Assassin Ethics

There seems to be a trend developing from the creative teams at Ubisoft regarding the portrayal of the Assassin Order.  Perhaps it stems from a desire to shake things up a bit, or maybe it is simply expanding the world to provide different and previously unseen points of view.  Whatever the motivation, the world of Assassin’s Creed has become a lot greyer.

It reminds of a comedy sketch from Mitchell and Webb in which two Nazi officers are talking and one notices their skull insignia as if for the first time and asks, “Are… are we the baddies?”  More and more I find myself wondering that myself.  Are the Assassin’s the baddies in the world of Assassin’s Creed?

The central conflict in the series is between two secret societies, The Assassins and the Templars.  When Edward Kenway asks Mary Read about the Assassins, she answers, “We kill Templars”.  At times that seems to be the sole purpose of the Assassins and the Creed is little more than a mask covering the simplistic model of, “My team is against your team”.

It is easy to say that the Assassins are the baddies in the Assassin's Creed series. After all, they murder powerful and influential people and thus altering the course of human events in unforeseeable ways, not to mention the countless guards and hired muscle that are just doing their job.  Who are they to decide who lives and who dies without any sort of trial or legal mandate?  They say “nothing is true” and yet seem to impose their vision on others.  They say “everything is permitted” but punish the actions of others.

First, we need to remember that this is a video game and killing pixelated people and getting away with it is what it is all about. In the Assassin's Creed novels, the body count is much lower because it is a medium for story not gameplay.   What about translating Assassin’s Creed into the medium known as real life?  Are the ways of the Assassins the path of good or evil and how is this reflected in the series?

Understanding Ethics and Values

One thing that science teaches us is that things are not always what they seem.  When looking at the horizon the Earth seems flat.  When watching the procession of celestial objects across the sky, it seems they are moving around the Earth.  The same is true in the study of Ethics.  What seems right or wrong may not be.  Just as people ignorant of science think they just know, so too do people who have never studied Ethics believe that they intuitively just know good and bad or right from wrong and that these notions are universal and absolute. Whether the people in question are religious or not is irrelevant to the fact that this approach to Ethics is ultimately derived from religion. God has ordained right and wrong and these laws, like Him, are eternal, universal, perfect, and immutable. But the study of Ethics tells a different story.  Before we can judge the Assassins, we must first understand the basics of Ethics.

The philosophical branch of Ethics is not about good and evil, right and wrong.  It can be described best as the study of human action.  What actions are beneficial (good), which are harmful (bad), and which are destructive (evil).   Ultimately, the goal of Ethics is happiness.  This is very different from the common top down view of “do I say or else because I am God’s representative” approach to morality that most people assume the study of Ethics to be.

At the centre of Ethics is the concept of values.  Values are things that are valuable.  They are those things that people strive to gain or to keep.  The story of values begins with two very primal questions.  “Can I eat it?” or “Will it eat me?”  If I can eat it, then it is a good to strive to get and fight to keep.  If it will eat me, then it is a bad that I must fight, avoid, or escape.  If I cannot eat it and it will not eat me, then it is a neutral and therefore irrelevant to me.

One theory of emotions states that all human emotions are derived from four basic emotions determined by values.  The gaining of a value brings happiness and the loss of a value brings sorrow.  Since humans have the power of abstract thought, we can imagine gaining a value, which is desire, and we can imagine losing a value, which is fear.  For example, emotions like anger, aggression, and frustration are born of the fear that we will not get what we want or we will lose what we have.

What makes people unique is that we all value different things to different degrees.  This is often referred to as the value system. I value A and B, but I value C more than I value B, but not as much as A.  In order to determine our value system we have to make value judgements.  This gets complicated for a few reasons.  Most of the time, these judgements are made unconsciously and too quickly for the conscious mind to keep up.  So instead of reasoning out that one thing is good and another is bad, we just feel something.  We feel joy, pain, disgust, pleasure, or any number of emotional responses without knowing how or why these value judgements were made.  We also take values for granted.  There is a saying that the quenched man turns his back on the well.  Water is a life sustaining value, but when we are not thirsty we take that value for granted and do not appreciate its importance.  Another factor that can affect value judgements is habits, routines, and pre-existing programming that can cloud our approach to values.  Smoking is bad for you, but a smoker makes cigarettes a very high value because of habit and addiction.  Or people may be so caught-up in a routine that they miss what is truly important to them.  Or people may see a particular lifestyle as a high value because that is how they were raised as in “my parents were middle-class, so being middle-class is important”.

This pre-existing programming is what I call the “should”.  People “should” act this way.  I “should” be this kind of person.  My life “should” be like this.  It’s a mental template, a yardstick with which we measure the world.  The good is whatever meets or exceeds my should and bad is anything that falls short.   The technical term for these shoulds is standards of judgement.   And they form the basis of our value judgements.

It is impossible not to judge.  We are constantly judging the world and everyone in it to determine what we should pursue, what we should avoid, and what we should fight for and against.  When people say that we should not judge, which is a judgement in itself, what they are really saying is that we need to accept that different people have different values, make different value judgements, and choose different purposes.

Once we have imposed meaning on something and assessed its value according to our standards of judgements, then we decide what to do about it.  So values are part of the process of determining our purposes.  When Jean Paul Sartre wrote that “hell is other people” he was writing about purposes.  We all have them and achieving our purposes depends on the cooperation of others.  We are happy when others align their purposes to ours and we are in hell when they don’t.

Sartre introduced this idea in his play No Exit where three people find themselves in a hotel room.  There is a man who fancies one of the women, but she is a lesbian.  The lesbian likes the other woman, but she is straight and fancies the man.  It is later revealed that the trio is in hell and must spend all eternity thwarted by their desires.

Suppose there is someone you fancy.  You think about them all the time in a state of constant infatuation.  The value you choose to pursue is their affection towards you but in order to achieve this value another person, the object of your interest, must act in accordance with your wishes.  You want them to want you, so you must make them want you in order to get what you want.  The questions then become what are you willing to do to get it and how far are you willing to go.  What actions are justified and which are not?

The study of Ethics is the study of human action.  Values, standards of judgement, and purposes are all behind the scenes foundational stuff.  The real action in Ethics involves getting others to do what we want, not do what we don’t want, and how we go about achieving this.

The Action Equation

The process of human action can be divided into three stages.  The Pre-action is what occurs before the action takes place.  Then there is the action itself.  Finally, there is the post-action.

The pre-action stage is not simply a matter of saying, “I will do this” and then doing it.  This stage is a lifetime in the making and largely unconscious.  It begins with the meanings that individuals impose of the world.  Everything you think “just is what it is” is actually the result of a complex cognitive process that occurs so fast that your conscious mind hardly notices.  First you perceive a thing, then you assess its meaning in conjunction with your value system, make a value judgement deciding the thing being good, bad, or neutral, and from that you derive a purpose.  Purposes can be broken down to:  want, keep, don’t want, and avoid.   Most of the time, these involve other people doing the exact same.  They want something from you; they perceive you as a threat to what they have or an impediment to getting what they want; they don’t want you to do whatever you are doing; or they avoid engaging with you altogether.

This brings us to the action phase.  When it comes to human action you have two components.  The agent who initiates the action and the object who is forced to respond to the action initiated upon them.  For the most part, the agent is deemed the one responsible for the outcome because he initiated the action and the object is simply reacting.  Without the action of the agent, there would have been no reaction from the object and therefore no outcome.  The exception is when the object over-reacts or responds irrationally.

In 1974, Kenneth W.Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann introduced their Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), a test to determine how a person deals with conflict. The TKI identifies five different styles of conflict:  Competing, Avoiding, Accommodating, Collaborating and Compromising.  Even though this was designed to examine different ways that people deal with conflict, it can also describe how an object may react when acted upon by an agent. 

So imagine you’ve had a terrible morning, arrive at work miserable, and a co-worker that you can’t stand at the best of times gives you a big smile and says hello.  This is not a conflict per se, but it is an agent acting upon an object.  As the object you are forced to react.  You can compete by challenging them aggressively, you can avoid by ignoring them, accommodate by forcing a smile and saying hello back, you can collaborate by realising that you still have to work together and be professional so you give a pretty convincing “good morning”, or you can compromise with a quick half-hearted acknowledgment.  Hundreds of times a day people routinely force these decisions on us and we force them on others without a second thought. 

Following the action/reaction sequence is the post-action.  This involves assessment and consequence.  How does what you have done make you feel?  If your actions are consistent with your values, then you may feel pride, but if not there may be shame, guilt, or regret.  This also comes into play when we assess others.  If their actions are aligned to our values we may feel love or a desire to honour them as heroes, but if their actions are perceived as a threat to getting or keeping what we want, then we see them as being bad or evil.

The final part of the action sequence is consequence.  The process of action/reaction, cause and effect, is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. The Sanskrit word for this is karma. An omniscient being would be able to trace the world you know it all the way back to the beginning by following this ongoing process of Karma.  Causes and effects. Actions and Consequences.

At first glance we can see three types of consequences. Some are metaphysical, some natural, and others social.

I have been smoking since I was sixteen. The natural consequence is that I will most likely die from some smoking related illness. Without intervention this is the outcome dictated by the laws of nature. I met my first wife by asking her for a cigarette. Metaphysically speaking, if I never smoked then we would never have met and my life would have taken a completely different course. When I approached her, as an agent acting on an object, she had a few choices. She could have refused me or given me a cigarette and ended it there, but she chose to respond favourably to my advances. Once I initiated the action, the immediate consequences for me depended entirely on her social response.

In the life of a thief, there is no natural law forbidding theft and there are no natural consequences for breaking a non-existent law. A thief can be successful and never suffer consequences. Metaphysically speaking, a habitual thief may become dependent on prey and therefore never develop independent survival skills, but that is pure speculation. Socially, his victims may choose to respond in force and the consequence for the thief is injury or death. Plus there are the social mechanisms of police, courts, and prisons ready to dole-out consequences. 

Consequence may be the natural check to freedom, the kind of radical freedom advocated in the Assassin's Creed, however when there are no natural consequences to “bad” behaviour and the metaphysical consequences are too...well…metaphysical, then the only consequential checks to freedom are the actions of others.

There is the scene in Assassin’s Creed Cry Freedom, after Adéwalé fails to save all the slaves who perished in the slave ship sunk by his enemies, when he calls for vengeance and says that his Creed demands it.  How does he figure that?  How does “nothing is true, everything is permitted” demand vengeance?  Everything being permitted is not a pardon from consequence.   Humans make other humans pay for their sins. You push someone and they push back.  If you are mean to people, they choose not to associate with you.  Action and consequence.  In Adéwalé’s interpretation of the Creed, people have a responsibility to enforce consequence by doling out justice.  This opens a whole new world of questions. Who decides? Who enforces? Who judges? Who condemns and punishes? And who watches the watchmen?

The Ethics of Assassination

Existence is each human being’s highest value. People generally like living and losing that value really sucks. So naturally we tell people not to kill because we ourselves don’t want to be snuffed. So why feel the need to bring God into this with "Thou shalt not kill" to try to lend authority to a pretty obvious moral position?

The thing is that as much as we don't want to be killed, killing each other is part of human existence. The Bible does not actually say, “Thou shalt not kill.”  Hebrew, like English, makes the distinction between killing and murdering. The actual commandment is “Thou shalt not murder.” So what’s the difference?

Humans are small group animals whose main survival skill is cooperation, but there is also competition with other groups of humans who want to take your group’s stuff or you want to take their stuff. This is not about greed.  It's about the resources required for the survival of your group.

In this competition people are killed. Killing “them” is great. We make heroes out of the guys who kill as many of them as possible. But killing someone within your group is not cool. He may be the village doctor, butcher, farmer, or baker.   Killing him diminishes the strength of the group.  So it's okay to kill them, but murdering us is really bad. 

This moral distinction with one rule for us and another for them seems strange but it is actually the human norm and only began to change within the past few hundred years.  To put that into perspective, if all of human existence was described as one hour, it was a few seconds ago that we decided that killing them is just as bad as killing us. Needless to say, we still celebrate our good guys who kill as many of them bad guys as possible in our entertainment.  Assassin’s Creed is no different. Us Assassins versus them Templars and whoever kills the most pixelated Templars wins.

Real life is a bit different.  In our postmodern globalised system, the distinctions between us and them are blurry to say the least. Nations are no longer nations in the traditional sense of being a people with a common culture, history, religion, and language. Nations are now more like multicultural political units, the us/them divide now has more to do with ideological differences than group survival, and deciding who are us and who is them becomes completely subjective.  This brings us back to the “one man’s patriot is another man’s terrorist.”

As individuals, we feel pride and confidence when we live up to our values and we feel shame or guilt when we do not.  Likewise, when we see others as living-up to or exemplifying our values we see them as good or great, while those who violate our internal codes of how people should behave we see as bad or evil.  The villain is the guy who threatens our values while to hero is the one who exemplifies, upholds, and protects them.  Deciding whether the Assassins or the Templars are the baddies depends on your value judgements and which ideology you choose to align yourself with.

Choosing Sides

In the Ezio Trilogy, the writers presented two members of the Precursor Race who exemplify the Assassins and the Templars.  For the Assassins there is the Ancient known as Minerva, the Roman version of Athena, the Greek goddess wisdom and freedom.  For the Templars there is Juno, the Roman version of Hera, the Greek goddess of motherhood, which can be seen to signify social order.  The Assassin’s attitude of radical freedom is characterised by Minerva when she declared that it would be better that the world burn than to be a slave to Juno, the social order.

The key division between the Templars and the Assassins lies in their differing concepts of humanity.  The human animal is a small group primate forming bands of 100 to 150 individuals (monkeysphere). The success of this species is largely due to its ability to coordinate and work together to accomplish goals.  However, the human animal is also a self-aware creature possessed of an individual consciousness. We are not sheeple in a herd, but neither are we solitary tigers.  We are both, and this is a constant source of internal and social tension since both have their advantages and disadvantages.

For the Assassins, the existence of individual consciousness mandates freedom.  Since each individual ascribes meaning to reality and then derive purposes from these meanings, to deny an individual’s right to choose their purposes is to deny the expression their individual consciousness. 

In the Assassin’s world, each person is free to choose their own purposes free from imposed controls.  So the Assassins are largely reactionary.  They are not looking to create anything or impose any social rules or restrictions.  They only fight those that do, because nothing save Objective Truth gives one person’s perceived meanings and purposes more intrinsic value than another’s.

So if you value social order, security, with its benefits and sacrifices over freedom, then the Templars are the good guys and the Assassins are the baddies.  If you value radical freedom over imposed social order, then the Assassins are the good guys and the Templars are the baddies.  However, human are both small group animals and creatures individual consciousness.  We are both Templars and Assassins by nature.

Ezio tells us that the Creed is an observation on the nature of reality and not doctrine.  Edward Kenway realised that the Creed is only the beginning of wisdom, and not its final form.  The Creed will not teach you right from wrong.  It does not command us to act or submit - only to be wise.  My own personal meaning for the word wisdom is simply "knowing how the world works".  Understanding Ethics is part of that.  It is up to each individual to know how the world works and then make their own choices accordingly concerning what and who is right or wrong.

Understanding the Assassin’s Creed

The first step in deciphering the Assassin’s Creed is determining what the Creed is.  In this there is a bit of confusion for the game players.

In the first Assassin’s Creed game, the Creed is stated absolutely and without question:

“Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent.  Hide in plain sight.  Never compromise the Brotherhood.”

In the Ezio trilogy that followed and in Black Flag, the Creed is stated absolutely and without question:

“Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted”

In Assassin’s Creed III and Liberation, there are constant references to “The Creed”, but it is never stated by any character.

In Rogue and Unity, the “tenets of the Creed” are stated absolutely and without question:

“Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent.  Hide in plain sight.  Never compromise the Brotherhood.”

By way of explanation for this apparent discrepancy, it is suggested that while “Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted” is mentioned in the first game as a saying or motto, when Altair reformed the Assassin Order he adopted it as the Creed with the original creed becoming a subset as “tenets of the Creed”.  So everything is permitted, except killing innocents, being indiscreet, and compromising the group.  I have a few issues with these tenets. 

First, it is not a creed.  The “tenets of the Creed” would more accurately be called the Assassin’s Code.  A code, as in a code of conduct or moral code, is a statement of prescribed action, whereas a creed or tenet is a statement of belief.  In a philosophical system one follows on from the other.  I believe this therefore I must do that.  The “tenets of the Creed” do not naturally follow-on from the Creed. In fact they contradict it. Perhaps this is why every major Assassin character in the series violates the Assassin’s Code.

Just to keep things straight, for the purposes of this article I will be referring to “Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted” as the Assassin’s Creed and the “tenets of the Creed” as the Assassin’s Code.  Moving on…

Second, in the first game, the Assassin’s Code does play an integral part of the story; however it is also a guide to gameplay.  The game will warn the player if he kills an innocent and if it happens again it will reset the level and part of the game is to hide after making a kill, admittedly, compromising the order is not incorporated into the gameplay.  This leads me to think that the Assassin’s Code was created as a gaming device and not to be doctrine.

Finally, there is no historical precedent for the Assassin’s Code. The Assassin’s Creed was referred to by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Genealogy of Morals (1887) and prior to that in the book, The History of the Assassins: Derived from Oriental Sources by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1835).  “‘Nothing is true and all is allowed,’ was the groundwork of the secret doctrine.”  This gives the Assassin’s Creed real world legitimacy, while the Assassin’s Code was just something made-up for the game.

For these reasons, I see the Assassin’s Code as purely fictional and would go so far as to wish it had never resurfaced in the games. So, from my perspective there is only one Creed: Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted.  The next question is how this should be interpreted.

Throughout the Nineteenth Century, the Creed has had a strong association with nihilism.  This is often invoked when discussing Hammer, Nietzsche, and Friedrich Lange, another writer on the Assassins and their Creed who may have influenced Nietzsche.

In response to this, I quite like this scene from Black Flag.

Mary Read: We're Assassins and we follow a creed, aye. But it does not command us to act or submit - only to be wise.
Edward Kenway: Oh, do tell. I'd love to hear it.
Mary Read: Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. This is the world's only certainty.
Edward Kenway: Everything is permitted? I like the sound of that. Thinking what I like and acting how I please.
Mary Read: You parrot the words, but you do not understand them.

Kenway is approaching the Creed on face-value.  This interpretation is what leads to the accusations of nihilism.  I am sometimes surprised when the great minds and academics of Nineteenth Century Germany make this same error. The Creed cannot be interpreted on face-value.  To do so renders it nonsense.  For if nothing is true, then neither is the statement that nothing is true, therefore everything is true.  It does not work.

I find the easiest way to understand the Creed is first to understand the nature of the reality that it observes.  For this, I use the metaphysical model of the Triune Reality.

The basic model states that we exist in three “realities” simultaneously:  the Objective, the Subjective, and the Artificial.

Objective Reality is the world that is as governed by the Laws of Nature.  This reality is largely understood through Empiricism and the Scientific Method and is also known as Existential Reality, Nature, or simply the Universe.

As physical beings, humans are subject to the Laws of Nature, just like every other thing that exists.  However, humans are also conscious, imaginative, and self-aware things.  We not only perceive Objective Reality, but also assess it and impose meaning upon it according to our perception, values, and judgement.  This creates an internal mental construct of reality, or schema, a Subjective Reality unique to every individual.

We may exist in Objective Reality, but we each live in our own special Subjective Reality with ourselves at the centre.  Each person is the star of their show and everyone else is just supporting characters and extras.

Objective Reality is a harsh place to exist.  To survive, humans have always banded together into social groups comprised of many Subjective Realities and create technology to protect and sustain themselves.  This creates the man-made Artificial Reality composed of two types, the Social and the Material.

The Social aspect describes human social institutions such as religions, governments, and legal systems as well as culture, traditions, and customs.  The Material aspect includes every man-made construct from homes and cities to spears, factories, and toothpaste.

Artificial Reality is created and maintained through human production for the purpose of improving the quality of human life against the harsh demands of Nature.  Thomas Hobbes observed that without the benefits of Artificial Reality the life of human kind would be, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  Despite being a protection against Nature, the Artificial Reality is still derived from Nature and therefore subject to its laws, although in the case of the Social aspect this may not seem readily apparent in the relative short term.

So which "reality" is Reality?  Objective Reality is the ultimate Truth; however despite its transient nature Artificial Reality can have a greater impact on our daily lives and be, for all intents and purposes, reality.  Subjective Reality may not be reality outside the consciousness of a single individual, but it drives human action.  This action creates a cause which leads to an effect in the other realities. Not to mention the fact that each person's Subjective Reality is the only reality they really know.

To illustrate, consider that Bob loves the rain but Susan hates it, so she imagines and then invents the umbrella thus creating a new material Artificial Reality wherein she is happily dry despite the rain while Bob is wet.  According to Bob’s Subjective Reality, Susan’s invention is evil because it is blasphemous to his rain god, so he rips the umbrella from her and breaks it into pieces, thus wiping her Artificial Reality from existence.  Not content, he goes even further and has umbrellas outlawed, thus creating a new social Artificial Reality that conforms to his Subjective Reality.  Susan is a rebel and does not believe such silly superstitions.  She makes another umbrella, is arrested, and placed in jail.  There is no such thing as a rain god, but that does not change the Objective truth that she is imprisoned and none of these events changes the Objective truth that it is still raining.

With the model of Triune Reality in mind, we can apply it to Ezio Auditore’s description of the Creed from Revelations.

To say that nothing is true is to realise that the foundations of society are fragile and that we must the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions and that we must live with our consequences, whether glorious or tragic.

The two points in each sentence do not seem to connect.  How do we get from “nothing is true” to the realisation “that the foundations of society are fragile and that we must the shepherds of our own civilization”? How does “everything is permitted” link with the understanding that we are the architects of our actions?

To recognise that nothing is true is not a denial of Objective Reality.  You can deny the truth of gravity all the way down to the pavement if you like, but it will not change reality.  The “truth” denied by the Creed are the Subjective and Artificial Realities, however these are the foundations of society.  They are conceived from the human mind and created and maintained through human production. Without them, neither would exist.

The Four Fundamental Forces of Nature do not need human intervention in order to exist and thermodynamics will happen without us, or even in spite of us.  It does not matter if you believe in them, they just are.  Society and civilization are not true in the sense that they require human belief and production in order to exist and therefore they are not eternal truths.  They will rise and they will fall and they will disappear no matter how much you take them for granted.  This makes them fragile and means that we have a responsibility to create the kind of societies and civilizations that we want and we must work to maintain them. They are built solely on a collective idea and ideas are just thoughts and ideas can be wrong.

To recognise that everything is permitted is not a license to hedonism.  Part of Objective Reality is the process of Cause and Effect.  Everything is permitted, but all actions (and inactions) still have consequences.  You may jump off a tall building.  Everything is permitted.  However, this permission does not relieve you of the consequential splat at the end.  Each person is solely responsible for their actions and the consequences of those actions.

In Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, we see the initiation ritual for the Assassins.  This too clarifies the Creed.  The initiate and the assembly recite:

Where other men blindly follow the Truth, remember nothing is true. Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember everything is permitted. We work in the dark to serve the light.  We are Assassins.

To illustrate this consider slavery in the United States prior to the American Civil War.  Slavery has been a part of human existence since the very beginning of civilization and none of the three Abrahamic religions condemned it. In America it had been the norm of everyday life for over 200 years.  During that time there had only been a handful of slave uprisings and most were led by insane people. As a norm, slavery was truth, it was moral, and it was legal.

In Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and Cry Freedom, this “truth” was challenged by the Assassins.  Even in Assassin’s Creed III, Connor points out the hypocrisy of Samuel Adams in advocating freedom for some and not all.

Today, we accept as a norm that it is immoral to claim ownership of another individual, so much so that some academics have difficulty getting into the mind-set of the American Founding Fathers who wrote of liberty but owned human beings as property.  They cannot comprehend that their anti-slavery social conditioning limits their understanding in the same way that the social conditioning of historical figures limited theirs causing them to see slavery as normal, moral, and acceptable.

The “Truths” of people’s everyday lives are primary the result of their social conditioning and these are not necessarily based on Objective Reality, and therefore not truths at all.  People just blindly follow the Subjective and Artificial truths that they were taught to accept as fact.

When these truths become institutionalised, like slavery, standing against them is viewed as both immoral and illegal.  To free a slave is to be a thief and “Thou shalt not steal” not to mention being arrested and put into jail for the crime of taking another man’s property.  This is where the Assassin says, “I will not be limited by the morality and laws that people have made-up to suit themselves.”

This attitude is what leads to working in the dark to serve the light.  It means doing what is right in accordance with Objective Reality, what is commonly called Natural Law, even when society, both legally and morally, determines that action to be evil.

Contrary to popular and academic thought, the Creed is far from being nihilistic or hedonistic.  It simply recognises that existence has no inherent in-born meaning to be discovered and forced on others.  Any meaning life has is the meaning you choose to give it and you are just one of seven billion people each with their own ”truths”.  And yes, everything is permitted, but that does not mean actions do not have consequences.   You can choose to be a hedonist, or a criminal, or an asshole, but with those roles there are consequences.  You can party hard to an early grave, end up in jail, and have no friends.  It’s your choice.

The Creed is about freedom – radical freedom.  You may think as you will and do as you will.  But the natural check to freedom is consequence.  When a person is aware of the consequences of their actions they become aware of their responsibility for their actions. They do not require an outside force, like Church or State, to outline the do’s and don’ts for them.  Unfortunately, there will always be people looking to impose their truths on others and attempt to use the force of law to that end.  In standing against that the Assassins will always be branded as the bad guys, the nihilists, the hedonists, and the anarchists looking to undermine the social order.

Keep Calm and Follow the Creed

Over the past few years variations of the now famous World War II poster, “Keep Calm and Carry On” have spread from the internet to the mass market adorning bags, poster, and coffee mugs.  Most are intended to be funny and convey either motivational messages like, “Keep Calm and Love Life” to those invoking some film or television program or characters like, “Keep Calm and Use the Force”, while others pertain to a lifestyle like, “Keep Calm and Smoke Weed”.  So it was inevitable that an Assassin’s Creed variation would emerge, “Keep Calm and Follow the Creed”.

I would guess that fans of the video game franchise had a laugh and maybe posted it on their webpages,  but there is actually some valuable life advice in remembering to keep calm and follow the Creed.

Here are some ways to Keep Calm and Follow the Creed.

Remember Nothing is True…

Accept Diversity and Freedom

Everyone has their own perspective on reality and most people see theirs as the right one, so without condoning or condemning accept the existence of these other realities and respect the rights of others to have them. Expecting or forcing others to conform to your ideas of how they should think or act only frustrates you and angers them.

This Too Shall Pass

Life is change.  Today’s reality, good or bad, will be tomorrow’s memory and memories are just thoughts.  If today is good, then appreciate it while it lasts.  If today is bad, don’t worry, because it will not last forever and tomorrow might be better.

Do Not Allow Yourself to Become Too Attached To Things

A primary source of human sorrow is the real or imagined loss of things.  These “things” can be anything – possessions, places, a certain lifestyle, public services, respect or love,  cherished beliefs, relationships with others, and even youth, strength, and beauty.  We may have these things for years or decades but in the end they will all change and will all pass.  Learn to accept that truth.

Be Wary of the Fear Impulse

A primary source of human anger, cruelty, and frustration is their fear that they will not get the things they want or that they may lose the things they have.  Recognise this impulse in yourself and others and make allowances for both.  For yourself, accept that fear is not real.  It is the emotional response to a perceived threat which may be real or imagined.  Fear simply tells us to pay attention and should not be allowed to motivate our actions, cloud the mind, or force us into despair.

Don’t Deal In Hypotheticals

Hypotheticals, assumptions, and preconceptions are just opinions and speculations elevated falsely to the level of truth.  People often have strong emotional reactions to their idea of things rather than the reality of things.  Learn to look at what is and not what you think might be or might happen.

Accept That You (And Others) Are Most Likely Wrong

Consider the potential cognitive biases of yourselves and others that can cloud understanding the situation or the people involved.

Remember Everything Is Permitted…

Do Not Limit Yourself

Often, people cannot do something because they have been socially conditioned not to do it; as a result, certain actions go against their programming.  The program punishes violations with emotions like fear, anger, guilt, shame, or a vague internal resistance.  Learn to recognise and overcome your limiting programming to do what you deem necessary and do not be limited in your actions by the opinions of other people, whether these opinions are actual opinions or those that you imagine others to have.

Learn to Limit Yourself

A common feature of human existence is doing what we do not want to do now in order to get something better later.  This requires self-discipline and deferred gratification.  These qualities have been identified as a key feature in people who succeed in life.

Look For New Opportunities and Possibilities

Your existence is a blank page full of possibilities.  It is up to you to fill that page.  Decide what kind of life you want and make it happen.

Recognise What Can and Cannot Be Changed

Everything is permitted does not mean that every action is wise.  There are things you can change and things you cannot.  Accept what cannot be changed and change the things you can.

Focus On What is Important and Let Go of the Trivial

Whatever we focus on has importance.  This is illustrated in games where the player is so focused on gaining collectibles that it becomes the most important activity in their life until they change their perspective and realise how trivial it really is.  These are referred to as “first world problem”.  Trivial matters that people become angry or upset about because they do not have to worry about serious survival issues.  Take a moment and ask yourself if your crisis is really that important.

Cultivate Your Power and Will

Power is simply the means to work your will in the world.  Everything may be permitted, but acting on that permission is limited by the power at your disposal and your willingness to use that power.  The most common form of power is material power in the form of money.  Being low in this resource limits your range of actions.  This is also true if you have the resources but lack the will to use it.  Building your resources before they are needed will give you the power to act when the crisis comes.

Accept the Consequences of Your Actions,

Whether they be glorious or tragic; celebrate the good outcomes and learn from the negative ones.

The Existentialist Assassin and the Ritualization of Philosophy

Ever notice that religions – just about any religion – have it pretty good.  Well, pretty good when compared to any philosophical school.  Religions have holidays, traditions, symbols, songs, sacred stories, social and political considerations, special outfits and distinguished titles for their leaders and teachers.

  

In contrast, philosophy is pretty boring.   Followers of a particular philosophy have books -- and that's about it.  There are no Stoic holidays. Existentialists don't get to wear special symbols of their philosophy around their necks. And there are no hymns for the Pragmatists.  Not to mention that no one is concerned about accidentally offending someone’s philosophical beliefs, except perhaps the Atheists at Christmas time.  If a religion is a belief and a philosophy is a belief, then why is philosophy treated like religion’s ugly little sister? Because it doesn’t have the razzmatazz of ritual.

The key difference between religion and philosophy are the rituals. Religions have them and philosophies don’t.  Some will argue that religions believe in supernatural beings and philosophies do not.  This is true.  With the exception of Satanism and a few sects of Buddhism, religion is all about the supernatural.  However there is more to it than that.  There is a strong self-identification with religion born from its rituals.  This is considered socially acceptable within reason, but anyone who strongly self-identifies with a particular philosophical school is instantly perceived by the ignorant as being part of some cult. Ask any Objectivist.

Theology is one of the most difficult studies that I have ever encountered, but you do not have to be a theologian to be a Christian. The most dim-witted among us can happily participate in the community and its shared rituals with the most basic understanding of its belief system.  Without the community that forms around ritual there are no children socially conditioned to a particular philosophical school on their mother's knee and therefore no shared belief based self-identification among the people.

Any student or adherent of a particular school of philosophy has to first seek out the philosophy and then choose it from among other philosophies on offer.  Most people who approach philosophy do so as either as disassociated scholars  fascinated  by the variety  of ideas on offer, or as searchers tasting a bit of each  dish on the smorgasbord  and deciding which to put on their plate. Very few become highly invested, self-identified, lifelong advocates of a single philosophical school.

The rarity of such folk is probably what lies behind the accusations of being a cult. We accept such an approach to belief when it comes to religion but not philosophy.  Perhaps in order to make sense of it, some people will perceive a philosophical group as being religious because they cannot understand strong belief and self-identification without  religion being involved, and this leads to the cult label. 

We also see the cult label being applied to fraternal organisations, like the Freemasons.  An Atheist cannot become a Freemason because membership requires belief in a divine being.  It does not matter if you are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or even a Jedi.  You just have to believe in a something.  Beyond that, the Freemasons are primarily an example of how philosophy can be ritualised, but with that comes the outsider’s fears of secret societies with secret agendas.

Ritual is a powerful tool in cementing beliefs and self-reprogramming.  As Voltaire wrote, “If God did not exist, we would have to invent him.”  Philosophy could use the rituals. For one philosophical school, fiction has given us a picture of what it would look like as a ritualised philosophy.

According to European legends, the final words of Hassan-i Sabbah were, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." Historically, this legend is most likely entirely fictional. Remember, to the medieval audience of such legends the Assassins were the bad guys and these were the villains final words, a slam on their beliefs.

I like to believe that there is more to it than that.  It is possible that a literary trick is being used here where the storyteller chooses to convey a socially unacceptable point of view by placing the words in the mouth of the villain so that he can blame the villain for the offensive opinion and claim to not advocate it himself.

To Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle-East, the suggestion that, “Nothing is True, Everything is permitted” is a dangerous concept.  It challenges all authority claiming divine right and every moral code based on, “because God says so.”  To be an Atheist literally means to be ungodly ( a = without theist = god) and to be ungodly is to be evil and evil must be destroyed.  This reasoning held sway until the late 19^th century and is still around today.  This is why the few Atheists there were kept their heads down, called themselves Deists, or pretended to be Christian.  They hid in plain sight.

Soren Kierkegaard is commonly seen as the first Existentialist, followed by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.   As a point of interest, self-proclaimed Existentialist Vladimir Bartol wrote the book Almut which inspired the first Assassin’s Creed game.  The term "Existentialism" was coined by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the mid-1940s, but Sartre rejected it.  Nonetheless the label stuck.  And it is just a label.  The concepts of Existentialism are much older than the label and Kirkegaard.

During the latter half of the 3^rd century BC, about 2300 years ago, an anonymous author calling himself “The Preacher” wrote a book in which he claimed to be King Solomon.  This book is commonly known as the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.  The themes and concepts presented in the book would be labelled today as Existentialist.

The game series Assassin’s Creed opens with a quote from Ecclesiastes, chapter 1 verses 17-18. This is repeated again at the end of the first game. 

"I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing at the wind. For in much wisdom, is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow."

Also in the first game, a great secret is revealed in the underground ruins of the Temple of Solomon to the nine men who discovered it.  Each of them experiences what is today called an Existential Crisis.  This occurs when what you believe to be true is proven false and as a result there is a mental breakdown.

According to the game, what was discovered was an artefact from the precursor race. We can see this allegorically to represent the Creed itself; the realisation that nothing is true and therefore everything is permitted. This is the conclusion found by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

In the book, the Preacher recounts his attempts to find meaning and purpose in life, but concludes, "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity."  The New International Version of the Bible translates the passage more to the point. "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."  Towards the end of the book, Ecclesiastes 11:9, we have this verse:  “Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.”

To summarise these two passages together we first have “everything is meaningless” and then “do whatever you want, but be wary of the consequences”.  In other words, “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted”.

My argument is that this concept is ancient and due to its volatile nature has been kept “secret” but always in plain sight if you know what to look for.  The European legends of the Assassins attributed it to them.  Nietzsche referred to it as their motto, but the “Motto of the Assassins” does not have the same ring to it as “the Assassin’s Creed”.

Ubisoft has provided this ancient motto with a catchy, modern, but entirely accurate name – the Assassin’s Creed -- and I believe the Creed to be the perfect summary of what today we call Existentialism.   More than that, the storytellers at Ubisoft have built a mythology around the Creed, created a symbol to wear, the title of Mentor for the leaders, ceremonial attire, oaths to recite, heroes to follow, and catchy phrases to quote.  Basically, in creating a fictional world for a video game series, the creators of Assassin’s Creed have ritualised Existentialism.  There is one thing lacking though.  What do we call it?

Since 2001, people have been claiming their religion as Jedi Knight on census forms around the world.  Due to its modern usage, you can’t exactly call yourself an Assassin without people thinking it’s a job title.  We no longer associate the word Assassin with a belief system.  Actually, we never did.

When the historical Assassins were just killing their fellow Muslims, the trait that initially struck the Europeans was their total devotion to their leader.  So when the word assassin first came to Europe it was used to describe devotion.  There are ballads in which the troubadour describes himself to his lover as being her assassin – totally devoted.   But when the Assassins started killing Christians too, the meaning of the word changed in Europe to mean a killer and has remained so ever since.

During the Nineteenth Century, European scholars began searching for the origin of the word assassin.  The conclusion was that the word is derived from the Arabic word Hashishin meaning hash-smoker.  The problem is that this was also used as a general insult directed at social lowlifes, like calling someone a pot-head or stoner.  So yes, the Assassins were called Hashishin, but so were many non-Assassins.

A more likely origin comes from Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf:

According to texts that have come down to us from Alamut, Hassan-i Sabbah liked to call his disciples Asasiyun, meaning people who are faithful to the Asās, meaning "foundation" of the faith. This is the word, misunderstood by foreign travellers, that seemed similar to "hashish".

Assassin’s Creed is a video game based franchise, inspired by European legends, derived from shadowy historical fact.  So if someone identifies with the Assassin and their beliefs, then which Assassins are they talking about?   Characters in a video game?  A legendary secret order?  Or a radical sect of Islam?   For me, it’s something else entirely.  It’s something new – the Existentialist Assassins.

When Hassan-i Sabbah called his disciples “faithful to the foundations” he meant the foundations of Islamic belief.  From the Existentialist point of view, to recognise that nothing is true is not a denial of objective truth.  It is simply the recognition that subjective perception is not objective reality.  With this in mind, being faithful to the foundation can be interpreted as being faithful to the foundations of reality – objective reality based on science and reason.  Looking at the name question from this perspective, the name Asasiyun seems wholly appropriate for a census form.

When people recognise that I am wearing the symbol of the Assassins from Assassin’s Creed on my ring or as a watch fob, they automatically assume that I am a fan of the game series.  Obviously I am, but that is not why I wear it.  I have no need to announce to the world that I play the games.  In fact, it makes me a bit uncomfortable when I am called out.  When someone unfamiliar with the games asks me about it I find myself dithering for the appropriate answer.  For me, associating it with a video game feels like it trivialises it.  My current answers are this.  “What is that symbol?” It’s an Existentialist symbol.  “What does it mean?”  It means “Nothing is True, Everything is permitted”. 

The Creed teaches us that life is about change, or as Mary Read says in Black Flag, “it is life’s only certainty.”  The day will come the Assassin’s Creed video game series comes to an end.  The stories will dry up, fans will become bored and move on to the next hot game, and like most disposable culture it will be disposed and forgotten. 

When that day comes, the phrase “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” will still exist.  It might even be called The Assassin’s Creed for as long as it is remembered instead of “the motto of the Assassins”.  Existentialism will still be taught and people will still read Nietzsche.   What I would like to see is the rituals, trappings, symbols, and beliefs presented and represented in the games to merge with the real world philosophy to essentially ritualise Existentialism.

Imagine if a hundred years from now it becomes an interesting point of trivia that the symbol of the Existentialist Asasiyun was developed for an early 21^st century video game.  Historically speaking, stranger things have happened.

What is Assassin’s Creed?

It’s one of the most popular video games series around.  People with no concept of Assassin’s Creed at least know of its existence by name or they have seen the iconic image of the hooded figure in white advertised every autumn.  Since the release of the first game in November 2007 over 55 million copies of all the games in the series have been sold making it one of the most successful for the current generation of consoles.  In addition to the games, there are novelizations of the games, stand-alone novels, comic books, animated short films, an array of merchandise, and even a line of apparel.

 

To say that Assassin’s Creed is a video game series is an accurate description, but not a very good definition.  It is only part of a definition.  According to Aristotle, who invented the definition, a definition has two parts.  The first is called the genus.  This tells us what is similar to the thing we are defining.  The second part is the differentia.  This tells us how this thing is different from those things that it is like.  To truly understand what Assassin’s Creed is requires a definition.

Assassin’s Creed Is A Franchise

Establishing the genus begins by recognising Assassin’s Creed as a video game series, but this can be further clarified.  There are all sorts of video games out there from car racing, to sports, to first person shooters, to straight-up puzzle games.  Assassin’s Creed is classed as a third person, action/adventure open world game.  This tells a bit more about the kind of game it is.  In these types of games there is a narrative plot told through a series of cutscenes or cinematics.  To connect the cutscenes, the player has the choice to either move to the starting point for the next cutscene and thus advance the story, or the player may choose to run about the world gathering collectibles or engage in side-missions that have only a tentative connection to the main plot.

The second part of this genus is that Assassin’s Creed is a series.  There are currently nine games in the series, but more importantly it has crossed-over into other media.  Therefore, it is more than a series.  It is a franchise.  This multimedia aspect distinguishes a mere series from a franchise and being a franchise also tells us other facts about Assassin’s Creed.

As both a video game series and a franchise, Assassin’s Creed is a cultural commodity.  In the global marketplace there is a part that could be labelled “entertainment” filled with movies, television programs, books and comics, various types of music, and of course video games.  Collectively these are known as cultural commodities to be created and distributed by people in the culture industry to be purchased and consumed by the masses in order to generate a profit for everyone along the supply chain.

The Assassin’s Creed franchise is produced by a company called Ubisoft that employs writers, actors, artists, musicians, game designers, marketers and hundreds of others to produce a product intended to distribute and sell to consumers for a profit.  When people get caught-up in the emotional and intellectual stimulation of the world created by Ubisoft, it is easy to forget that Assassin’s Creed is just another cultural commodity to be consumed.

And like any mass produced consumed commodity, cultural commodities are indeed consumed in mass.  There’s the video game industry, the music industry, the film and television industries, the publishing industry, the sports industry, and even the news-infotainment industry, all creating a huge array of entertainment products and associated merchandise that the general public consumes and throws away.  It is because of this disposable nature that franchises must continually try to reinvigorate their product.  If they cannot, then the customers will get bored and find something else to eat.  A dead franchise might be fondly remembered, but very few attain the multi-generational cultural impact of Star Trek, Star Wars, and DC or Marvel comics.  It is this need to sustain the franchise and the profits it generates that drives its production.  When Assassin’s Creed is no longer profitable, it will cease to be culturally viable.

Another assumption exists when describing Assassin’s Creed as a franchise.  There are customers for the product.  In other words, there is a fan base.  So what is a fan?  The word is short for fanatic and describes someone passionate about a particular cultural product.

Some people consume media and then move onto the next thing without a backwards glance.  Some people are moved to a level where they will buy the t-shirt and stick a poster on the wall.  Some people are engaged at a level where they just can’t get enough of the product.  These are the people who have seen the movie scores of times, memorise dialogue and trivia, and some create costumes for cosplay.  This last group are the people commonly seen as being fans.  However, there is another level – a fourth level breaking the fourth wall – those who seek to bring art into life.  They are the people inspired by Star Trek to become astrophysicists, by Star Wars to become film makers, or by Indiana Jones to become history professors.

Another feature of a franchise is lore. Since there are so many stories being told throughout all the media utilized by the franchise, a vast amount of information accumulates over time.  Collectively, all these stories comprise the lore of the franchise.  Sometimes lore is referred to as “the universe”, like saying the Star Trek universe or the Assassin’s Creed universe.  Where the term lore focuses on the various stories in the setting, the use of the word universe emphasises the setting in which the stories occur, but they both mean the same thing.

Unlike a single story by a single author, like Moby Dick for example, the lore of a particular franchise is the product of a company employing or endorsing many writers, directors, and artists operating in a variety of different media telling a variety of different stories all set in the same fictional universe.  This makes it difficult to credit any one person with a particular phrase of dialogue or to interpret a single author’s meaning.  Literary critics can ponder Herman Melville’s intent and meaning when analysing Moby Dick, but when analysing the lore of a franchise it is not always possible to know exactly who is responsible for a piece of dialogue or plot point.

Generally, there will be some form of caretaker who oversees the franchise during a particular period ensuring that the media output fits certain constraints according to a certain vision.  This will often keep continuity in check, but not always, therefore some outputs are considered canon while others are not. 

The term canon is taken from religion and refers to religious texts deemed to be of divine inspiration and therefore included in what we know today as the Bible.   In media, canon determines what works are part of the overall story and what is not.   In the Star Trek franchise, the films are deemed canon, but not necessarily all the spin-off books.  If a spin-off book says that Captain Kirk’s favourite ice-cream is vanilla, but a film says that it is chocolate, then we go with the film because it is canon.  In Assassin’s Creed, the games are deemed canon, then the novels, but the comics less so. 

The caretakers decide what is and is not canon as the controllers of the primary source material.  Among fans, certain fans become experts in the lore and are sometimes called upon by other fans to settle debates concerning the lore.  These experts have been called bards, a term referring to the caste of storytellers in ancient Celtic society who were the keepers of the cultural lore.

Identifying Assassin’s Creed as a franchise infers a great deal of information about it.  It is a series that operates in several media; it is produced by a corporation driven by corporate interests and employing many storytellers over many years; it has a devoted fan base; it has created a large body of work, or lore, overseen by a central caretaker which is then learned by expert fans emotionally invested in the fictional world. 

Assassin’s Creed Is An Historical Romance

Assassin’s Creed is primarily described as a video game, and this too has key characteristics.  Open world games, like Assassin’s Creed, have two major elements:  gameplay and story.  Storytelling is becoming more and more important in video games.  In 2006 the Writer’s Guild of America introduced a category in their annual awards for video game writing.  With the exception of Assassin’s Creed 1, every game in the series has been nominated for the award.  Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood won in 2010 and Assassin’s Creed III lost in 2013 to Assassin’s Creed Liberation. 

However, games are still judged by the games industry and gamers largely by this thing called gameplay.  How does the character interact with the environment, what are the combat mechanics like, how enjoyable or irritating are the side quests, collectibles, achievements, or puzzles, how are the graphics and the overall look and feel of the game?  Is it immersive and fun to play?  A video game can be successful without a complex story.  For example, Donkey Kong is the story of Mario rescuing the Princess, but really it’s about avoiding barrels.

When it comes to fans of Assassin’s Creed, some like the gameplay and others like the story elements, such as the historical settings and costumes, characters, plot, and themes.  Of course it is possible to like both of these aspects, and that is the ideal for game designers, but a person predominately passionate about gameplay may not see the same Assassin’s Creed as someone more invested in the story.  In this sense the series has achieved the multileveled approach to please those moved by the story as well as those who like running around and stabbing someone in the face.

There are some gameplay elements unique to an Assassin’s Creed game.  Each game in the series shares a certain “feel” even though various aspects are tweaked and new game features are added from game to game.  However, none of these are fundamental in defining Assassin’s Creed.  There are many other games that include free running, climbing, and finding collectables and even if Assassin’s Creed was the only game with these gameplay features it would still not define what Assassin’s Creed is really all about.  For this we have to look at the story.

When you take a story and boil away all the fluff you find that there are really just a few basic plots.  Watch any Romantic Comedy and you find the boy meets girl, boy looses girl, and boy wins girl back plot over and over again.  You’ll even find it in films not obviously of that genre, like Shrek for example.  So in defining Assassin’s Creed, part of the genus is identifying the type of story found in the game.

Assassin’s Creed is what is commonly known in literary circles as a Historical Romance.  Unfortunately, the word romance has become tainted in popular culture.  In the 1930’s the so-called Romance novels emerged and today account for over half of all paperback books sold.  Before this the word Romance had a very different meaning.  It meant action/adventure.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, there emerged among the tribes of Western Europe various dialects of pigeon Latin collectively referred to as being Roman-like, or “romantic”.  These dialects eventually became the modern Romance languages of French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

During the Middle-Ages travelling storytellers told stories in these languages and they came to be known as collectively as Romances. These stories in turn provided inspiration for the poets and early novelists of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The English word novel means new, because it was an entirely new form of storytelling, but the word for novel in French and Italian is roman, in reference to the Romances that inspired the early novels.

The Medieval Romances had four key features: the hero's quest, the love interest, interesting settings, and supernatural events.  These four elements have brought us literally scores of different uses for the word Romantic.  For example, the most common modern usage pertains to love; this comes from the love interest aspect.  Romantic is also used to mean unrealistic; this stems from the supernatural element.  Another key usage refers to a love of nature; this refers back to the emphasis on the beautiful settings depicted in the Romances.

The best way to understand the Romantic in this context is to see these stories as portraying believable but larger than life people, in larger than life relationships, doing larger than life things, in larger than life places under larger than life circumstances.  In other words, Romanticism is about making life interesting.

It does not matter if the hero is a knight in shining armour, a cowboy with a six gun, the captain of a space ship, wearing tights and cape, or just some guy in jeans and a t-shirt.  The love interest can be the traditional boy/girl or it can be the emotions between partners or comrades.  The settings can be anything just so long as it is interesting.  As for the supernatural element, this can be magic or science based, an unknown mystery to be explored, or something as simple as a hero in a realistic setting who accomplishes extraordinary feats, like leaping onto a moving train.  This is something taken for granted in films, but it real life it’s a feat.

The man responsible for creating the template for Romantic storytelling was Sir Walter Scott as the inventor of the Historical Romance.  Another important invention from Scott was the character of Robin Hood as portrayed in his novel Ivanhoe.  Robin Hood existed in ballads from the Middle-Ages, but it was Scott who created our modern image of the character.  The story of splitting the arrow was made-up by Scott.  He also politicised the character as someone who “robbed from the rich and gave to the poor” in opposition to tyranny.  This element was mentioned briefly in one ballad but does not exist in the bulk of the original ballads.  Scott also invented the Merry Men.

In his creation of Robin Hood, Scott gave us a new kind of hero.  He is outside the law, fights alongside his team for the good of others against oppression in the name of freedom, and uses his physical agility, skills, and cunning to thwart his adversaries.  He is a villain to many, but to those in the know he is a hero.  This character inspired the heroes of the penny-dreadfuls, the Victorian equivalent to comic books, such as the highwayman Dick Turpin.  These in-turn inspired characters like The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), Zorro (1919), The Shadow (1930,) and culminated in Batman (1939).  In Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Sofia Sartor jokingly asks Ezio Auditore if Altair established the tradition among the Assassins for wearing menacing hoods.  More likely, the source is Rob in the Hood as the spiritual ancestor of the Assassins.

This look back at the Western storytelling tradition demonstrates that Assassin’s Creed is firmly part of this tradition.  There is the archetypal Robin Hood hero fighting oppression with his team, there are interesting settings, supernatural events, and although the relationship aspects is not as pronounced (there is no Maid Marion type), there are important human relationships and emotions present.  This makes Assassin’s Creed a Romance and the use of historical settings and characters make it a Historical Romance.

Assassin’s Creed Is A Secret

When creating a definition, the genus tells us what is similar to the thing we are defining.  What type of thing is it?  Assassin’s Creed is a historical romance franchise based on an open-world video game series.  This tells us the type of story, the type of video game series, and that it is a franchise.  The next question is what makes it unique.  What differentiates Assassin’s Creed from other historical romances, video games, and franchises?  The answer lies in the elements of the story itself, particularly in the setting and the themes.

Assassin’s Creed is set in an alternate reality where the lore of the modern day conspiracy theories are mostly true.  The fundamental premise of conspiracy lore is that there exists a group of central planners, these may be the Knights Templar, Freemasons, Illuminati, Bilderburg Group, lizard people, or any other alleged organisation depending on who is promoting their pet theory, that has been behind the scenes of human history guiding events to a determined conclusion, typically the enslavement of the human race.

Of the various groups in the lore, the creators of Assassin’s Creed have chosen the Knights Templar as the primary planners.  At the same time as the Templars were historically active, there was another secret society running about the Middle East called The Assassins, from whom we get the word assassin.  From a storytelling perspective is seems only logical to make them the primary foil to the Templars.  Where the Templars seek the enslave humanity, the Assassins promote freedom.  Where the Templars look to consolidate power, the Assassins want to distribute it to each individual.

Secret societies are secret in the sense that their existence is not known to the general public, but another aspect is that secret societies have a secret.  In Assassin’s Creed, both the Assassins and the Templars share the same secret knowledge; that the human race was not created by God, but in a laboratory to serve as a slave race.

In 1968, Erich von Daniken released his book Chariots of the Gods?in which he speculated that extraterrestrial aliens had visited ancient human civilizations, taught them new technologies, and were revered as gods.  A decade later, Zecharia Sitchen went a step further in his book The 12th Planet suggesting that visiting aliens genetically engineered humans from proto-human primates to serve as a slave race.  These theories formed the premise of the film and television series Stargate and is alluded to in the film The Avengers when the god Loki declares, “You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel”.

In an unrelated theory, Graham Hancock in his 1995 book, Fingerprints of the Gods: Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization furthers a theory first proposed by Ignatius Donnelly in 1882 suggesting that an ancient but highly advanced civilization existed prior to recorded history.  At the end of the last Ice Age, the great sheets of ice covering the poles melted, sea levels rose, and they perished leaving behind the legacy of advanced astronomy, architecture, and mathematic to those who picked-up the pieces.

The creators of Assassin’s Creed incorporated both of these theories into their story.  In their version of events, a sentient race evolved on Earth over 80,000 years ago and created humans as a slave race.  These beings, referred to in the game as both Those Who Came Before or simply as “the precursor race” formed the basis of human mythology and religion.  They were eventually decimated in an apocalypse from which enough humans survived to continue the species. Among the remains of their civilization were artefacts so technologically advanced as to be seen as magical by the humans who discovered and wielded them.  Much of the conflict in the game series revolves around Templar attempts to acquire these artefacts and the Assassins working to prevent them from falling into Templar hands.

This conflict between these two secret societies provides the central conflict in the game series with each group representing an opposing ideology.  From this tension the central themes of the series emerge.

Assassin’s Creed Is All About The Themes

As human beings, we learn from experience.  This can include vicarious experiences, and since the unconscious responds equally to real and imagined stimuli, stories have the power to transform, or at least influence, who we are.  Someone may say, “War is bad”.  This may have little or no effect on how a person views war.  However, if he tells a heart-felt story about a family in which the father is called to war and suffers depravation while his family at home first suffers because he is absent and later suffers because of an invading army, then through storytelling the writer has illustrated that war is bad without saying it outright.

In literary criticism this is called the theme.  A theme is often expressed as a single word.  So the theme of this story is war, but beyond that is what the storyteller is saying about war.  He is saying that it is bad.  This is the writer’s philosophical statement of belief, more commonly called the message of the story.

The audience may be drawn in emotionally to the plight of the soldier and his family and feel that they have experienced that war is bad.  However, they forget that every action and consequence illustrating the theme was created by the storyteller from a blank sheet of paper to convince them that war is bad.  It is all a lie.  The storyteller might just as easily tell a tale of heroism and noble sacrifice for God and Country to give the impression that war is good.  The story is essentially rigged by the storyteller to convey whatever message he wishes to convey or whatever he believes.  One of the purposes of literary criticism is to identify the themes and messages in the story and convert them from emotion-based storytelling into rational prose for analysis.

The way a theme is presented is called style.  All of the things that people associate with Assassin’s Creed from the gameplay, to the iconic hooded costumes, to the characters and settings themselves are all packaging for the theme.  The style of a story is what draws people, inspires them, and emotionally moves them, but ultimately style is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.  It may seem unfair to call a theme medicine, but most people would rather watch an engaging drama with an anti-war theme than read a philosophical anti-war treatise.  Yet, the themes of Assassin’s Creed are the real core elements of the game and have real world application beyond the entertaining fantasy world that has been created.

There are many themes in the Assassin’s Creed lore worthy of examination.  For the purpose of identifying a differentia for a definition of Assassin’s Creed there are three key themes that stand-out above the rest.  Interestingly, two are found in the creed itself.

Nothing is true.  Throughout the Assassin’s Creed series truth is concealed and characters must face uncomfortable revelations.  In the first game, Al Mualim, the leader of the Assassin’s, is revealed to have secretly been a Templar all along.  In the second game, Ezio’s father has hidden his secret life as an Assassin from Ezio as do the characters who guide Ezio throughout the game.  In Brotherhood, the Borgia family is a nest of lies.  In Revelation, Ahmet, the leader of the Byzantine Templars, is concealed for most of the story.  In Assassin’s Creed III, Connor’s entire quest is based on manipulation and lies, in Liberation the villain proves to be someone close to Aveline, and in Black Flag, Edward only pretends to be an Assassin throughout the game until his acceptance into the order near the end.

Everything is permitted.  The second major theme is Freedom.  This is a topic of discussion among the many characters, but also an overt motivation for the Assassins in their conflict against Templar control.  The most outspoken expressions of this theme are found in Liberation and Cry Freedom which both deal directly with the topic of slavery.

The third major theme is Defiance.    This theme is largely implied in AC1 and the Ezio trilogy,  however it takes centre stage in AC3 and AC4. The most blatant examples come from the Ubisoft marketing department with the Rise trailer for AC3 and the Defy trailer for AC4.  Presumably,  the intent was to encourage to audience to want to assume the role of the playable character and have the vicarious experience of resistance by purchasing the game. However, looking past the fourth wall, these trailers, in capturing the spirit of defiance in the games, also tap into the real world spirit of defiance against increasingly authoritarian state governments. They ask the audience,  what are you prepared to do? How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to sacrifice in the name of freedom?

So What Does It All Mean? 

Assassin’s Creed is a historical romance franchise based on an open-world video game series set in the world of conspiracy theory that explores the central themes of truth, freedom, and defiance.

Aristotle teaches us that since all things act according to their nature, we cannot understand a thing unless we understand its nature. This understanding begins with defining the subject.  This is why it is important to define Assassin’s Creed. 

Definitions, by their nature, are cold things – heartless.  But definitions are only half of the process of understanding a subject.  The other half of objective definition is subjective meaning.  Definitions are rational and logical while meanings are emotional, personal, and often indefinable.

To illustrate the difference between definition and meaning, here is an observation from Captain Jack Sparrow, “That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs but what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom.”  The keel, hull, deck and sails are the definition, but what does it mean?  It means freedom.

There is one definition for a cat but seven billion different meanings.  Understanding this concept is vital to understanding the underlying philosophy in Assassin’s Creed.  Objective definitions can be argued at length with facts and reason, but subjective meanings are personal.  No one can tell you what something means.  You have to decide that for yourself.

What does Assassin’s Creed mean?  For some it’s just a cool video game.  For others it’s just another video game that their kid asks for every Christmas.  For me personally, it’s Existentialist mythology with a healthy portion of Stoicism and the Romantic mixed in.  For you it’s something else.  It could mean everything or it could mean nothing.