User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 03-03-'13 — Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag trailer and screenshots/@comment-189.121.182.21-20130303220434/@comment-1153722-20130303231013

From what Forsaken says, Edward was a man of honour and morals. I figure anything he does will be for the Order and the people, not for personal gain. Kind of beats the point of him being an Assassin.

And Edward may be the only pirate Assassin for all we know. Even if there were more than one, that is only a small fraction of the total number of Assassins that existed at that time. It couldn't really be called a "Dark Age of the Order" because of that. It was different for the Templars, because that Dark Age applied to all Templars in Europe, and at that time the Assassins' and Templars' reach extended only through the Old World.