Board Thread:Comics general discussion/@comment-18014300-20170201020149

I've just read Black Cross. I want to explain my thoughts on it.

If you guys have read my post here, I was disappointed in Ubisoft's decision to make Sun Yat-sen a Grand Master Templar that was killed by the Assassins no less. This is because Sun Yat-sen was a very liberal individual historically whose commitment to democracy was one of his core, defining ideals. People have pointed out that this isn't necessarily in conflict with Templar goals, and that not all Templars are dictators. This is aside from my point. I believe that Sun Yat-sen could reasonably have been a Templar, a reasonable, "benevolent" one, like François de la Serre, but my disapproval stems from who he was relative to other figures of Chinese history in that period. Because he was the most liberal (and I do not mean left-wing necessarily) hero of China from this period—that is to say the one character whose ideology matches the Assassins the most out of his contemporaries in China—and essentially my people's counterpart to José Rizal or Gandhi, I think that while he could be a Templar, it would have made more sense to go with a different choice as Grand Master Templar, if only because this makes me think the Assassins had no historical ally in China during this time period xD. I'm not going to lie that subconscious bias might play a role in my grievance about it, being Chinese myself.

Anyways, that was just a summary of the background to my review. Here it goes:

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW So first, I see that Sun Yat-sen doesn't actually feature in the story. Instead his death by the Assassins as Grand Master of the Shanghai Rite takes place before the story, with the Templars hoping to recruit his successor to the Nationalist Party, Chiang Kai-shek as the new Grand Master.

Sun Yat-sen's widow attempts to thwart this because she sees Chiang as a megalomaniac, authoritarian man with no loyalty to anything but himself; he might as well be a psychopath. In other words, she sees his quest to be a dictator to be contrary to the goals of the Templar Order. This, I approve about this comic. I liked that it showed that Templars true to their ideology still believe in a higher calling than themselves (as the Assassins do), that they want the betterment of humanity, only that their means are merciless and brutal. I think this comic therefore slightly accomplished what Rogue failed.

Rogue just tried to display Templars as nice people who try to help out the city by doing normal, decent things, stopping crime, and saving civilians while the Assassins are bullies, demand absolute obedience, wreck havoc, and (accidentally) destroy cities. Rogue took the lazy approach of switching the labels around and making Assassins look almost pure bad guys while Templars pure good guys while avoiding their philosophies or even goals.

Black Cross, despite not featuring the Assassins, nor touching upon their philosophies that much, through subtlety, managed to portray a more sympathetic side to the Templars without censoring the fact that their usual methods (i.e. murdering and threatening their own members on a whim or recruits) would be considered evil to the average audience. Even Soong Ching-ling, widow of Sun Yat-sen, who seems to be a pretty devout Templar, explained that a "great failing" of their order was eliminating human feeling from their methods—though from the context, it doesn't necessarily mean that she was advocating compassion so much as emotional intelligence. At the same time, the comic draws a clear distinction between these Templars who truly believe that they desire a world free from chaos, to transcend superficial labels and boundaries such as "race, religion, and nationality" (a heartwarming overlap with the Assassins), from those hedonistic gangsters that have given up trying to do anything but indulge in pleasures and greed and from megalomaniac, authoritarian, power-mongering wannabe dictators such as Chiang Kai-shek. She even does mention that Sun Yat-sen fought for a free China.

Thus, Black Cross manages to be honest about what the Templars are (unlike Rogue which censors it all), hiding not the darker side of them (e.g. using terror & murder to enforce indoctrination), while still clearly illustrating how they are not pure evil. Albert Bolden, one of the main characters, as the Black Cross, seems at first to be nothing but a merciless agent of terror for the Templars, yet he is shown to have a sense of honor in the way he considers how his actions impacted the innocent son of a corrupted Templar he killed. I have to say that Albert Bolden is what I had hoped Shay Cormac would be like. Shay was depicted as just a hero who cared about innocent lives and didn't want to see cities destroyed, which we can reasonably expect from most Assassins and even average Templars like Haytham. I think Albert has more nuance to him. We see his disregard for the lives of those he kills, how he view incompetence as even potential justification for murder, how obedient—almost to the point of blind faith—he is to the Templars' purpose, all of which highlights typical flaws of their ideology, yet we do get to know that he is clearly a human being, one who tries to take responsibility for the repercussions of his actions, who can identify them, and take the initiative to solve. (I personally did not see that with Shay though that's debatable. Some might say he was trying to take responsibility by preventing more cities' destructions, but my interpretation was that he played the blame game with the Assassins while trying to write himself off as a white knight hero over what was just a colossal error in communication.)

The ending was a tragic turn of events, but it was emotionally impactful drama for me. The nooby protagonist Darius Gift is as idealistic as many (definitely not all) Assassins. One could think that he could easily have been an Assassin if he had been exposed to them first, and how some equally idealistic Assassins could easily have been Templars if they grew up with them. The two factions share the same goal, and it's not order vs. freedom (which I must emphasize is just Templar rhetoric), but universal peace, dissolution of superficial labels and prejudices, scientific progress, and the amelioration of chaos, only their methods differ. Templars believe that direct intervention by shepherding humanity is the only solution whereas Assassins believe that no human being has the wisdom to choose the correct path for all of humanity, that only through the arduous yet risky path of education and tolerance, channeling rather than fearing it, can it hope to truly remedy that chaos. Hence two people—altruistic people—can believe in the exact same dream yet side with opposing factions. Of course, you will always have corrupt people lurking within every faction or ideology.

Now.... as for the Sun Yat-sen issue.

After reading the comic, I can reaffirm that it is not entirely unreasonable for Sun Yat-sen to be a Templar, especially after hearing his widow, a Master Templar herself, emphasize the distinction between the Templars and dictators such as Chiang Kai-shek and ruthless, gangsters like Du Yuesheng. As I said, it's entirely possible for two people who share the same dream to side with opposing factions; a lot of the differences between the Assassins and Templars are distinct yet similar enough that I think a person growing up can easily have been swayed to either side through the right rhetoric and the right people. (I'm not forgetting that fact that most genocidal historical people were Templars by the way. Their order is more prone to such corruption, in general.)

Sun Yat-sen could reasonably be a Templar, but if so, I would suggest that he would have been more akin to the likes of François de la Serre. My protest that he was chosen as a Grand Master Templar still stands, however, and again, not because it's entirely unreasonable for him to have sided with Templar ideology, but because I think that from an OOU-perspective, going this route leaves no historical Chinese leader of this period I can think of who would best be an Assassin ally. He was still, as far as I know, the closest figure from this period to Assassin ideals, hence while he could conceivably be a Templar, juxtaposed with his contemporaries, I think that it would've made more sense to put him as an Assassin.

That aside, my greatest issue with it is that they had to add the unnecessary detail that he was killed by Assassins. Sun Yat-sen's death did much to escalate the turmoil and division of China. He was the closest person to keeping the country unified, and an ideal Assassins, and Assassins like Evie Frye, Ezio Auditore, Arno Dorian, Aveline de Grandpré don't kill Templars needlessly and try to consider the long-term ramifications of their targets. This was the primary cause of tension between Evie and her brother Jacob who would just rush in and kill them all without thinking. Ezio spared Rodrigo's life partly because of this, and the Assassins had considered several times that killing Torquemada earlier on, despite how much he threatened their lives, would have just caused the Inquisition to escalate. For the Assassins to kill Sun Yat-sen, an action that clearly would just plunge China further into darkness is just sloppy. It's totally not impossible because some Assassins are trigger-happy, and it can be written down to mismanagement. But I personally think that the situation in China at this point made it ripe for an opportunity for the Templars and the Assassins to ally again for the republican revolution against the regressive monarchy, as they did in the French Revolution. If both sides were reasonable, and Sun Yat-sen was the Grand Master Templar, that would have made the most sense. His policies did not conflict with Assassin goals. Sadly, given their age-old enmity, another alliance may not have been a likely occurrence, but I still think that from an OOU-standpoint, Ubisoft chose the worst scenario for the character. 