross, implementing within him as a child a hidden desire to seek out the Assassin Order, learn everything he could about it, kill the Mentor, and then report back to Abstergo. It worked, leaving the modern-day Assassins severely disorganized and vulnerable.
• Hate Sink: A cruel and arrogant man with next to no redeeming qualities. It's an incredibly satisfying moment when he dies in III.
• The Heavy: In Assassin's Creed through III, where he's not the leader of the present-day Templars, but he is the main antagonist of Desmond's arcs.
• Hypocrite:
  • Vidic berates Desmond for killing a mentally-ill man like Cross. This coming from the person who put him into the Animus when he was only a child that to the point he occasionally suffers from said mental illness.
  • Like any other Templar, he calls out the Assassin for taking things that doesn't belong to them such as the Apple, even though it doesn't belong to them either.
• Impersonation Gambit: Of a sort. In order to keep contact with Lucy during her stay in Monteriggioni, he used the name of William M. in his emails, as noted in Assassin's Creed: Initiates. His difference from the real William Miles can be noted in his flippant lack of concern for Desmond's Sanity Slippage and the fact that he "has to go to lunch" in "the office" as reason for not keeping constant communication, something that the real William Miles would never do, considering he does not seem to even have an office, and is constantly on the move.
• It's All About Me: The "Subject Zero" tapes from Black Flag show him in the 80s, and it's pretty apparent that all Warren cares about is the welfare of his Animus project, nothing else. Including his test subjects, as he grumbles and complains about Subject 1's freak death and the resultant fallout with "it's hardly my fault he died from being in the Animus too long".
• Jerkass: You can't spell Vidic without "dic(k)".
• Knight Templar: Comes with the affiliation.
• Lack of Empathy: Not exactly uncommon for a Templar, but Vidic takes it to astounding heights, refusing to even try and maintain the welfare of his test subjects. Lucy mentions he would keep Clay in the Animus for days at a time.
• Mad Scientist: The head of the Animus project, and utterly amoral. Shaun describes him as having "a first class degree in Basket Case Studies at the University of Nutjob".
• Manipulative Bastard: Preyed on Lucy's emotional vulnerability to persuade her to defect.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's Dr. Vidic after all.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The Lost Archive reveals that his apparent stupidity in the first game was all part of an act to help Lucy gain Desmond's trust. His jerkassness was apparently real, though.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The multiplayer plotline shows he's one of the handful of members of the Templar high council, the Inner Sanctum.
• Pet the Dog: He may have messed up Daniel Cross big time, but he was the only person he showed any kind of respect to. He would cover for Daniel Cross' mistakes in spite of other members of the Inner Sanctum wanting to boot him and when Desmond kills Cross, he drops his usual calm Faux Affably Evil demeanor to tear into Desmond and the Assassins.
• Professor Guinea Pig: He volunteered himself for the Animus Project as Subject 2. One of his ancestors was apparently one of Joan of Arc's executioners.
• Sanity Slippage: Very minor compared to all the other test subjects of the Animus, but the end of one of his audio recordings has him screaming "Quiet Joan!" at a barking dog (As mentioned above, one of his ancestors was one of Joan of Arc's executioners).
• Serious Business: The Animus is this to him, despite his callousness towards the Subjects who actually suffer from the Bleeding Effect.
• Smug Snake:
  • Though it was revealed in Project Legacy that he was Obfuscating Stupidity in Assassin's Creed, allowed Desmond to read his emails and escape on purpose, and had convinced Lucy to pull a Face–Heel Turn, his arrogance and cruelty make it highly unlikely for the player to feel any respect for him.
  • The "Subject Zero" tapes show Vidic when he was younger, and the man radiates unimaginable levels of smugness with every sentence.
• The Sociopath: Shows a lot of signs, including a Lack of Empathy, superficial charm, ability to manipulate others, and a Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth.
• Too Dumb to Live: Vidic is well aware of the abilities of the Apple of Eden when trying to extort Desmond to give it to him, but decides to stand in the same room as him, while Desmond holds the Apple in his hand. This mistake costs him his life.
• Underestimating Badassery: Despite knowing that Desmond has become a bonafide badass via the Bleeding Effect in a short amount of time and is in possession of a Piece of Eden, he still thinks that he isn't a threat and send lightly-armed guards after him.
• Villain Ball:
  • In the first game, with all the crap he lets Desmond get away with, it could be a little hard to believe that this doofus was one of a handful of elite humans secretly running the world. Subverted in The Lost Archive, as it turns out it was All According to Plan.
  • The Stupid Evil comes full circle in III: "Desmond, I'll trade you your father, whom I just kidnapped, for the Apple of Eden. Just bring it to my evil lair and hand it to me. P.S., Please don't figure out how it works and then use it against me."
• Villainous Breakdown: In III, he has one when Desmond kills Cross. While he seems to calm down when Desmond meets him personally, he is still very angry, and again breaks down when Desmond uses the Apple to finally kill him.
  Vidic: You... you killed him! Daniel was Like a Son to Me. A sickly son, perhaps, but one full of promise! He accomplished so much, and so well. And now you've taken him from me! From us! Like the Apple, like Lucy! We want to help the world, Desmond. To save it from itself! But you keep getting in the way. All our hard work, ruined! You're a fanatic! All your kind. Maintaining the erroneous belief that we are evil. That the work we do is wrong. We enrich lives here! We save and transform them! But you... you just keep taking... and taking what isn't yours!
• Zero-Effort Boss: All the player has to do is press X then Boom, Headshot!. Given that Desmond, at this point, has learned decades of ways to kill people across three different eras within the span of a few months, while Vidic is just a scientist and nothing more, it's not surprising.

Agent Daniel Cross

Agent Daniel Cross / Subject 4

Voiced By: Danny Blanco-Hall (English)^note Other Languages:Alexander Golovchansky (Russian)

The great-grandson of Russian Assassin Nikolai Orelov, Daniel was experimented on by Vidic as a child and given subliminal orders to infiltrate the Assassins, locate their camps, and assassinate The Mentor before returning to Abstergo. The plan worked perfectly, and Daniel returned a hero to the Templar Order, rising up into the Inner Sanctum and becoming one of the heads of their Operations department.

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• The Alcoholic: At the beginning of The Fall.
• Ax-Crazy: Unlike Desmond, he never managed to reach a Synch Nexus to solve his Bleeding Effect, so he has trouble keeping his memories separate from those of Nikolai Orelov. Unfortunately, that trouble tends to lead to the deaths of his coworkers, and eventually himself.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Whenever Vidic's reprogramming kicked in while he was an Assassin.
• Canon Immigrant: Preemptive. Daniel is introduced in The Fall, but plays an important part in Assassin's Creed III.
• The Chosen Zero: According to III, he was considered the Assassin by some of them before his programming kicked in.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both before and after he joins the Templar.
• The Dragon: To Vidic as of III.
• Evil Counterpart: To Desmond. Both of them are Assassins that used the Animus, but Cross sided with the Templars and killed the Mentor in 2000, ultimately becoming a Master Templar. By contrast, Desmond became the Assassins' version of The Chosen One.
• Face–Heel Turn: Not really his fault at first, since Vidic brainwashed him, but then he stayed with the Templars and began actively working for them.
• Hero Killer: Daniel is widely feared by the remaining Assassins due to his murder of the Mentor and subsequent killings of several other Assassins.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Ever since he killed the Mentor in 2000, Cross has been using the Animus non-stop as it has a calming effect on him. As a result, Cross' Bleeding Effect worsens, often at the wrong time such as in his final confrontation with Desmond.
• I Just Knew: Despite not knowing about his Assassin heritage, Daniel got a tattoo of the Assassin emblem because "It felt right." One wonders how he must feel about it after Vidic's brainwashing kicked in.
• Informed Ability: His prowess as a Hero Killer in Assassin's Creed III. The first time that he and Desmond meet, Desmond knocks him out with the first power source, in spite of the fact that Cross is holding a gun on him. The second time they meet, Cross uses all of his bullets in his gun on non-Assassins, and ends up having to run away with the second power source, ending up chased down and again knocked unconscious by Desmond when he tries to call Vidic for help. The third and final time they meet, Desmond is forced behind the original Animus by gunfire, but Cross' own Sanity Slippage finally catches up with him, and he ends up running down the halls and firing wildly at anyone, screaming for Nikolai to get out of his head until Desmond finally kills him. That said, he is treated as a legitimate threat in every encounter and in backstory, but what is witnessed doesn't really add up. William Miles even acknowledges this somewhat, saying that in the end he is just a symbol to Abstergo, rather than an asset by 2012. Also, Rebecca mentions that Daniel's problems were worse than Desmond's, so it's entirely possible that while he was genuinely threatening back in the day, his insanity has nullified his skills.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He dies by being stabbed with a knife by an Assassin (Desmond). This is thematically appropriate due to the fact that Daniel stabbed the Assassins who helped him and trained him in the back, and also killed the Assassins' Mentor with a literal stab to the neck.
• Karmic Death: If one counts Nikolai's memories, an Assassin from both the present day as well as his own ancestor worked together to kill him for his betrayal of the Order, ending with him stabbed In the Back in a literal sense.
• Le Parkour: A skilled freerunner.
• Like a Son to Me: According to Vidic after Cross' death. Though, considering what Vidic did to him, that doesn't sound very genuine. However, Assassin's Creed: Initiates does show Vidic covering for Daniel a lot and preventing other members of the Inner Sanctum from trying to punish him, in spite of his mental state being mostly Vidic's fault. It is also Cross' death that triggers Vidic's breakdown.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The Animus becomes this for him after he kills the Mentor, but he eventually snaps out of it and becomes a Templar agent.
• Manchurian Agent: Though he stays on with the Templars after the truth is revealed. In fairness he doesn't exactly have anywhere else to go after betraying the Assassins.
• Meaningful Name: Daniel Cross isn't his real name. It was chosen for him by Warren Vidic. Cross is supposed to represent his status as a Templar Manchurian Agent.
• Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight: Generally uses a gun, and even lampshades Desmond's use of a knife in the 21st century.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: A member of the Templar Inner Sanctum.
• Sanity Slippage: Unlike Desmond, he never went through a Synch Nexus to solve his Bleeding Effect, leading to his life and Nikolai Orelov's overlapping to the point of a Fatal Flaw.
• Ship Tease: With Dr. Sung, the Templar doctor assigned to keep him sane. It's not happening now that he's dead...
• Took a Level in Badass: After he joins the Assassin Order.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After his brainwashing kicks in and he embraces the Templar ideology he becomes noticeably more dickish.
• Tragic Villain: Found and indoctrinated by the Templars at a young age, forced to do their bidding and betray the Assassins who both took him in with open arms and could have helped him, mind raped again and again, more Sanity Slippage than you can shake a stick at... William Miles and Rebecca express regret at Daniel's fate whenever Desmond talks to them.
• The Worf Effect: The comics build Cross as a powerful Templar agent that many Assassins fear. However, Desmond easily gains the upper hand against him in all their encounters. Granted that in their final encounter, Cross suffers from a breakdown from the Bleeding Effect.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Vidic, who programmed in him a compulsion to kill the Mentor.
• You Are Number 6: Is referred to as Subject 4, though this is toned down once he joins Abstergo for real.

Alan Rikkin

Alan Rikkin

Appears in: Assassin's Creed | Assassin's Creed (2016) | Assassin's Creed: Heresy

Played by: Jeremy Irons (2016 film)^DubsValery Storozhik (Russian)

"We are making history here, the past is largely irrelevant."

A member of the Templar Inner Sanctum and CEO of Abstergo Industries, and one of the three Guardians who reports directly to the General of the Cross themselves. He is the father of Dr. Sofia Rikkin.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Our brief glimpse of him at the end of Assassin's Creed was as a bald, corporate shark with undistinctive features. In the film he is played by the suave Jeremy Irons.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Being played by Jeremy Irons also seems to have altered his personality as he's Affably Evil and a little more patient, a far cry from the impatient bully of much of the franchise. It helps that he's interacting with his daughter and superiors instead of harassing his underlings.
• Affably Evil: Comes off as this in the film, but considering his behavior in the games he's probably more accurately Faux Affably Evil.
• Bad Boss: As mentioned below, he's probably a bigger asshole than Vidic, and doesn't take failure well.
• Bald of Evil: He's completely bald in the 2007 game but he has hair in the 2016 film. Perhaps he grew it out in the meantime?
• Beard of Evil: Has one covering most of his face in the game but in the 2016 film he is clean shaven; either way he's evil.
• Big Bad: The modern primary antagonist in the 2016 live action film.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: If one takes into account both his game and film characterizations, it seems that he is a complete asshole to people who know him closely, but maintains an air of civility to others.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He's the head of the Templar front Abstergo Industries.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: In Assassin's Creed Origins, his death is covered up as one of these despite several witnesses watching him get killed by Cal.
• The Ghost:
  • Downplayed. For the most part, he is only mentioned in e-mails within the games and online manuals. At the end of the first game, a group of Abstergo executives is seen speaking to Vidic from the conference room; the one speaking to him is presumed by the Wiki to be Rikkin.
  • Averted in the 2016 film, where he has a bigger physical presence.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He fits this trope in the first games as he's the one giving orders to Vidic. He is also one of the three Guardians of the Templar Order, ranking higher than the Grandmasters and the other members of the Inner Sanctum, and answerable only to the General of the Cross themselves. He drops this trope in the 2016 film in favor of being the on screen Big Bad, leaving it to the General of the Cross.
• Jerkass: He's a bigger asshole than Vidic judging by his emails, at least to those outside of the Inner Sanctum.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the 2016 film, he is assassinated by the man he kidnapped and manipulated into repeated Animus immersions, whereby Callum gains both the motive and skills to do so.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He doesn't fight at all in the movie.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: He's one of the handful of members of the Templar high council, the Inner Sanctum, and one of the Guardians on top of that.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Heresy gives a glimpse into his mind. He finds idealism highly dangerous, and does his best to quash it in his fellow Templars.
• Slashed Throat: Callum kills him this way at the end of the 2016 film.
• Stealing the Credit: He not only plagiarizes his daughter Sophia's speeches, but takes credit for the Animus program finding the Apple of Eden.
• The Unfought: He is killed in the live action film by Callum Lynch, meaning that players of the games never have a chance to face him in any way.
• You Have Failed Me: An email chain with Caroline Grey about the failure to capture Shaun Hastings heavily implies that Rikkin had her executed for Shaun's escape.

Laetitia England

Laetitia England

Voiced by: Amy Landecker (English)^note Other Languages:Natalia Kaznacheeva (Revelations), Olga Kuznetsova (AC IV, Rogue) (Russian)

A member of the Templar Inner Sanctum and one of the heads of Abstergo's Operations Division, based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In this capacity, she oversaw the search for William Miles and ordered a team of Master Templars to find and capture him. She also oversaw the Sample 17 Project at Abstergo Entertainment, which she used to hunt for the Observatory.

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• Chair Reveal: When introducing herself to Juhani Otso Berg, Laetitia faces away from him during the first part of her speech before turning her chair around to look at him.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Of Abstergo.
• Implied Death Threat: After his evaluation of his mission to extract William Miles at Cairo, Laetitia threatens Juhani Otso Berg about how his daughter's treatment depends on Abstergo. Berg merely tells her that she's being vulgar and that there's absolutely no need to play petty games with a committed Templar like him.
• Mean Boss:
  • She treats the employees of Abstergo Entertainment horribly and makes demands of them that make zero sense for videogame developers... as opposed to unwitting dupes in the creation of Templar propaganda and the search for a First Civilization site.^note Word of God is that Olivier Garneau may in fact be the only Templar in all of Abstergo Entertainment, or at least "he does know who his bosses are", while the extent of Melanie Lemay's awareness — despite sitting in on a call between Laetitia and Olivier — is unknown.
  • Even amongst the Inner Sanctum, she isn't very well liked. She treats Otso Berg like a total idiot and indulges in petty surveillance, which he calls her out on, while Ardant and Gramatica groan when they mention her name.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: A member of the Templar high council, the Inner Sanctum.
• Wicked Cultured: Her office decorations, which include numerous paintings and statues, certainly gives off this impression, as does her manner of speaking. Emphasis on the wicked however, given how much of a Jerkass she is.
• Woman Of Wealth And Taste: She shows them.

Agent Juhani Otso Berg

Agent (later Master Templar) Juhani Otso Berg

Main Game Apperances: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood | Assassin's Creed: Revelations | Assassin's Creed III | Assassin's Creed Rogue | Assassin's Creed Syndicate | Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

Other Apperances: Assassin's Creed: Initiates | Assassin's Creed: Brahman | Assassin's Creed Rogue | Assassin's Creed Syndicate | Assassin's Creed: Chronicles | Assassin's Creed: Templars | Assassin's Creed: Uprising | Assassin's Creed: Reflections | Assassin's Creed: Heresy

A Finnish ex-special forces soldier and high ranking Templar agent under consideration for induction into the Inner Sanctum, which he joins in December of 2012. The multiplayer storylines in Brotherhood and Revelations tell part of his story in rising the ranks of the Templar Order. As of Rogue he has joined Abstergo Entertainment under the cover of a contractor.

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• The Ace: He has the skills of Daniel Cross without the insanity.
• Anti-Villain: Likely a mix of Type III and Type IV.
• Ascended Extra: From a background character who didn't appear in single-player mode for 4 years after his debut, to the closest thing to a (human) Big Bad on the modern day after Warren Vidic bit the dust.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Wields a sword while clad in modern full-body military armor when he fights Layla in Odyssey.
• Arch-Enemy: To Harlan T. Cunningham, who has managed to escape him twice.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Was promoted to higher ranks within the Templars due to his skill at field work, which took him off his Assassin hunting assignments to search for Pieces of Eden and Sages. Isn't too happy about this.
• Badass Normal: Unlike Cross, Berg does not have superior First Civilization genes, Assassin training, or Animus/Bleeding Effect abilities. Yet he is still able to fight evenly one-on-one against Assassins who possess such advantages. He's just that badass. It's probably the Finnish sisu coming out.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Rogue has him acting as an "independent consultant" for Abstergo Entertainment, which he hates.
• Beard of Evil: Has a prominent beard and happens to be a Templar.
• Big Bad: Is the main villain of the modern portion of Brahman.
• Blood Knight: Briefly became one during his time in the Animus due to his ancestor being a Viking.
• Brutal Honesty: Osto Berg has a point of being very blunt in his interactions with other people. Particularly this interaction between Violet da Costa and him on one of Rogue's database entries on Samuel Smith:
  Violet: I wonder if [lack of details on his life] is why he was hired? No one really knew him and no one would really miss him. He was completely expendable.
  Juhani: Agent da Costa. You are ALL completely expendable.
• Consummate Professional: Is always focused on the mission. He also bristles at how his superiors, namely Laetitia England, treat him like an idiot, turned one of his own teammates into an informer against him, and blindly give commands without taking into account ground-level variables that requires him to change tactics.
• Curbstomp Battle: He's on the receiving end of one when he attempts to take down Layla in single combat at the very end of Odyssey. This happens after Layla not only spend hundreds of hours reliving the memories of Ancient Greek's greatest misthios, but also right after she unlocked the full potential of the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, which she wields in their duel. Predictably, Berg poses as much of a threat as a basic Greek soldier, the weakest human enemy aside from civilians that the game has to offer.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He holds Shay's story as proof that the Templar way is better than the Assassins. Considering that Shay left because the Assassins refused to heed his warnings and blindly heeded Achilles, if anything Shay proves that Templar values such as blind obedience are foolish. He also became a loyal Templar because George Munro disregarded William Johnson's suggestion to kill him and showed kindness.
• Enemy Mine: In Assassin's Creed Uprising, he reluctantly teams up with Galina's cell, needing their help to take down the Instruments of the First Will. Both sides make it clear they hate this, and will try to kill one another once everything's done.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Has a four year old daughter. His handlers are worried this could be a weakness.
• Evil Is Petty: Layla Hassan sent him a complaint (and a patchwork F-bomb) over him repeatedly using her parking space. In Odyssey, he manages to gain access to her email, and uses it to send her taunting messages.
• Genius Bruiser: Rogue reveals him to be extremely perceptive in terms of the Assassin-Templar conflict and quite interested in history.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Acquires some after becoming the sole survivor of a mission gone wrong.
• The Heavy: While the Templars are all the bad guys, Berg serves as the main antagonist in the modern day segments of the games.
• Hired Guns: Rogue reveals that he spent some time as a mercenary after leaving the armed forces.
• Horny Vikings: The one time he entered the real Animus to research his ancestry, he discovered his Viking heritage by reliving the memories of his Viking ancestor who invaded Saxon England at Lindsifarne in the late 8th Century, the event considered the start of the Viking Age.
• I Have Your Wife: Implies in Odyssey that Abstergo hasn't actually killed Deanna Geary, by sending a voicemail to Layla using Something Only They Would Say.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: His fight against Layla in Odyssey ends with Layla running Berg through with the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, severing his spine and paralyzing him from the waist down.
• Internal Affairs: After learning of the corruption deep within the Templar Order, he takes up the role of the Black Cross with the help of André Bolden.
• Just Following Orders: Averted. His refusal to blindly obey his superiors makes them highly suspicious of his loyalty but he states that he utterly subscribes to Templar objectives and achieving them with the least fuss, he just doesn't see why that requires him to be a total fanatic or give him no room to think and decide for himself.
• Knight Templar: Literally.
• Moral Myopia: Proving his apple doesn't fall too far from the Templar tree, when he approaches Layla in Fate of Atlantis, he tries to condemn her for killing the Abstergo team he sent to kill / abduct her, while brushing off killing Deanna Geary.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Berg unwittingly clues the Instruments in on the location of the Phoenix Project, giving them the very means they need to resurrect Juno.
• Noble Demon: Despite being a Templar, he's got some morals. For instance, he didn't capture William Miles at the airport because he had children with him. He's so noble that he becomes the new Black Cross in order to weed out corruption within the Templars themselves.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: After he becomes part of the Inner Sanctum, though he gets annoyed with their tendency to keep things to themselves, even from each other.
• Only Sane Man: After his adventures in Templars, to be the only member of the Templar Order who sees there's something wrong with them from the inside and isn't The Mole.
• Papa Wolf: Do not touch his daughter, or he'll shoot you in the head remorselessly.
• Post-Final Boss: Serves as this to Layla at the very end of Odyssey's Fate of Atlantis DLC episodes. Since these provide the canonically last story arc, he's also this for the game at large if you played the main arcs in order. True to the trope, misthios-trained Layla swats him like a fly.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Shown during his interaction with André Bolden. Where most other Templars (like, say, Vidic) would just take a bunch of goons, knock André out and shove him in an Animus, Otso approaches the man, and offers help for his PTSD. When it freaks André out, he still manages to sweet talk the man into coming back, which makes things easier for Abstergo, since a willing participant means they synchronise better.
• Precision F-Strike: Is quite fond of "perkele"^note An old Finnish name for Satan that has fallen out of usage on that context and nowadays it's essentially the country's version of the F-word without the sexual connotations.
• Properly Paranoid: He harbours suspicions that the Instruments of the First Will might be using the Templars, rather than the other way around. Given his own immediate underling turns out to be working for Juno, he's right. And it turns out that's only the tip of the iceberg.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Rogue reveals that the main reason he joined the Templars originally was because they had medicine for his daughter, who suffered from cystic fibrosis, though later on he fully internalizes their ideals.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Is the blue to Violet da Costa's red.
• Sole Survivor: Of the original Team Sigma, after one of the Assassins in Florence they were sent to capture blew up a bomb to stop them from getting their files.
• Uncertain Doom: At the end of the "Fate of Atlantis" DLC for Odyssey he gets seriously injured by Layla, and Valhalla reveals through the existence of a recording file that he got interrogated afterwards, but the file is corrupted so we don't know what was spoken or what happened to him afterwards.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • The first image of him on the Initiates website is of him simply spending time with his daughter in Helsinki, Finland.
  • One of the cut scenes in Revelations begins with him buying an expensive watch and follows him as he experiences the luxuries of being a high ranking Templar Agent.
• Villain Protagonist: Of the multiplayer storylines of Brotherhood and Revelations.
• We Have Reserves: Even though he's slightly better about this than most other Templars, he still regards his underlings as expendable, as he outright tells Agent Da Costa at one point.
• Worthy Opponent: Views the Assassins as this. Played with as he believes the Assassins' similarities to the Templars means they should be destroyed with excessive force.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Rogue reveals that he was supposed to nab William Miles at the airport but didn't because he had schoolgirls with him at the time due to him posing as a tour guide. The Templars are dickish enough to see this as a flaw but Otso Berg merely points out that there was no need for random cruelty when a smarter way could achieve objectives.^note That, and there's no way to know that nabbing Miles at the time would have prevented his son Desmond from busting in and rescuing Miles/killing Vidic anyway.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: An odd example as his reaction to his ancestor's pillaging of a monastery (which he relived via the Animus) is horror and disgust. He's less than pleased to have Violet act like it's the coolest thing ever.
• Younger Than They Look: He's about 31, but could easily pass for a man in his 40s.

Isabelle Ardant

Isabelle Ardant nee Chu

Appears in: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

An Operations Executive in the Historical Research division of Abstergo Industries, and a member of the Inner Sanctum. During Syndicate she searches for the Shroud of Eden.

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• Even Evil Has Standards: She tells Alvaro that she's not going to let him mutilate the "10 year old" boy sage. Instead she's going to do something more humane, like incubate him into the Animus for the rest of his life.
• The Ghost: Until Syndicate she never appeared onscreen, though in Unity she has an e-mail talk with Àlvaro Gramática regarding the brief TWCB footage extracted from John Standish's genetic memories.
• In the Back: Shaun kills her by zapping her from behind with his shock blade.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Despite being the main villain of the modern day portion of Syndicate, she has no combat capabilities and leaves the fighting to Sigma Team.

Àlvaro Gramática

Àlvaro Gramática

Appears in: Assassin's Creed Syndicate | Assassin's Creed: Uprising

A Mexican Research Executive in the Future Technology division of Abstergo Industries, and a member of the Inner Sanctum. He runs the Phoenix Project, Abstergo's attempt to fully sequence an entire First Civilization genome.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: Easily shakes off Otso Berg's attempt to drug him unconscious in Syndicate, stating that he could "shit better drugs than the weak shit [Berg] spiked [him] with".
• Affably Evil: Despite being a Templar he appears to be a pretty friendly guy.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: A quack with a Spanish accent involved in weird science and a faux-cheery demeanour, hi, Doctor Nick!
• Character Death: Dies in the final issue of Uprising when he's hit by a falling girder after Juno blasts the roof of the Phoenix Project base hidden in the Australian desert.
• Dissonant Serenity: Talks calmly to Isabelle even while it's implied that he's dissecting a corpse and having a labcoat covered in blood.
• Dr. Jerk: He's a bigger psycho than Vidic, a fact not gone unnoticed among other members of the Inner Sanctum who are already missing his predecessor (Vidic was a huge douche to be sure, but he was far more stable). His otherwise cheerful demeanor makes his Mad Scientist tendencies stand out even more.
• Evilutionary Biologist: He's the head of the Phoenix Project to sequence a First Civ genome, and is pretty immoral.
• Large Ham: His emails and his voice recordings reveal a man in love with the sound of his voice.
• Mad Scientist: Our first view of the guy has him talk to Isabelle Ardant calmly while in the middle of a bloody autopsy, and Syndicate's Stinger reveals that he plans on full-on reviving a member of the First Civilization using their DNA. Not to mention when he got the Shroud working he routinely blew both his and Viola's brains out just so to talk to the entity within. FOR SCIENCE!!
• Would Hurt a Child: On hearing about the existence of the Sage and the likelihood that he's a descendant or relative of the Miles family, he gets giddy and yearns to harvest the child of his body and limbs. Even Isabelle Ardant calls him out on this.

Ellen Kaye

Ellen Kaye

Appears in: Assassin's Creed (2016)

Played by: Charlotte Rampling^DubsOlga Kuznetsova (Russian)

"It's 2016. No one cares about freedom."

The chairwoman of the Board Of Directors of Abstergo Industries, and the leader of the Council of Elders of the Templar Order.

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• Dark Is Evil: Dresses in dark robes for the ceremony of the Apple of Eden.
• Evil Old Folks: She's old and part of a Nebulous Evil Organization that seeks to rob humanity of its free will.
• Greater-Scope Villain: As chairwoman of the Board, Ellen holds an even higher rank than CEO Alan Rikkin, however she has only a few minutes of screen time. Subsequent invokedWord of God postings from the game editors and writing staff make it clear that she is not the General of the Cross, but answers directly to them. She's still the highest-ranking member of the Order that has made a physical appearance so far.
• Karma Houdini: The Assassins kill Rikkin and retrieve the Apple of Eden but spare Ellen and the rest of the Council of Elders.

Other Modern Templars

Agent Violet Da Costa

Agent Violet Da Costa

Appears in: Assassin's Creed Rogue | Assassin's Creed Syndicate | Assassin's Creed: Templars | Assassin's Creed: Uprising

Violet Da Costa is a Canadian "consultant" sent by Laetitia England to Abstergo Entertainment after the events of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. She was a member of Juhani Otso Berg's Sigma Team, serving as tactical support.

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• Bait the Dog: Early in Rogue, Violet rather bemusedly encourages Numbskull to keep snooping around the Abstergo files despite snarking that they are finding files they clearly shouldn't be seeing. Considering one of the audio logs Numbskull discovers has Violet flippantly stating they should kill them after getting all the information they need about Shay, it's pretty apparent that Violet is intentionally setting them up.
• Dark Action Girl: It's implied that she can certainly hold her own in a fight, though she doesn't actually fight onscreen until Syndicate.
• The Dragon: To Juhani Otso Berg, being his second in command in the Anti-Assassin Sigma Team. And also to Juno, being her second most visible agent in the Instruments.
• Faux Affably Evil: She can act nice, but it's rather superficial as compared to Melanie being genuinely nice.
• Foil: To Melanie Lemay from Black Flag; where Melanie was warm, friendly and enthusiastic, Violet is rude, blunt and dismissive.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: The Shroud is capable of healing any wounds and Violet finds the healing process rather soothing, which is why she's totally okay with getting her head blown off whenever Gramatica needs her to test it.
• Hidden Depths: Is a massive history buff in addition to being a Dark Action Girl. She's also apparently a Doctor Who fan.
• Jerkass: She treats "Numbskull" like crap and drives her to research Shay's life and eagerly discusses icing her after she has finished her job.
• The Mole: The Stinger to Syndicate reveals that she's a member of Juno's Instruments of the First Will.
• The Nicknamer: She always refers to the player as "Numbskull".
• Nightmare Fetishist: A low-key example as her reaction to the murder and pillaging of the Lindisfarne monastery by Juhani's Viking ancestor is to think that it's the coolest thing ever.
• Number Two: To Juhani Otso Berg.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Is obviously an agent of the Templars and deeply annoyed to be working with people who aren't aware of it.
• Pet the Dog: Just before "Numbskull" finishes looking through Shay's genetic memories, Da Costa quietly suggests they should get their affairs in order, with none of her usual snark or vitriol.
• Perky Female Minion: She's much more easygoing and has a sense of humor (albeit a rather mean-spirited one) compared to the rather dour Otso Berg.
• Properly Paranoid: She never trusted Elijah, due to his being Desmond Miles' son, but Juno overruled her. The concern turned out to be well-founded.
• Psycho for Hire: Downplayed, but she exhibits a disturbing amount of pleasure regarding killing.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: She's the red to Otso Berg's blue, and even wears a red shirt most of the time.
• Use Your Head: In the last cutscene of Assassin's Creed Syndicate, she fights Rebecca Crane and headbutts her to the ground.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Takes this view of Numbskull after she managed to see most of Shay's memories, though Berg tells her to wait and see.

Agent Sorkin

Agent Sorkin

One of the Templars working under Juhani Otso Berg in the reformed Sigma Team.

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• Made of Iron: Has managed to survive being shot with a sniper bullet while being used as a human shield by Harlan T. Cunningham, and even managed to survive getting stabbed by Galina Voronina about seven times in an altercation.
• Villainous Valor: While being used as a human shield by Cunningham, he yells at Berg to take the shot.

Dr. Sung

Doctor Sung

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Subject Four

An Abstergo doctor tasked with keeping Daniel Cross sane and healthy.

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• Affably Evil: Is really a nice person, but is also a dedicated member of Abstergo Industries and the Templar Order.
• Anti-Villain: A mix of Types I and III.
• Evil Counterpart: To Hannah Mueller, as both are women that come to trust and genuinely care for Daniel, and also represent his strongest connections to the Assassins and the Templars.
• Knight Templar: Literally.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: She's a Templar doctor.
• Non-Action Guy: Well, girl, but unlike Lucy she hasn't been shown to have any martial skill.
• Punch-Clock Villain: She's a Templar and believes in their cause, but is not particularly evil.
• Reluctant Mad Scientist: She has some hints of some standards, as her superiors sometimes have to threaten her to do some of the more heinous activities Abstergo gets up to, such as when they force her to extract more information out of a suffering Daniel Cross, which she objected to. That said, she still follows the Templar ideology and considers Daniel a hero for his work against the Assassins. She still thinks what they did to him was horrible though.
• Ship Tease: With Daniel, which got sunk following his death.
• Token Good Teammate: While not really "good", she is by far one of the nicest and least evil named members of Abstergo Industries and seems to genuinely care about Daniel's well-being.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: As one would expect from a modern day Templar.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: No sign of her in Assassin's Creed III or future games, even though Daniel Cross himself shows up.

Agent Theodore Rizzo

Agent Theodore Rizzo

A Templar operative and trainer stationed in Italy who dislikes Daniel Cross.

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• The Brute: He isn't exactly averse to using brute force.
• Character Death: He is killed by Daniel when the latter suffers a psychotic break in the presence of an Apple of Eden.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: By Daniel:
  Rizzo: My team is dead! I rep–(gunshot)
• The Leader: Of a Templar tactical team.
• Mook Lieutenant: The Leader of mooks.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: He admits to Vidic that while he hates Daniel, he admires his skills.

Dr. Damian Saravakos

Doctor Damian Saravakos

A high level Templar who works as a medical examiner in the Lineage Research and Acquisition department of Abstergo Industries.

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• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: An evil Templar doctor.
• Psycho Psychologist: Hinted to be one. When monitoring Milton Jones and Deanna Geary interacting, his notes get rather creepy:
  Damian: What's interesting is that when their hands touched, thermal imaging suggested that both of their heart rates jumped. I'd bet you anything that had I cut them open at that very moment, I'd have found their brains soaking in norepinephrine and their hearts flooded with adrenaline. Young love!

Antonin Scalia

Antonin Scalia

A Justice on the United States Supreme Court during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

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• Evil Old Folks: Since he was fully on board with the Templar agenda, and was about 79 when he died.
• Historical Domain Character: Eventually, since he died in 2016.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: While his personage still influences real life current events to some degree, he's one step closer to being historical now that he's dead.
• Manipulative Bastard: He influenced fellow Justices' votes to coincide with the Templar agenda, and got fellow Templars appointed to openings on the court.

Sofia Rikkin

Dr. Sofia Rikkin

Appears in: Assassin's Creed (2016)

Played by: Marion Cotillard^DubsElena Shulman (Russian)

"You're not a prisoner here, Callum. I'm here to protect you."

A scientist and the head of the Abstergo Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Madrid. She is the daughter of Alan Rikkin, the Chief Executive Officer of Abstergo Industries and a member of the Templar Order's Inner Sanctum.

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• Canon Immigrant: Though she's always been part of the Assassin's Creed canon, she makes her first game appearance in Origins.
• Daddy's Little Villain: She cooperates with her father for most of the film in their quest for the Eden Apple of Granada, although she resents it by the end.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Despite coming to a Heel Realization, the death of her father ensures that Sofia forgets all about her doubts and rededicates herself fully to the Templar cause.
• Heel Realization: Sofia becomes quite aghast when she finally realizes that her work will not be used to "cure violence" but instead to eliminate free will so that the Templars can establish an eternal dictatorship over humanity. Unfortunately, her doubts don't ultimately override her loyalty to her family, leading to a Heel–Face Door-Slam.
• Friend to All Living Things: The novelization of the film provides her backstory, where she adopted a filthy and flea-ridden stray dog, and also spent hours sitting in front of a forest while holding acorns in her hand to lure a squirrel to her.
• The Ghost: In Origins, Layla's computer contains letters from Sofia but she does not appear in the flesh.
• Kick the Dog: Layla's email logs in Origins reveal that she was welcomed to Abstergo by Sofia, who knew full well that Layla wanted in on the Animus Project and refused to permit her. While this could be excused by Layla's self-admitted reluctance to play by the rules, the Animus seen in the film (codename "Aerie") got its awesome mechanical crane arm out of a suggestion from Layla. Sofia mocked Layla for the suggestion, implemented it into the Aerie anyway, and failed to give Layla any credit.
• Ironic Echo: "I'm here to help you, and you're here to help me." First said by her to Cal when he is a prisoner at Abstergo's Madrid facility and then said to her by Cal when he and his fellows infiltrate a Templar temple.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When she kneels over her father's dead body, she realizes she is party to his murder because she didn't sound the alarm when she had the chance.
• You Killed My Father: The ending of the 2016 film suggests that she will embark on a vendetta against Callum for her father's murder.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She really believes she can better the world through her work at Abstergo, and seeks to eradicate humanity's violent impulses and enforce peace using science.

McGowen

McGowen

Appears in: Assassin's Creed (2016)

Played by: Denis Ménochet

The bodyguard of Alan Rikkin and the Chief Security Officer of the Abstergo Rehabilitation Center of Madrid.

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• Number Two: He's second to Alan Rikkin at the Madrid Abstergo facility.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He has some similarities with Ojeda, a Knight Templar from the time of The Spanish Inquisition who hunted down Aguilar de Nerha, like a similar build and beard pattern and being the Number Two of an important Templar (Tomás de Torquemada for Ojeda / Alan Rikkin for him).
• Villain Respect: In the novelization, after one of Callum Lynch's Animus sessions, he expresses to Callum his admiration for the Assassins, particularly the medieval Levantine branch.

Historical Templars

Cain

Cain

The eldest son of Adam and Eve, he murdered his brother Abel for a Piece of Eden and founded the Templars.

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• Antagonistic Offspring: He's the son of Adam and Eve, whom the Assassins regard as their founders.
• Biblical Bad Guy: He's the Biblical Cain.
• Cain and Abel: In this version, the Trope Namer killed his brother for an Apple of Eden.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the entire series, as every Templar after him has been his philosophical descendant. His parents' betrayal of the First Civilization also led to Juno's actions in the 21st century.
• Name of Cain: Trope Namer and all.
• Our Founder:
  • His actions inspired the creation of a cult known as the Children of Cain. Additionally, his mark was later adopted by the Templars as their insignia.
  • Might have founded the Templar Order. Maybe. Later games suggest that the group was actually founded by an Egyptian Pharaoh named Smenkhkare during the Old Kingdom to study an Isu technology cache and later spread to try to take over the Earth. Cain may be metaphorical rather than historical, or Smenkhkare may have simply refounded something that had already existed.
• Sibling Rivalry: He killed his brother for the Apple of Eden.

Smenkhkare

Smenkhkare

Mentioned in: Assassin's Creed Origins

An Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty during the Amarna Period. Despite his short-lived reign and untimely death, he was the founder of the Order of the Ancients, the precursor to the Templar Order.

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• Blue Blood: He was the son of Akhenaten.
• The Ghost: He's never appeared in the flesh at all in the series but Bayek does explore his tomb centuries after his death.
• Greater-Scope Villain: This little-known ruler of Ancient Egypt was responsible for the creation of the Order of the Ancients, an organization initially created to obtain Isu technology but would eventually evolve into the modern-day Templars.
• Historical Gender Flip: Possibly. The AC version of Smenkhkare is explicitly identified as a male but since so little is known about this Pharaoh it may or may not be a change in sex for the character.
• Our Founder: Shares this status with Cain for the entire Templar Order.
• Posthumous Character: He's already long dead by the events of Origins but his influence is widespread with the Order of the Ancients having members throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia by 1st century BCE.
• Small Role, Big Impact: As his character page makes it very clear, he had a rather brief reign as Pharaoh of Egypt but he was the man responsible for starting the Templar Order.

Arthur Pendragon

Arthur Pendragon

Mentioned in: Assassin's Creed Syndicate | Assassin's Creed: Heresy | Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

The legendary founder of the Kingdom Of Britannia and the Knights of the Round Table who was eventually betrayed by some of his loved ones at the Battle of Camlann.

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• Adaptational Villainy: As a member of the Order of the Ancients, this technically makes him a villain within the setting though he's also noted to be as valorous as his mythical counterpart.
• Big Good: To the Romano-British inhabitants of England and the modern-day United Kingdom. He's also the only Templar to serve this role besides Jacques de Molay.
• Blue Blood: He was the son of a Cornish king known as Uther Pendragon. His marriage to Guinevere also created a legendary dynasty.
• The Captain: The man who led the Knights of the Round Table onto the battlefield.
• Et Tu, Brute?: His allies Guinevere, Lancelot, and Amr were responsible for his death at Camlann.
• Excalibur in the Stone: He pulled out his signature weapon from a stone rather than Caliburn in the the original myths. Afterwards, he would eventually place it at Stonehenge, which was actually built on top of Isu military barracks.
• Founder of the Kingdom: Of not only the Kingdom of Britannia but the modern United Kingdom in general.
• The Good King: He was the first Briton to unite all of England under one banner and is fondly remembered as a benevolent monarch despite his membership in the Order of the Ancients.
• Knight in Shining Armor: The Trope Codifier as he was a British aristocrat and a legendary warrior.
• Posthumous Character: He's already dead in Valhalla though Eivor can use his legendary sword Excalibur as a weapon when they find it at Stonehenge.
• Public Domain Character: He's the Assassin's Creed version of the mythical British king.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Arthur wasn't just simply a nobleman but a talented warrior who protected the Romano-British inhabitants of England and fended off the Anglo-Saxon invaders from Scandinavia.
• Token Good Teammate: One of the noblest members of the otherwise shady, Illuminati-esque Order of the Ancients.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He started off early in his life as an optimistic man but eventually he grew to become disillusioned with the Order by the time he's already dead.

An Lushan

An Lushan

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Dynasty

A Turkic-born jiedushi (military commissioner) of the Tang dynasty who unleashed an uprising against Emperor Xuanzong in the mid-8th century. He is a former member of the Golden Turtles, the Chinese branch of the Order of the Ancients. He left the Order to found the Yelouhe and the Yan dynasty because of his fierce rivalry with fellow Golden Turtle Yang Guozhong, the chancellor to Emperor Xuanzong.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: He the founder of the Yelouhe and the Yan dynasty, in addition to being a skilled commander on the battlefield. On top of that, he was the jiedushi of Luoyang (Beijing), Pinglu (Yingzhou) and Hedong (Taiyuan) even before he started his own rebellion against the Tang.
• Beard of Evil: As in real life, he has a rather wild-looking beard. He's also the main antagonist of the story.
• Big Bad: He is the overarching threat to the Hidden Ones in Dynasty, as a former member of the Order of the Ancients.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In real life, Lushan was killed by Li Zhu'er in 757. In Dynasty, it's Li E who does it instead.
• General Ripper: Lushan has a deep hatred of Guozhong over his leadership of the Golden Turtles, so he splits off and forms his own group, the Yelouhe. He also tries to overthrow the Tang and replace it with his own dynasty.
• Historical Domain Character: An Lushan was a general of Sogdian and Göktürk origin in the Tang army who rose to prominence by defending the northeastern frontier of China from the Khitans and other threats. He managed to amass significant military power with Chancellor Li Linfu and Emperor Xuanzong. After Linfu's death, Geshu Han became the new chancellor and soon developed a rivalry with Lushan, which led to him creating the Yan dynasty as its self-proclaimed emperor. Lushan's rebellion was initially successful with the Yan forces capturing the capital of Luoyang and some of Xuanzong's relatives such as his sister who were sacrificed. However, he was killed by Li Zhu'er in 757 after he was unable to find the sword in his bed.
• The Rival: To Yang Guozhong.
• Rogue Soldier: He was a Tang general and jiedushi who decided to overthrow Xuanzong by attempting to become the Emperor of China.
• Start My Own: Lushan decides to leave the Golden Turtles to establish the Yelouhe. He does the same thing with the Tang, when he creates the Yan dynasty.

Jacques de Molay

Jacques de Molay

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Memories | Assassin's Creed: Unity

The last public Grand Master of the Templar Order in the early 14th century, he ordered his followers into hiding and to operate secretly before being put to death by the Assassin ally King Philip IV of France. The modern day Templars recognize him as a hero.

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• Bald of Evil: Later in his life, he began to go bald, losing most of the hair on the top of his head.
• Big Good: For the Templars. His portrait adorns the hall of their Inner Sanctum.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Suffered it after being arrested by King Philip le Bel with the approval of the French Pope Clement V (the first Avignon Pope).
• Dying Curse: A famous one from history (probably apocryphal):
  Jacques de Molay: Pope Clement, hear me! Before this year is out, you will answer for your crimes before God almighty. And you, King Philip, no punishment is too heinous for the great evil you have inflicted upon the Temple. I curse you! Curse you to the thirteenth generation of your blood! You shall be cursed!
• Evil Old Folks: By the time of his death he's quite old, being in his seventies at the time of his execution.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Before being captured, he entrusted his nine most trusted and loyal Templars with all the accumulated knowledge of the Order and of Those Who Came Before and sent them out into the world to rebuild the Order in secret, controlling events from the shadows. This plan gave rise to the dominance of the Templars worldwide. In addition to this, he ordered one of his Templar Knights to hide his Codex and a Sword of Eden beneath the Temple Fortress of Paris.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Much like the Assassins after Altair, every Templar since has been the philosophical descendant of Jacques.
  • In Unity the new Templar Grandmaster wants to revive his vision during 18th Century France by shifting power from the aristocracy to the rising middle class.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: Unity claims that he was a visionary who envisioned that the Templars would have to give up their Order and go underground and influence the world via finance. The real Jacques de Molay had no such vision. He spent most of his life trying to start crusades and failed to attract attention, and then belatedly started petitioning the King to convert some Templar holdings and settlements into a Kingdom, and he and his order were wiped out by his failure to adjust in time.
• Humanoid Abomination: Unity reveals that he was a Sage, though unlike the other Sages we've seen, he managed to integrate Aita's personality and his own, rather than going dangerously insane or getting completely subsumed by Aita. Thus he was the only one we've seen who died at an advanced age.
• Kill It with Fire: He was burned at the stake by King Philip the Fair, with the support of Pope Clement, under the influence of the Assassins.
• Not Quite Dead: Invoked by de Molay about the Assassins, who informs his underlings that contrary to popular belief, they survived the destruction of Masyaf at the hands of the Mongols.
  Templar: King Philip's moving faster than we expected.
  Jacques: Mm. Another hand is at work here.
  Templar: The Pope?
  Jacques: The Assassins.
  Templar: Assassins? I thought the Mongol Khans broke their power decades ago.
  Jacques: The Assassins are far older than Masyaf, my friend. Their anarchic delusions are virulent as the plague, and less easily eradicated.
• Shadow Archetype: Like Altair, whose final decades briefly overlapped with Jacques' childhood, he scattered his Templars into hiding while letting their public front be subject to a convincing defeat, much like Altair let Masyaf fall to the Mongols under Hugelu Khan. Jacques took it a step further by sacrificing his life for the cause.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only makes one in-person appearance during the games, during the prologue of Unity. Despite that, his death sets in motion the entire plot of the game.
• Thanatos Gambit: He allowed himself to be executed to help cover the tracks of his fellow Templars and mislead the Assassins into thinking the Templars had been destroyed, only for them to later rise from the shadows.
• Villainous Valour: Regardless of his ideals, he was incredibly brave to be willingly burnt at the stake in order to prevent the Assassins from knowing that the Templars had survived.
• Visionary Villain: Already in the Middle Ages, he felt that the Templars' attempt to rule via Kings, Popes and blind despotism will not really compel order and via the Templars' innovations in modern banking, he felt that a middle class would provide a better solution.

Esquieu de Floyrac

Esquieu de Floyrac

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Unity

Esquieu de Floyrac was a French Templar that served under Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who would eventually betray the latter after being expelled from the Templar Order.

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• The Dog Bites Back: In response to being expelled from the Templar Order, he assisted in completely obliterating their public face in the world and forced them into hiding.
• The Exile: He was expelled from the Order and took revenge by destroying their public front.
• In the Hood: Wears a dark hood when he comes to arrest de Molay.
• Historical Domain Character: The historical Floyrac was the one who betrayed de Molay to King Phillip IV.

The Knight

The Knight

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Unity

An unknown Templar Knight during the 14th Century who was entrusted by Jacques de Molay with a Sword of Eden and his Codex to hide from the Assassins during the French raid of their headquarters.

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• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The first portion of Unity has you playing as him.
• Cool Sword: Briefly wields the Sword of Eden against Thomas de Carneillon.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: By Thomas de Carneillon, which grievously injures him.
• Made of Iron: Is one of the very few people who have managed to survive a direct Hidden Blade stab.
• No Name Given: We have no idea what his name was.
• Villainous Valor: He might've been a Templar, but he was certainly a fairly brave individual.

Constantine XI Palaiologos

Constantine XI Palaiologos

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Revelations (mentioned)

The last emperor of the Byzantine Empire and secretly a Templar, who died during the Fall of Constantinople.

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• The Ghost: He doesn't appear in the game given that he's already dead.
• Historical Domain Character: Constantine XI was the last ruler of the Byzantines.
• Last Stand: He died fighting the Ottomans during one final charge.
• Never Found the Body: A variation in that while it's known for sure that he died, since he threw down his royal vestments before dying in his last stand his body was unidentifiable and was likely buried in a mass grave alongside his men.
• Posthumous Character: He's been dead for decades by the time of Revelations, but avenging him is a major motivation of Manuel Palaiologos.
• The Purge: Had any known Assassins in his territory executed.
• Villainous Legacy: Manuel Palaiologos' ambitions are based upon avenging him.
• Villainous Valour: He might've been a Templar, but historically he did choose to die in a last stand rather than run away or submit to capture.

Alessandro Valignano

Alessandro Valignano

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Memories

A Neapolitan Jesuit missionary and Templar who helped supervise the introduction of Catholicism in the Far East, most specifically in Japan, during the Sengoku Period of the late 16th Century.

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• Historical Domain Character: The historical Alessandro Valignano is most famous for managing to get the Jesuits to more easily convert Japanese followers to Catholicism via seminaries for native converts.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Valignano was definitely not a Catholic missionary that wanted to convert more people to the Templar cause.
• Sinister Minister: Used the Catholic Church in order to recruit more Templars from converts to Catholicism.

Mochizuki Chiyome

Mochizuki Chiyome

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Memories

"The illusion of free choice, a magnificent tool for control, is it not?"

A Japanese noblewoman during the Sengoku period of the late 16th Century who was recruited by the Templars due to her information network of kunoichi, and their inability to properly infiltrate Japan due to its insularity and constant clan warfare. She was eventually assassinated by the Assassin Hattori Hanzō sometime during the 1590s.

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• Amazon Brigade: Her kunoichi were all women she personally selected and trained.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Was a Japanese noblewoman and a Templar.
• Dark Action Girl: Had no problems fighting alongside her kunoichi if need be.
• The Evils of Free Will: Seemed to be a pretty big believer in this, even outright calling free will an illusion.
• Graceful Loser: Congratulates Hattori Hanzo for managing to best her as she dies without a hint of sarcasm. That said, she still gets into a philosophical argument with him before telling him to leave so she can die in peace.
• Historical Domain Character: As she was a real person, though the real Chiyome disappeared from the historical record following the death of Takeda Shingen.
• A Mother to Her Men: She cared for her kunoichi, and feared what would happen to them after Hanzo killed her.
  Chiyome: Who will take care of these girls now? You've sent them all back to the streets, the gutters, the brothels...
• Ninja: Created the kunoichi for her uncle in law Takeda Shingen, and happened to be one herself.
• The Spymaster: Her kunoichi posed as prostitutes, servants, and couriers to gather information and assassinate targets if need be. Her network was regarded as one of the best informed in Japan.

Uesugi Kenshin

Uesugi Kenshin

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Memories

The head of the Uesugi clan during the Sengoku Period and a member of the Templar Order, who was assassinated by the Assassin Hattori Hanzō in 1578 with the help of Honda Tadakatsu.

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• Aristocrats Are Evil: A daimyo of a Japanese clan who just so happens to be a Templar.
• Historical Domain Character: As he was a real person.
• The Rival: To Takeda Shingen, who also ended up dying at Hanzo's hand for his Sword of Eden.

William Lloyd

William Lloyd

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Fragments - The Blade of Aizu

The right-hand man of Harry Parkes, the British Consul to the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He is tasked with restoring the power of the nearly-defunct Japanese Templars and obtaining the Musashi Masamune from the Assassins.

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• Arch-Enemy: Over time, he becomes the personal arch-nemesis to the Shiba family over their affiliation with the Japanese Brotherhood as well as their desire to preserve the samurai tradition and to protect the Musashi Masamune.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Not only is he a Templar agent but he commands his own army of ronin allied to the Imperial Court. He even possesses a Japanese saber which made the locals believe that he made a deal with an Oni to obtain it.
• Big Bad: He is the main antagonist of The Blade of Aizu since he wants to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and replace it with a Westernized state ruled by the Imperial Court. His primary goal is to steal the Musashi Masamune, the legendary sword of Miyamoto Musashi.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Although Lloyd is merely a Templar agent working for Harry Parkes, he serves as the main Big Bad throughout the story.
• Evil Brit: Unsurprisingly, he is a British Templar who is an outright antagonist.
• Near-Villain Victory: Zigzagged. Lloyd almost comes close to killing Shiba Atsuko and securing the Musashi Masamune for the Japanese Templars during the Battle of Aizu, only to be slain by her brother Ibuka. Nevertheless, his mission of undermining the Tokugawa shogunate was a success with the Imperial forces emerging as the victors of the Boshin War.

Erich Albert

Erich Albert

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy

Albert was a Templar who served as a German general in World War I. He was assassinated on December 25, 1914 by a British Assassin serving as a medic in the British Army.

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• A Father to His Men: During the Christmas Truce of 1914, Albert's first priority was to get medical help for one of his wounded soldiers.
• Affably Evil: Seemed to be pretty nice for a Templar.
• Four-Star Badass: As a German general.
• Oh, Crap!: When he saw that the British medic had a circular scar on his ring finger.

The Black Cross

The Black Cross / Albert Bolden

Appears in: Assassin's Creed: Templars | Assassin's Creed: Uprising

A feared figure among the Templar ranks, the Black Cross was dispatched to hunt down any Templar who strayed from the path, and kill them. The last recorded one was Albert Bolden, a WW1 veteran who disappeared in Hong Kong in 1927.

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• Badass Normal: By all indications, the Black Cross is entirely human, with no First Civilization DNA whatsoever. He's still the terror of the highest members of the Order.
• Beneath Suspicion: As a black man in the '20s, most people don't tend to look at him twice, meaning he can easily make his way to his targets by pretending to be an ordinary musician.
• Defector from Decadence: While he refuses to join the Assassins, he also leaves the Templars because he wants no part of a group willing to make common cause with Hitler and Stalin.
• The Dreaded: Even Grandmasters are afraid of the Black Cross' coming.
• Enemy Mine: With an Assassin in Fascist Spain, to fight an Instrument whose taken control of an Assassin cell to gain the Koh-I-Noor.
• I Choose to Stay: He decides to stay in Spain to guard the Koh-I-Noor's resting place, rather than go back to the Templars.
• Legacy of Service: The Black Cross title has passed down through the Bolden family line for generations.
• Living Macguffin: The Templars want to know what happened to him because their data suggests he knew what had become of the Koh-I-Noor diamond.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: He is entirely devoted to the Order's goals. However, after his fall off the rooftop, this attitude has shrunk. By the outbreak of WW2, he's decided that if the Templars are working with Nazi Germany, he wants no part of it.
• One-Man Army: While the Black Cross' primary job is to take on other Templars, he has fought Assassins before, having wiped out entire cells more than once single-handedly.
• Opium Den: Assassin's Creed Uprising Issue 7 reveals that after he survived being shot by Darius Gift, he spent his time in the hospital pumped full of morphine expected to die. He came back, but now addicted to opium. He was found smoking in an opium den, even to the point of selling the Koh-I-Noor to get a fix!
• Pet the Dog: He feels some sense of obligation for Darius Gift, after having ruined the young man's life when he killed his father.
• Super Window Jump: He has a fondness for them. Getting hit with the glass, much less so.
  No matter how many windows I go through, I have yet to figure out how to keep all the glass from not going through me.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: An in-universe version. Bolden was last seen when Darius Gift shot him, before he fell over the side of a building, on April 27th 1927. The modern-day Templars are very determined to find out what happened next.

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Edison was one of the leading Templars of the early 20th century, and led the discrediting of Nikola Tesla as well as the set up to World War II. He later became one of the founders of Abstergo Industries.

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• Arch-Enemy: To Nikola Tesla.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: As one of Abstergo's founders.
• Evil Genius: Was the brains of the early 20th Century Templars.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: While he could be a Jerkass in Real Life (the video demonstration of an elephant being electrocuted is real), he probably wasn't part of any evil organizations.
• Jerkass: And not completely wrong either. He really did steal other people's inventions.
• Manipulative Bastard: He publicly discredited Tesla's inventions so that the Templars could maintain control of the world's energy sources.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Is remembered rather fondly rather than as the thief that he was.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford

Ford was an associate of Edison, and held the Fourth Apple for some time before sending it to Hitler. He later became one of the founders of Abstergo Industries.

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• Bad Boss: He used a Apple of Eden to do things like make his employees think they were getting a raise, when in reality they were getting a paycut.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: As one of the founders of Abstergo.
• Evil Genius: In Abstergo Industries.
• Evil Is Petty: The above use of the Apple to dick with his employees.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Although that being said he really was a raging anti-Semite and Hitler Fanboy who approved of the Holocaust.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: After sending the Fourth Apple to Hitler, he wrote to Edison that Hitler's plans for the Holocaust would be good for Europe since it would get rid of the Jews.

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

One of the conspirators behind World War II, Hitler used the Fourth Apple to gain control of Germany and institute the Nazi regime. He was killed by the Assassins on April 30, 1945, and they took the Apple for the Assassin Order.

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• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Hitler was a Templar. If you needed a hint that the Templars are unquestionably the bad guys, there you go.
• The Caligula: It's Hitler, what did you expect?
• Corrupt Politician: Used his position to advance Templar interests.
• Faking the Dead: What his plan had been. He had already killed his double and was leaving his bunker to meet up with his fellow Templars when the Assassins managed to kill him.
• Master Race: His main belief as a Nazi.
• Mind-Control Device: The Fourth Apple, which he used to gain power and convince people to carry out the war and the Holocaust.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Their leader.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The 32nd President of the United States, Roosevelt was one of the major planners of World War II, using the Third Apple to maintain control of the United States.

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• Corrupt Politician: As a Templar he used the Presidential Apple to get himself elected four times.
• Evil Cripple: Spent his life mostly crippled due to polio.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: FDR, one of the United States' most beloved Presidents, helped orchestrate WWII and was using an Apple of Eden to keep himself in power for four terms.
• Mind-Control Device: The Third Apple, which is how he maintained power for so long.
• President Evil: Was President of the United States for nearly four terms.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Orchestrated the New Deal while plotting for the eventual Templar takeover of the world.

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

The Templar leader in charge of the Soviet Union during World War II. He was killed by the Assassins on March 5, 1953.

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• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Stalin was a Templar. If you needed a hint that the Templars are unquestionably the bad guys, there you go.
• The Caligula: It's Stalin, what did you expect?
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Stalin was hardly the nicest man, but it's unlikely he was part of a global conspiracy to usher in a One World Order.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

The 36th President of the United States, he came into power after helping in the assassination of John F. Kennedy to prevent a joint United States and Soviet Union mission to the moon.

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• Corrupt Politician: Willing to help in a murder in order to achieve the presidency.
• Evil Old Folks: He was 61 years old when his presidency ended.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The real Lyndon Johnson probably didn't help with the murder of John F. Kennedy.
• President Evil: Became President after helping with the assassination of JFK.

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