Europe

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Europe is a continent or subcontinent comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, bordering the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east along with the rest of Eurasia.

Since at least the Roman era, both the Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order have had a strong presence in Europe. Europe served as the primary housing for both organizations until the Age of Discovery, when they started expanding their influence around the entire globe.

History

Isu Era

The city of Atlantis

Millennia ago, Europe, like the rest of the World, was populated by the Isu, an advanced civilization divided in many factions. In modern Greece, the Sister Realms of Atlantis, Elysium and Underworld were ruled respectively by Poseidon, Persephone and Hades. In Norway, the Aesir of Asgard were led by Odin. To stop the war between the Aesir and the Vanir led by Freyr, Odin married Freyja, Freyr's twin sister, uniting the two people. Numerous Isu Temples were built across Europe, especially in British Isles, Greece and Italy.

The Isu scientist Phanes engineered humans as slaves for the First Civilization, using Apples of Eden to control them. Phanes fell in love with a female human and they fled to Atlantis. She gave birth to Eve, the first hybrid who was unaffected by the Apple of Eden. As the number of hybrids increased, Eve, with Adam, led the Human-Isu War by stealing an Apple of Eden around 75 010 BCE.

During the War, Isu learned that an upcoming coronal mass ejection will destroy Earth. The Isu scientists searched for different ways to save the World. The Capitoline Triad, composed Father of Understanding Jupiter, the Mother of Wisdom Juno and theSacred Voice Minerva work on seven solutions. One of the them was the Rings of Eden Initiative led by Rah Cel'eze, adapting the technology of Rings of Eden to deflect the solar flare. Inside a station in modern England, the Isu tried to create a giant Ring of Eden to circle the Earth but without the time and resources, they limited their goal to protect one city. Eventually, the initiative was shut down and the station was cut from the global grid.

The Aesir witnessing the Great Disaster

Knowing that the Isu would become extinct after the catastrophe while humanity would prevail, the Aesir, with the help of Juno, stole the Mead, the seventh solution, permitting to store their essence into the human gene pool across eons. After this treason, the Aesir entered in war with the Isu of Jötunheimr and Múspellsheimr and Juno was outcast. In 75 000 BCE, just before the Toba Disaster, Odin, Tyr, Freyja, Freyr, Thor, Sif, Idun and Heimdall used the computer Yggdrasil with the Mead to store their essence before dying. The Isu Loki also secretly used Yggdrasil to take his revenge on Odin millennia after the Catastrophe.

After the Earth burnt for weeks, less than ten thousand humans and a few Isu survived. Jupiter, Minerva, and other Isu taught what they could to the humans to help reignite the spark of civilization. After a few centuries, all Isu were dead but they were remembered by humans as gods, composing the pantheon of different civilizations. While the Isu Temples were buried through time, the Pieces of Eden were used by descendants of the hybrids, becoming rulers, heroes, and conquerors. Their feats were remembered as legends and the artifacts were perceived as magical objects.

Antiquity

Mediterranean Civilization

Ruins of Knossos Palace

During the Bronze Age, many civilizations appeared across Europe, like the Celts in Western Europe, the Etruscans and the Romans in Italy, the Minoans in Krete and the Mycenaean in Greece, which was later seen as the cradle of Western civilization, influencing philosophy, art, politics, and science.

During the Archaic era, the Greek culture expanded by settlers across Mediterranean Sea, in Sicily but also in Iona and Cyrenaica. During the 6th century BCE, the scholar Pythagoras met the Isu Hermes Trismegistus who gave him his Staff of Eden, granting him immortality. Pythagoras founded the Cult of Hermes, a group that sought to keep balance between Order and Chaos. However, many Hermeticists favored Chaos, and they eventually split off to form the Cult of Kosmos, which was led by a person under the moniker the Ghost of Kosmos to secretly control Greece. They found an Isu Pyramid under the Sanctuary of Delphi, permitting them to see possible futures and influencing Greek politics. Pythagoras went to the ruins of Atlantis to protect its secrets from the Cult.

Athens' Acropolis

During the Classical Era, Greece was divided into many poleis, such as Sparta, Korinth, and Athens, which was one of the first Democracy. Between 490 and 449 BCE, Greece was invaded by the Achaemenid Empire which was supported by the Order of the Ancients, a secret society emulating the Isu civilization by controlling humanity through Pieces of Eden. The Persians and the Order allied with the Cult of Kosmos, facing the Greek city-states alliance, Athens and Sparta among them. Even if the king Leonidas of Sparta died with his army at the Battle of Thermopylae, the Greeks defeated the Persians at the battles of Salamis and Plataia.

Without a common enemy, Athens and Sparta fought for Greece's hegemony, creating the Delian League for the former and the Peloponnesian League for the latter. This led to the Peloponnesian War between 431 and 404 BCE, with the Cult of Kosmos infiltrating the two sides to gain control of Greece. Their plans were thwarted by the misthios Kassandra, granddaughter of King Leonidas, who assassinated each member and destroyed the Pyramid with the Leonidas' Spear of Eden. The Order of Ancients infiltrated the Greek institutions during the War but they were stopped by Kassandra who was helped by the Persian Proto-Assassin Darius. Later Kassandra helped her father Pythagoras to seal the ruins of Atlantis and inherited the Staff of Hermes, becoming the Keeper, tracking Piece of Eden through the World for twenty-six centuries.

Mosaic depicting Alexander the Great

In the late 4th century BCE, Greece was part of the Kingdom of Makedonia ruled by Alexander the Great. The Order of the Ancients granted him a Staff combined with the Trident of Eden, permitting him to conquer Egypt and the Middle East. His vast empire didn't last as Alexander was poisoned by the Babylonian Proto-Assassin Iltani, leading to the division between Makedonian Greece, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Seleucid Empire, each ruler having one of the Trident's prongs.

In the late 2nd century BCE, the collapse of the Seleucid Empire created a power vacuum that turned the region of western Cilicia into a pirate stronghold. The inhabitants were already known for their outlaw activities and military prowess, and the Cilicians established themselves as the most successful group of pirates in the ancient Mediterranean region.

Roman Era

According to legend, Rome was founded by King Romulus in 753 BCE and became the center of a Republic in 510 BCE. By the 3rd century BCE, Romans expanded across the Mediterranean Sea, fighting Celts, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Persians. This led to the Romanization of most parts of Europe, with the construction of aqueducts, forts, and cities but also the enslavement of the defeated populations.

Caesar's assassination by the Hidden Ones

In 49 BCE, as a civil war erupted between the consuls Pompey and Gaius Julius Caesar, the Order of the Ancients executed the last and inducted the latter into their ranks, the dictator becoming their leader. Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and other senators allied with Amunet, a descendant of Darius and Kassandra of Sparta. They founded the Roman branch of the Hidden Ones, a group dedicated to fighting the Order and protecting humanity's freedom. In 44 BCE, the Hidden Ones assassinated Caesar.

After the dictator's death, general Marcus Antonius allied with Caesar's nephew and adopted son Octavian. In 42 BCE, they defeated Brutus and Longinus at the battle of Philippi, the two Hidden Ones committing suicide afterward. Octavian took the leadership of the Ancients, and after defeating Antonius in 30 BCE, established the Roman Empire. His successor expanded the empire using the Prong of Faith and Devotion. The expansion wasn't without resistance, like the Iceni revolt led by the queen Boudicca in 60 CE. As the empire spread across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, the Hidden Ones established bureaus to operate in Europe.

Representation of Peter with a Staff of Eden

During the 1st century CE, Simon Peter, an Apostle of Jesus of Nazareth, arrived in Rome leading the Christian Church with a Staff of Eden. His successor inherited the Staff and later the emperors' Prongs, spreading Christianity in Europe. In some cases, Christians were persecuted by the Roman authority until the emperor Constantine I authorized the new religion during the 4th century. In 330 CE, he rebuilt the Greek city of Byzantium as a New Rome and a Christian city, which later became Constantinople. At the end of the 4th century, Theodosius I declared Christianity the official empire religion, and ordered the closing of polytheist temples. This particularly decreased the influence of the Order throughout the empire.

By the 5th century, as the empire was too vast to control, the legions retired from the peripheral provinces like England. The Hidden Ones also fled these provinces and established their strongest foothold across Mediterranea. The empire was invaded by Germanic tribes, the Saxons and the Franks among them. In 410 CE, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths and their king Alaric I. In Eastern Europe, Attila the Hun obtained a Sword of Eden and used it to expand his empire in central and western Europe.

In 476 CE, Rome and the Western Roman Empire fell. Only the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople remained, controlling Greece, Egypt, and the Near East. Even after the Empire's fall, many ruins lasted for centuries and the Roman Civilization held a lasting influence on the European countries.

Middle Ages

Dark Ages

Arthur pulling Excalibur

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes filled the political vacuum, with the establishment of new kingdoms. In the late 5th century, when the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, Arthur Pendragon received the Sword of Eden Excalibur from the Women of the Mist, a group of witch-warriors. Using its power, Arthur became the king of Britons and a leader of the Order of the Ancients. The Women of the Mist's agent Mordred tried to recover the Sword for himself, founding the Descendants of the Round Table, but Arthur hid the Sword in an Isu vault. The Women of the Mist protected the vault, becoming an enemy of the Descendants.

In 536 CE, as Italy was under the control of the Ostrogoths, the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I sent the generals Belisarius and Narses to conquer Rome. During the Gothic War, the Romans took Rome but the city was besieged numerous times by the Ostrogoth of Totila. Eventually, Italy became a part of the Byzantine Empire, but in the 7th century, after Lombard's invasion, Byzantine settlers took refuge in Venice, establishing their own Republic.

Between the 6th and the 7th century, the Anglo-Saxons established the Heptarchy with the kingdoms of Wessex, Essex, Sussex, Kent, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. With the influence of Irish monks, the Anglo-Saxons adopted Christianism, as well as the Picts of Scotland. The Britons in Wales regularly fought with the Anglo-Saxons. During the late 8th century, Mercia was ruled by the Ancients Offa, who expanded his kingdom and built a linear military fortification known as the Offa's Dyke. After his rule, the Ancient established one of their last stronghold in England, even reaching Scandinavia.

In the early 8th century, after the Umayyad Caliphate nearly conquered all of Spain, the last Christian states struck back. This led to the Reconquista, opposing the Christian and the Muslim states in Spain for over seven centuries. After the Abbasid Revolution in 750, the Umayyad dynasty established the Emirate of Córdoba.

File:ACV Charlemagne tapestry.png

Tapestry depicting Charlemagne

In 756 CE, the bishop of Rome established the Papal States, becoming the pope. As Rome and Constantinople were rivals for Christendom leadership, the pope Leo III allied with Charlemagne, king of the Franks and secretly the leader of the Ancients. In 800, Leo crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Roman. The Carolingian Empire spread across France, Germany, and Northern Italy and was seen as a spiritual successor of the Western Roman Empire. Later, the empire was divided into three but the Ancients kept influence as the emperor Louis II of Italy was the leader of the Order in the mid-9th century.

Viking Age

Ragnar Lothbrok

In the late 8th century, the lack of arable land in Scandinavia led many Norses to leave their countries. As a seafaring people, Norse became settlers, and traders, but also Vikings, raiding the coast to loot goods and made slaves. The monastery of Lindisfarne was one of the first raided in 793 CE, beginning the Viking expansion. One of the most famous Vikings was Ragnar Lothbrok, who besieged Paris in 845. In the 850s, the Norwegian Imair established the kingdom of Dublin in Ireland, which became an important trading hub under the rule of his son Bárid mac Ímair.

In 852, the Varangian Rurik built the city of Novgorod in in modern-day Russia. Sailing through the Danube, Varangians besieged Constantinople in 860. To stop them, the imperial family recruited them as personal guards, the Eagle Clan among them. In 867, the Order of the Ancients helped the Chambellan Basil to assassinate the emperor Michael III. As Basil was the new emperor, the Order influenced him to kill his son Leo, suspected to be Michael's son. The Varangian Thyra from the Eagle clan allied with the Hidden Ones Basim Ibn Ishaq and Hytham to protect Leo. They succeeded, killing the Ancients leader Isaac, and Basil cutting his ties with the Order.

Aella subjected to the blood eagle

In 865, Lothbrok raided the kingdom of Northumbria ruled by the Ancient Aella. After Lothbrok was executed by Aella, the Sons of Ragnar invaded England with the Great Heathen Army to conquer it. When they killed Aella, Northumbria became a vassal of the Ragnarssons. East Anglia knew the same fate after the murder of the king Edmund the Martyr. As the Great Summer Army led by Guthrum expanded in Mercia, Wessex, ruled by the Grand Maegester of the Ancients Æthelwulf and later his sons Æthelred and Alfred the Great, fought the Viking expansion. The Picts and Britons also entered into war against the Norse.

During this period, the Isu Reborns of the Aesir appeared, among them Thor's as Halfdan Ragnarsson who became the king of Northumbria, or Freyr's as Harald Fairhair, uniting all Norway. Tyr's and Odin's reborn were Sigurd Styrbjornsson and Eivor Varinsdottir from the Raven Clan. As they fought the Ancient Kjotve the Cruel, they allied with Basim and Hytham. After Kjotve's death, the Hidden Ones followed the Raven Clan in their settling of Ravensthorpe in Mercia, establishing the bureau for the British Hidden Ones. Unknown to them, Basim was Loki's reborn and tried to take his revenge on Odin but it ultimately failed after he was trapped in the Yggdrasil for centuries.

The Battle of Chippenham

While Eivor tried to conquer all of England, the Hidden Ones recruited her to kill the Ancients in the country. At the same time, Alfred the Great wanted to reform the Order, deeming its Isu worship as heretical. As Poor-Fellow-Soldier of the Christ, he sent clues to Eivor to eliminate all of the Ancients. In 878, during the Battle of Chippenham, Eivor fought with her allies Alfred army. After his defeat, Alfred hid at Athelnay where he met Eivor to reveal the truth and the reformation of the Ancients as the Templar Order. Later Alfred's Army defeated the Great Heathen Army at the Battle of Edington. Alfred established peace with Guthrum who converted to Christianity and became king of East Anglia. During the following decades, the Norse adopted Christianity, and the two societies were unified as the Kingdom of England.

While the Ancients were collapsing, other secret organizations were active in the British Isles. As Eivor recovered Excalibur, both the Descendants of the Round Table and the Women of the Mist tried to steal the Sword of Eden. The Hidden Ones allied with the witch warriors after Niamh of Argyll infiltrated their ranks. Hytham orchestrated a sacrifice of an Excalibur's copy to fool the Descendants while granting the Piece of Eden to the Women of the Mist. In Scotland, a Christian sect led by Saint Columba the Reborn used the Codex of Eden to convert the population. Both Hidden Ones and Templars took interest in the group. Their headquarters in the Loch Ness Temple was flooded by the Hidden Ones while the Templars recovered fragments of the Codex.

In Ireland, as Christianisation progressed, the druid culture faded out. In this context, the Children of Danu emerged, a secret society dedicated to defending the Gaelic culture through violent ways, practicing sacrifices, and using hallucinogens to spread fear among Christians and Norse. By 879, the Children were led by Eogan mac Cartaigh who pretended to be a dedicated Christian priest. The Children planned to assassinate the High King Flann Sinna to destabilize Ireland but they failed and were eliminated by Eivor. Their actions led to further persecution against the druid by the Christians.

Vikings raiding Paris' street

In the 880s, the Carolingian empire was once again unified under Charles the Fat who had a troubled mind. The zealous Christian sect known as the Bellatores Dei believed that Francia fell in apostasy and influenced Charles to restore order. By 886, they tried to eliminate his wife Richardis and killed the jarl Sinric of Elgring Clan of Melun. Sinric's brother Sigfred led the Siege of Paris with the help of Eivor and the Raven Clan. Even if the city was defended by its Count Odo and the Bellatores, the Vikings stormed Paris. Eivor and Odo made a truce to spare the citizens while Charles paid the Elgring Clan to leave, weakening his leadership. Later Eivor eliminated the Bellatores, saving Richardis and defeating Charles in a duel. In 887, Charles was deposed and Odo became the king of Western Francia, leading to the collapse of the Carolingian empire.

During the 10th century, the Fatimid caliphate took control of Sicily. In 929, the emir of Cordoba Abd al-Rahman III founded a caliphate over Spain and Maghrib, challenging the Abbasids of Baghdad.

In 962, the king of East Francia and Italy Otto established the Holy Roman Empire, controlling most of central Europe. Owning the Prong of Devotion, he granted the artifact to the bishop Poppa to convert Denmark to Christianity. Poppa baptized its king Harald Bluetooth who kept the prong and joined the Templars In 975 in Sweden, the Hidden Ones assassinated the King Olof Björnsson and promoted his brother Eric as his successor. Olof's son, Styrbjörn the Strong allied with Harald to invade Sweden, using the prong. In 985, at the Battle of Fýrisvellir, Styrbjörn army was defeated and the prong was taken by the Hidden One Thorvald Hjaltason. He entrusted the artifact to the warrior Östen Jorundsson who hid it.

Vikings also explored the Atlantic Ocean, settling in Iceland by the 9th century. Around 1000, according to sagas, Leif Ericson participated in a Viking expedition to North America, establishing a colony in Vinland.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed
• Assassin's Creed: Lineage
• Assassin's Creed II
  • Battle of Forlì
  • Bonfire of the Vanities
• Assassin's Creed II: Discovery
• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
  • The Da Vinci Disappearance
• Assassin's Creed: The Fall
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations
• Assassin's Creed III
• Assassin's Creed: Forsaken
• Assassin's Creed: The Chain
• Assassin's Creed III: Liberation (Map)
• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
• Assassin's Creed: Rogue
• Assassin's Creed: Unity
  • Dead Kings
• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate
  • The Last Maharaja
  • Jack the Ripper
• Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia
• Assassin's Creed: Identity
• Assassin's Creed: Heresy
• Assassin's Creed (film)
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods
• Assassin's Creed: Origins
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
  • Legacy of the First Blade
  • The Fate of Atlantis
• Assassin's Creed: Gold
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
  • Wrath of the Druids
  • Siege of Paris
  • The Last Chapter
• Assassin's Creed: Fragments – The Highlands Children
• Assassin's Creed: Fragments – The Witches of the Moors
• Assassin's Creed: The Engine of History
• Assassin's Creed: The Golden City
• Assassin's Creed: Mirage (mentioned in Database entry only)
• Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR