Assassins vs Templars

Every mainline game is a chapter in one long, fictional conflict. On one side stands the Assassin Brotherhood, which argues that peace must protect free will, even when free will is messy. On the other stands the Templar Order, which argues that peace requires order and control, even when control becomes domination.

That is fiction layered onto real history, not history itself: real Crusaders, Medici, revolutionaries and monarchs existed, while the secret war directing them is the series' invention. The framing lets each game argue the same question in a new century — who gets to decide for everyone else? Rogue complicated the formula by making its hero, Shay Cormac, defect to the Templars, and later games have repeatedly shown both orders producing heroes, fanatics and people caught between the two creeds.