Templars

Good

"May the Father of Understanding guide us"

- One of the mottos of the Templars

The Knights Templar is a military religious order created during the First Crusade and are the sworn enemies of the Assassins. The order survives through the Third Crusade and exists through the Renaissance even until Modern Times (2012).

Assassin's Creed
They attacked Masyaf after a failed mission under Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem; and after that, Templars found in the Holy Land will attack Altaïr on sight. They tend to attack more skilfully and take more hits than normal guards. You can find them in small villages throughout the kingdom, as well as throughout the cities, keenly observing their surroundings of encroaching danger. Templars are battlefield hardened soldiers lending aide to King Richard in the Third Crusade. Their battlefield experience shows in the way they fight. They are warriors in every meaning of the word, extremely skilled in the application of sword combat, and extremely disciplined. Templars should be dealt with while expressing extreme caution and solid battle skills. These soldiers are usually stationary, and on the lookout for the Assassins, their sworn enemies, who they are engaged with in a low-scale war.

Assassin's Creed II
According to Subject 16, the Templar Seal is the Mark of Cain. This indicates that the principle ideas of the Templars seems to have existed for much longer.

Distribution and goals
The Templars originally sought peace the Christian way, but with the discovery of the Pieces of Eden and their power to manipulate the minds of the masses, that all changed. As all powerful religious and political figures used the pieces to spread their lies, the Templars realized a personal truth: there is no God or Great Power out there, only men with power and those without. They became atheists, with maintaining the pretence and tradition of Roman Catholics to avoid suspicion, retain friends in the Vatican and for personal habit. This new freedom brought a new perception to the Templars. With no afterlife or ultimate punishment or reward after death, there was no real obligation to oblige by such morality (this was an easy transition, as most in those violent times ignored the concept of morality anyway). It also ensured that only this life was important, rather than preparing for the next. Without this new view, the corruption of the world shone to them like an ugly light. With so many lower class kept in line with the promise of Heaven and so many upper class blissfully ignoring such ideals, the Templars vowed to make a better world, one of peace, no matter the cost. Their main goal during the Crusades was to bring peace to the Holy Land by usurping the rule of Saladin and undermining the efforts of Richard the Lionheart while both were more concerned with fighting each other, but the ways they do it are both ruthless and barbaric. However, they believe that they're doing good. They're trying to control peoples' free will and they will ruthlessly kill anyone who is against them, especially the Assassins, whose leader, Al Mualim, was a member of the Templars, but later chose to betray them by stealing the Piece of Eden for his own purposes. They're also good at manipulation, as they have members in both the Crusader and Saracen armies, allowing themselves to manipulate both Richard the Lionheart and Saladin for their own gain and manipulated the other knight orders like the Hospitalliers, Teutonic Knights and even the Assassins (Hashshashin) via Al Mualim.

Third Crusade

 * Basilisk (Grand Master of the Knights Templar)
 * Robert de Sable (Grand Master of the Knights Templar, after Basilisk)
 * Armand Bouchart (Grand Master of the Knights Templar, after Robert)
 * Tamir the Merchant (Black marketeer in Damascus)
 * Garnier de Naplouse (Grand Master of the Knights Hospitalier)
 * Talal the Slave Trader (Slave master in Jerusalem)
 * Abul Nuqoud (A noble man of Damascus)
 * William of Montferrat (Regent lord of Acre)
 * Majd Addin (Regent lord of Jerusalem)
 * Jubair al Hakim (Head of the Illuminated and the chief scholar of Damascus)
 * Sibrand (Grand Master of the Knights Teutonic)
 * Al Mualim (Master and leader of the Assassins, and a former Templar)
 * Maria Thorpe (Robert de Sable's steward and his own personal assassin)
 * Roland Napule (Head of a Templar hospital in Tyre)
 * Masun (Traitorous assassin who is a double agent to the Templar)
 * Alaat (Templar knight)
 * Tamir (Altaïr's Chronicles) (A rich merchant allied to Basilisk)
 * Master of the Tower (Basilisk's second-in-command, master of the art of killing)
 * The Master's Student (Templar killer)
 * Harash (Al Mualim's second-in-command, traitor who joined Templars)
 * Frederick The Red (Templar regent of Limassol)
 * Pirate Captain (Leader of Cypriot pirates who joined the Order)
 * Osman (Templar knight, secretly a member of Cypriot resistance)
 * Moloch (Templar regent of Kyrenia)
 * Shalim (Armand Bouchart's second-in-command, son of Moloch)
 * Shahar (Shalim's twin brother)
 * Templar Agent (Armand Bouchart's highly trained, stealthy killer)
 * Isaac Comnenus (Former ruler of Cyprus and keeper of the Templar Archive)

Renaissance

 * Rodrigo Borgia (Grand Master of the Knights Templar and His Holiness, Pope Alexander VI)
 * Marco Barbarigo (Corrupt Doge of Venice)
 * Silvio Barbarigo (Member of the Supreme Tribunal of Venice)
 * Emilio Barbarigo (Corrupt Merchant of Venice)
 * Carlo Grimaldi (Member of the Council of Ten of Venice)
 * Uberto Alberti (The Gonfaloniere of Firenze)
 * Jacopo de' Pazzi (Head of the Pazzi Conspiracy)
 * Francesco de' Pazzi (Patriarch of the Pazzi Family)
 * Vieri de' Pazzi (Francesco's son - Ezio's rival)
 * Stefano da Bagnone (Advisor to Jacopo de' Pazzi - Pazzi Conspirator)
 * Bernardo Baroncelli (Banker - Pazzi Conspirator)
 * Francesco Salviati (Archbishop of Pisa - Pazzi Conspirator)
 * Antonio Maffei (Priest - Pazzi Conspirator)
 * Dante Moro (Personal Guard of Marco Barbarigo)
 * Francisco Pizzaro (Spanish Conquistador)
 * Checco Orsi (Forlì noble)
 * Ludovico Orsi (Forlì noble)
 * Girolamo Savonarola (Dominican priest)

Modern times

 * Alan Rikkin (Abstergo Industries CEO)
 * Warren Vidic (Scientist of Abstergo Industries)
 * Nancy Nilop (Abstergo Industries employee)
 * Jane Birkam (Abstergo Industries employee)
 * Audrey Jacobs (Alan Rikkin's assistant)
 * Richard (Abstergo Industries employee)

Others

 * Cain
 * Xerxes
 * Alexander the Great
 * Qin Shi Huang
 * Atilla the Hun
 * Genghis Khan
 * Cleopatra
 * Caligula
 * Francois Duvalier
 * John Wilkes Booth
 * Lee Harvey Oswald
 * Rasputin
 * Josef Stalin
 * Mary I of England
 * Tomas de Torquemada
 * Thomas Edison
 * Henry Ford
 * Adolf Hitler
 * Lyndon B. Johnson
 * J. P. Morgan (?)
 * Winston Churchill (?)
 * Franklin D. Roosevelt (?)
 * J. Robert Oppenheimer (?)

Templar Groups
There are groups who act as unofficial divisions of the Templars, unrelated to them publicly but in fact commanded by Templars (some of them through the membership of their leaders and others are part of the Templar Order itself).
 * Third Crusade
 * Knights Teutonic Cross.svg Teutonic
 * Hospitalier Crest.svg Hospitalier
 * Renaissance
 * Pazziingame.png Pazzi
 * Flag of Most Serene Republic of Venice.svg Venice Law enforcement
 * 442px-Emblem of the Papacy SE svg.png Papacy
 * Blason famille it Borgia01 svg.png Borgia
 * 20th century
 * Ford Motor Company Logo.svg Ford Motor Company
 * Edison Studios
 * Flag of Nazi Germany (1933-1945).svg Nazi Party
 * Animuslogowhite.svg Abstergo Industries
 * NASA logo svg.png NASA
 * 21st century
 * Animuslogowhite.svg Abstergo Industries
 * NASA logo svg.png NASA

The Historical Templars
Ordre du Temple in French, the Knights Templar are amongst the most famous of the Western Christian military orders involved in the war. They are well known by the distinctive white mantles with a red cross. Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a favored charity throughout Christianity, and grew rapidly in membership. Because the Templars' existence was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded.

They were among the most skilled fighters at the time, which is reflected in the game. Their ruthlessness against non-Catholics was also infamous; this also is reflected in the game.