Great Rites Controversy

The Chinese Assassin purge which began as a planned full-scale assault on the Chinese Brotherhood of Assassins by the Eight Tigers and later continued through the Great Rites Controversy, was an decade long operation led by the Templars controling China and the Jiajing Emperor, to eradicate their hereditary ennemies and all those who opposed their rule, from court officials to neo-confucian philosophers.

History

Failed attack

In 1521, when the Zhengde Emperor died heirless, the powerful Templar eunuchs known as the Eight Tigers, who had remained silent after the execution of their leader Liu Jin, began to plot again in order to put their own man on the throne and eliminate the threats to their rule. The Templars discovered that Wang Yangming, the governor of Jiangxi province and leading figure of the Neo-Confucian current, was also the leader of the Assassins and started to spy on him and identified many of his allies. They prepared a massive operation to purge the Assassins from Beijing during the confusion caused by the absence of a declared Emperor, but luckily the plot leaked to the Imperial Concubines, and one of them, Shao Jun, was able to warn Yangming in time. In order to counter the Templars, Wang Yangming called his best Assassins to the Forbidden City in an attempt to kill the Tigers before they could strike, but they were defeated.

After this debacle, those captured were tortured and executed by Ma Yongcheng, the Tiger known as "the Butcher", and all those suspected to have ties to the Assassins and those related to them were murdered. The man designated to investigate the attack in the palace, Wei Bin, who was also a Templar, designated many innocent culprit who were also executed on his orders. Understanding that none of his allies would escape the Tigers' wrath, the Mentor ordered a full retreat of all the Assassins and their allies from the Forbidden City. Having lost his influence in the palace but still in Beijing, Wang Yangming hoped to find a weakness in the Tigers' organization and take them down before they could completely steal imperial power and used his new recruit, Shao Jun, to gather information critical to Assassin's operations.

The Great Rites Controversy

The same year, Jiajing, the fourteen years old cousin of the Zhengde Emperor, was made the new emperor with the support of the Tigers, who ruled in his stead as the young but cruel boy was not interested by the Imperial affairs. The Tiger Yu Dayong, enforced the slave trade, selling opponents to the Portuguese and making huge profits while exiling the enemies of the Templars out of China. Another Tiger, Gao Feng, was given the commandement of the Templar secret prison in the former Assassin headquarter of the Maijishan Grottoes, with Ma Yongcheng torturing the prisonners. In the meantime, Zhang Yong, the leader of the Tigers, set-up the Great Rites Controversy in order to eradicate his rivals in court. The Controversy was a dispute between Jiajing, who didn't want to be posthumously adopted by the Zhengde Emperor according to the tradition when the new Emperor wasn't the son of the former Emperor, and traditional officials who estimated that he had no right to posthumously elevate his own father to the rank of Emperor instead.

Using the Controversy, Zhang's minions, Wei Bin and Qiu Ju, murdered or exiled many of their political opponents, while chasing the remaining Assassins, forcing Wang Yangming, whose true identity was known by the Templars, to disappear. A new Mentor, Zhu Jiuyuan, was chosen by the Brotherhood and under his supervision, a secret war began in Beijing and all over China between the Assassins and the Templars. Primarily using Shao Jun, who had become a fully trained Assassin and a formidable warrior, the Assassins tracked the agents of the Templars, trying to stop their growing control over the Empire. But the Brotherhood's actions were not decisive enough and soon the Tigers effectively controlled China, retreating in luxurious palaces to enjoy their new power and puting puppets in court, as Yan Song, the new public face of the administration. In the shadows, the Tigers completed their hunt for the Assassins, raiding most of the Brotherhood's safe houses, destroying its information network and finally killing all the Assassins in China. They also started to search for ancient artifacts, as well as consolidating their grip and financial power through diverse operations throughout the country.

Tracking the Mentor

With all their brothers dead and Yangming gone, Shao Jun and Zhu Jiuyuan despaired and finally decided to leave China in order to seek the help of foreign Assassins. Zhu suggested going to Italian Mentor Ezio Auditore da Firenze, whose reputation and fame had spread over the world, and traveled to Macau in order to take a ship for Europe. In 1524, Shao Jun and Zhu Jiuyuan eventually reached Venice and thought they were safe from the Tigers, but were in fact followed by Templar agents. Sent to kill the Mentor, the elite soldiers armed with muskets ambushed the two Assassins with Zhu Jiuyuan sacrificing himself so Shao Jun could escape alive and find Ezio.

Now truly alone, Jun managed to reach Ezio Auditore's villa in Tuscany, and persuaded the grizzled and retired Mentor to share his wisdom and teach her how to rebuild her Order. However the Templar soldiers had followed the Chinese Assassin to Florence and attacked Ezio's villa, but Ezio and Jun successfully killed them. After some training with Ezio, Jun decided to return to China in order to rebuild the Chinese Brotherhood and to exact her revenge on the Templar.

Reference

• Assassin's Creed: Embers
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China