User:ACsenior/Sandbox4

Personal views/essays

Welcome, Assassins/Templars! For the curious here, although I am mostly known as "The Templar" guy here, or at least was known for it when active previously, a lot has changed and rather than merely debate issues and edits articles I want to write about the political developments in the series on broad terms and various topics. Politically I am self educated through being a former Labour Party member in my country, having debate schooling, campaign experiences and even committee work. But I am no longer a member but far more politically competent now than my more younger and idealist years in the Wiki.

On State Formation(work in progress)

(description)

States

Given the nature of the conflict, isn't really a direct opposition despite their forever war, neither Assassins nor Templars are against states and having a ruling class in itself given their common positions among ruling classes. But that isn't really the main point I'm getting at, as per Germain himself, the Templars (Children of Cain or another unknown org predating the Ancients) created; "For centuries we've focused our attentions on the trappings of power: the titles of nobility, the offices of Church and State. So obsessed with clinging to the trappings of power we abandoned our purpose. Caught in the very lie we crafted to shepherd the masses." What's telling here as far history of State formation is concerned is that the first States was created was ancient Sumerian states, whom according to Germain was crafted by Templars for control.

Templars creating the State itself, followed by the Hidden Ones supporting Monarchs & Emperors and then later the Assassins even creating their own Assassin state, it seems even the Assassins sees the value of class collaboration with or being part of the ruling class itself.

A Hidden Ones example, one way worse than Assassin examples bellow is actually the Hidden Ones support of the Viking invasion Anglo-Saxon Britain and the fighting over the "titles of nobility": Eivor: The desire to rule is not unique to this order. Sigurd and I want the same. A land to call our own and the honor that comes with it. Hytham: Do not compare yourself to such people. The Order has no honor, no principles. No humanity. Yet they sit on a great many of England's thrones. If you seek to pacify England for the safety of your clan...

In this instance Eivor is correct to compare her own nobility and conquest to that of the various Kingdoms already doing so in Britain, here the Hidden Ones expose themselves as being just as dishonourable and without principles as the Ancients, whom just are doing an State practice older than even their own order. The irony here is of course that to conspire to conquest and replace nobility is also just an average Templar plan too, instead of claiming to do so for "order", instead the word used here is to "pacify", as if the political practices would be any different by changing a word. And all that makes the burning and pillaging of peasant villagers better just because it replaces a ruling class with one more politically aligned to the Hidden Ones. Any Templar worth their salt would praise this accomplishment of Hytham to rebuild the Brotherhood.

Taking Masyaf as an Assassin State, where the ruling class where exclusively the Assassin Brotherhood and the Mentors ruling without any checks of power, the Levantine Assassins created as much a "lie to shepherd the masses" but doing so while calming higher values and scapegoating Al Mualim/Abbas for the Assassins own failures at State control based on the premises of their idealist beliefs. Regardless of whom the Mentor were, even during supposed "corrupt Mentors", the power of the Mentor remained total as Mentors decide the foreign policy, the news speakers and are judge, jury and executioner.

During Italian Renaissance, the Italian Assassins, aside from using Monteriggioni as their another city-state, they not only leads as an exclusive ruling class consisting of only the Italian Assassins, many whom were of "titles of nobility" but also allied with other noble houses in Italy much like their brother Templars. The most egregious of their activities as rulers of Monteriggioni was their frequent wars with Firenze that was lead by an allied noble family. If it were not for the prestigious titles of Assassin, this would read as a "authoritarian Templar bad conspiracy and war crimes, kill the city state leaders".

To romanticise and presume the Assassins are any more virtues than Templars by the mere fact that their idealism proclaims their values to be so, is not an objective assessment of what I just gave an example of being a Templar practice that the Assassins themselves are complicit in doing. The only distinction of importance between a Templar and Assassin is that Templars are mostly honest about being of the ruling class, while Assassins dangerously and deceptively proclaim themselves as freedom fighters while also preserving a ruling class society.

Haytham: The people never have the power. Only the illusion of it. And here’s the real secret: they don’t want it. The responsibility is too great to bear. It’s why they’re so quick to fall in line as soon as someone takes charge. They WANT to be told what to do. They YEARN for it. Little wonder, that, since all mankind was BUILT to SERVE. Haytham: Even when your kind appears to triumph... Still we rise again. And do you know why? It is because the Order is born of a REALIZATION. We require no creed. No indoctrination by desperate old men. All we need is that the world be as it is. And THIS is why the Templars will never be destroyed!'

This brings me to these two quotes that I find wildly misused, in the context of Templars having created states and Assassins conceding to this State practice themselves, is the fact that in a class society, slaves, peasants, and workers "never have the power" and not wanting it isn't a fault of the lower class because the ideas of the ruling class itself promotes the ideas that "they don't want it". As we've evidentially even seen in Assassin states (Masyaf & Monteriggioni), where the idealism of the Assassin Brotherhood was the ideals of the ruling class imposed on their own subjects. And what society was this? A class society lead by an Assassin ruling class, whom State practice were by conceding to the Templar "realisation" of the need of the State to regulate society to keep "the world be as it is". A class society.