User blog comment:Francesco75/Missing history of the Assassins/@comment-30719293-20190202095720

Hey, I think this is great. My own headcanon goes in a different direction than a lot of this but I love seeing people write stuff like this. Check out my blog posts for more detail on what I’ve envisioned as some of the missing histories. I’m currently working on a rewrite for a lot of it, adding a lot more ancient history stuff and putting it in to one document.

But now to touch upon the stuff you directly addressed. There are two likely routes I see the evolution of the Hidden Ones to the Assassins happening. Either the Hidden Ones in Egypt were discovered and dismantled with the survivors fleeing north and changing their name only to return later and restablish a new branch under the new name or my favored idea, there was a schism within the Hidden Ones with those wanting to go public being ousted and exiled north taking on a new name and then becoming more successful than the Hidden Ones and subsuming them. Historically it could go either way as the Nizari Ismaili who the Assassins were the "militant arm" of originated in Egypt.

I disagree with your idea of Constantine being a Templar. My headcanon for this era has Diocletian being one and instigating the Great Purge in order to get Sword of St. George/St. Peter, a Sword of Eden. However the Assassins prevented him from recovering it and instead gave it to Constantine, who while maybe not exactly aligned with the Assassins was at least a moderate. I don’t see him as a Templar as I don’t see the Templars as major players within the Christian Church at this time. That would come later.

I also have a different direction for the Shroud. First I don’t think the Golden Fleece and the Coat of Many Colors were the same Shroud and thus for me Jesus's Shroud and Brutus's Shroud are not the same. Furthermore the Shroud that became known as the Shroud of Turin was in fact not Jesus's Shroud at all but Brutus's with Jesus's Shroud being transported northwest to Britain after his death.

I will need to look into these Nine Swords as nine is a common motif amongst the Templars and definitely could be adapted somehow.

If you’ve read Last Descendants I’m pretty sure it makes Otto an ally of the Templars. It also has European proto-Assassins prior to Sabbah. I don’t think Charlemagne himself was a Templar ally or puppet (even though he is one of the Nine Worthies which I feel could all be Templars or allies of them with at least two already confirmed) but I do think his son and successor was completely in their pocket.