Charlemagne

Patience, brothers. Soon we will reveal the secrets of Siege of Paris and Discovery Tour: Viking Age. This article has been identified as being out of date. Please update the article to reflect recent releases and then remove this template once done.

"Outwardly, Charlemagne was a pious defender of Christ's word. It seems impossible to believe he was under the sway of this corrupted cult. But the Order is expert at hiding its motives."

―Alfred the Great commenting on Charlemagne's affiliation with the Order of the Ancients, 870s.

Charlemagne (Latin: Carolus Magnus; 742 – 814), also known as Charles the Great or Charles I, was the King of the Franks from 768, the King of Lombards from 774, and from 800 the Emperor of the Carolingian Empire, which would eventually be succeeded by the Holy Roman Empire. Secretly, he was also a leader of the Order of the Ancients.

Biography

Reign

In the spring of 774, following the Lombards' siege of Pavia, Charlemagne visited Rome to confirm and reassert his father's grants of land. On 25 December 800, he was reluctantly crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, splitting Christiandom between the West and the East. Francia and the collection of Christianized tribes he already ruled became the Carolingian Empire.

Between 797 and 809, Charlemagne received three emissaries from the Caliph Harun al-Rashid of the Abbasid Caliphate. Among the gifts they displayed, there was an elaborate water clock made of brass on which 12 small horsemen would move around at the end of each hour. The emperor also received an elephant named Abul-Abbas.

In May 804, the scholar Alcuin wrote a letter to Charlemagne regarding the existence of the Order of the Ancients and how they were a parasitic group neglecting God's teachings and instead worshipping a race of precursor beings known as the Isu. Alcuin also informed Charlemagne about the Order's obsession with Sages, Isu allegedly reborn as humans. Believing the Order to be blasphemers, Alcuin was unaware that Charlemagne himself was a member of the same organization. Despite being a pious defender of God's will, Charlemagne hid his allegiance well. The Order then had Alcuin killed a week later as he knew too much and his letter was never sent.

Legacy

After Charlemagne's death, the Frankish Hidden Ones stole his sword Joyeuse and locked it away in their former bureau near Paris. In 886, during the Siege of Paris, the Viking jarlskona Eivor Varinsdottir from the Raven Clan found the bureau and claimed the sword for herself.

A slightly fictionalized version of Charlemagne appears in the epic poem, Chanson d'Aspremont, published in the late 12th century, in which Charlemagne oversees the baptism of his Iberian royal messenger Balan. An illustrated version depicting this scene was published between 1240 and 1250.

Sometime between 1544 and 1566, the Italian artist Taddeo Zuccari drew a depiction of Charlemagne confirming the Donation of Ravenna.

In 2012, Charlemagne was one of many historical figures included in the Glyph puzzles that the late Assassin Clay Kaczmarek left behind in the Animus as messages for his successor Desmond Miles to decipher. Desmond solved this puzzle in September of that year, which was part of a set titled "Instruments of Power" and in which Charlemagne was excluded from a list of individuals known to have wielded Swords of Eden. That same year, Charlemagne was included in a mnemonic set in Abstergo Industries' Project Legacy.

In 2020, during Layla Hassan's Animus sessions reliving the memories of Eivor Varinsdottir, she used a digital patch that allowed Eivor to equip a set of armor inspired by Charlemagne.

Gallery

• 
  Portrait of Emperor Charlemagne by Taddeo Zuccaro
• 
  Tapestry depicting the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed II (appears in Glyphs only)
• Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy (appears in mnemonic set only)
• Echoes of History (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
  • The Siege of Paris (tapestry only)
• Discovery Tour: Viking Age (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Mirage (mentioned in Database entry only)