Cem

Prince Cem (22 December 1459 – 25 February 1495) was a pretender to the Ottoman throne, a son of Mehmed II and a brother to Bayezid II. Cem was also a member of the Templar Order.

After his brother became Sultan, Cem was placed under house arrest in Italy. There, he secretly became a close friend of Rodrigo Borgia, or Pope Alexander VI, and became closely allied with the Borgia family. Rodrigo intended to use Cem's ambition to conquer Constantinople for himself, however, on realizing this plan, the Assassin Brotherhood had Cem assassinated in Capua in 1495.

Before his death, Cem was responsible for locating the memoirs of Niccolò Polo, as well as beginning the Templar goal to unite the East and West into one Empire. Accompanying this, he revealed the location of the Apple of Eden to Rodrigo Borgia.

Biography

As a young man, Cem learned that Sultan Mehmet II, his father, possessed an Apple of Eden and had used it to secure Constantinople. After failing to secure the throne of the Ottoman Empire after his father's death, he took the Apple and looked to it for aid. The Apple, however, did not listen to Cem, nor would it 'speak' to him.

Because of this, Cem decided that the Apple should be passed on to the Templars in the West, to men who had done more research into the Apple's power. Cem was fearful however that when accepting the Apple, the Borgia would shun him, due to him being a more recent convert to the Order. He therefore decided to hide the Apple, until he could establish the Borgia's trust.

Before going to Rhodes to meet with the Templars, Cem hid the Apple in the Templar Archive on Cyprus, and upon arriving at Rhodes, the Hospitaliers arrested Cem and took him before their "Masters in Europe."

During his many years in imprisonment, Cem wrote to his nephew Ahmet, teaching him, guiding him and shaping the way he thought and acted. It was through these letters that Ahmet learned of the memoirs of Niccolò Polo and the secrets that they contained. Through Cem's directions, Ahmet finally found the memoirs and learned of the library at Masyaf.

Knowing that Cem alone knew the wherabouts of the Apple, the Borgia spent many years persuading and appealling to Cem's better nature, eventually managing to draw the Apple's location from their prisoner. After securing the location of the Apple, Cem was of no more importance to the Borgia, and so they left him.

Cem spent another nine years in various prisons across Europe, before being assassinated by the Assassin Brotherhood, who believed that the Borgia were planning to use Cem to conquer Constantinople. However, despite this, the Ottoman and Byzantine Templars were unaware of Assassin involvement in Cem's death.

Legacy

Ahmet told the Templar, Hasan Pasha, through a letter that it was Cem who began the project to use the vast knowledge in Altaïr's library to bring peace, through uniting the East and the West into one Empire, by moving as one body with one head.

Source

• Assassin's Creed: Revelations novel
• Assassin's Creed: Recollection