Board Thread:Series general discussion/@comment-18014300-20170112113427

I just happened upon this article on Sun Yat-sen. Unfortunately, I have not read the Templars comic series yet, but I'm quite aggrieved to find that Ubisoft made Sun Yat-sen a Templar to the point that I cannot help but express it here and open up a discussion about it. Pardon me if this is the wrong place for such a topic.

I know that I shouldn't think it so simply as Assassins = good and Templars = bad, but in this case, I think it's less so much of that as the fact that dedication to democracy was one of Sun Yat-sen's most principal characteristics. He was a staunch, vocal opponent against monarchism and authoritarian rule.

Now I know that many revolutionaries turn out to be hypocrites that become dictators anyways, but when Sun Yat-Sen was democratically elected as the provisional President of the Republic of China after the Qing dynasty was overthrown, he very quickly abdicated to wannabe emperor General Yuan Shikai, a supposed ally. He didn't want to engage in a power struggle that would result in a civil war, and he feared contesting Yuan Shikai would mean that he was greedy for power.

When Yuan Shikai tried to revive the Empire by declaring himself emperor, Sun Yat-Sen led the democratic revolution against him.

I know that history can be written by the victors, or not all Templars are evil, or even democratic leaders can be Templar puppets, but making Sun Yat-Sen not a Templar puppet, but a Grand Master assassinated by the Assassins is like making Honoré Mirabeau the Grand Master of the Templars, except Sun Yat-Sen was even more fervently a democrat, to the point it was almost radical.

It's a very odd choice on the part of Ubisoft when you had a clear Templar figure in the form of Yuan Shikai and where Sun Yat-sen, an adversary, was one of the few Chinese leading proponents of social and political liberalism in this era, and you make Sun the GRAND MASTER of the Templars?

Not to mention that Sun Yat-sen's death had the immediate repercussion of helping the dictators of China rise to power because he was one of the few democratic leaders holding China together. I suppose Assassins can make mistakes, but killing Sun Yat-sen pretty much directly helped the Templar cause.<ac_metadata title="Sun Yat-sen a Templar?"> </ac_metadata>