Are the Templars in Assassin’s Creed Real? The True Story

• knighttemplar
• July 21, 2026
• Categories: History & Lore
• Tags: Knights Templar, Templar History

Yes — the Templars in Assassin’s Creed were real. The Knights Templar were a Catholic military order founded around 1119 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, and the Assassins were real too: the Nizari Ismailis, the medieval sect whose political killings gave us the very word “assassin.” What Ubisoft invented is the conspiracy — a secret Templar order that survives into the present and steers world events. The real story is shorter, bloodier, and in some ways stranger than the games. With Netflix’s live-action Assassin’s Creed series filming right now, here is what actually happened between the two orders — and what the show is likely to change.

The Short Answer: Real Orders, Fictional War

• Real: the Knights Templar (c. 1119–1312), warrior-monks of the Crusades. If you’re new to the order, start with who the Knights Templar really were.
• Real: the Order of Assassins (1090–1273), the Nizari Ismaili sect based at Alamut and Masyaf.
• Real: the two orders met — through tribute payments, a murdered ambassador, and one very famous assassination.
• Fiction: a millennia-spanning secret war over free will, Pieces of Eden, Abstergo Industries, and Animus machines.
• Fiction: the idea that either order survived to the modern day as a functioning organization.

The Real Knights Templar Behind the Games

The historical order was founded in Jerusalem around 1119, when the French knight Hugues de Payens and eight companions vowed to protect pilgrims travelling to the holy sites. Recognized at the Council of Troyes in 1129, the “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ” grew at astonishing speed into the most powerful military order of the Crusades — and into something like medieval Europe’s first multinational bank, moving money safely between Paris and the Holy Land.

Their look is the one detail the games never had to exaggerate: a plain white mantle bearing the red Templar cross, granted to the knights in the 1140s. The order’s end came suddenly. On Friday 13 October 1307, King Philip IV of France arrested every Templar in his kingdom on charges of heresy; the order was dissolved by the pope in 1312, and Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master, was burned in Paris in 1314. There was no secret continuation — only two centuries of service ended by a king who owed the order money.

The Real Order of Assassins (the Hashashin)

The Assassins were just as real, and almost exact contemporaries. In 1090, the Persian missionary Hasan-i Sabbah seized the mountain fortress of Alamut in northern Iran and built a network of strongholds for the Nizari branch of Ismaili Islam. Outnumbered by every neighbouring power, the Nizaris perfected a different weapon: the carefully staged public killing of a single enemy leader, carried out by devotees known as fida’is — often in a mosque or court, in daylight, with no escape planned.

The Syrian branch, headquartered at Masyaf — yes, the same castle you climb in the first Assassin’s Creed — was led in the late 12th century by Rashid al-Din Sinan, the “Old Man of the Mountain” feared by Crusader and Muslim rulers alike. One thing the real Assassins never said: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” That maxim comes from later legend, popularized by Vladimir Bartol’s 1938 novel Alamut, the book that directly inspired the games.

When Templars and Assassins Actually Met

The two orders shared the same crowded corner of the map for nearly two centuries, and the record of their dealings reads more like organized crime than holy war.

• 1152 — the tribute. After Assassins killed Count Raymond II of Tripoli — their first Frankish victim — the Templars answered with force, and the Syrian Assassins ended up paying the order an annual tribute the chronicler William of Tyre put at around 2,000 gold bezants. The feared Assassins were, quite literally, paying protection money to the Knights Templar.
• 1173 — the murdered ambassador. Sinan sent an envoy to King Amalric I of Jerusalem to negotiate an alliance. On the road home, a Templar knight named Walter du Mesnil ambushed and killed him — plausibly because an alliance would have ended the tribute. The king was furious and dragged the knight out of Templar custody himself.
• 1192 — the famous one. Conrad of Montferrat, king-elect of Jerusalem, was stabbed to death in Tyre by two Assassins disguised as monks. Rumour immediately blamed Richard the Lionheart for commissioning it. This killing is the seed of everything Assassin’s Creed grew from.

The endings were parallel too. The Mongols destroyed Alamut in 1256, and Sultan Baybars subdued the Syrian Assassins by 1273; the Templars followed them into history barely a generation later. Both “eternal” orders were gone within a single lifetime.

What Assassin’s Creed Gets Right — and Wrong

The first game is set in 1191, during the Third Crusade, and its geography — Masyaf, Acre, Damascus, Jerusalem — is genuine. Its villain is too: Robert de Sablé really was Grand Master of the Knights Templar from 1191, sailing east with Richard the Lionheart. The game just rewrites his death — the real de Sablé was never cut down by an assassin at Arsuf; he died in office a couple of years later, still running the order.

The deeper fiction is the premise. The games recast a 200-year-old military order as one face of an eternal conspiracy for control of humanity — and later entries (starting with Assassin’s Creed Origins) pushed that conspiracy back into antiquity as the “Order of the Ancients,” long before any real Templar drew breath. Entertaining lore, invented history.

The Netflix Series: Where the Templars Fit

Netflix greenlit its live-action Assassin’s Creed series in July 2025, and cameras started rolling in Italy in March 2026. The confirmed setting is a surprise: an original story in 64 AD Rome — Nero’s Rome — more than a thousand years before the first real Templar. Showrunners Roberto Patino and David Wiener describe a thriller about “the secret war between two shadowy factions,” with a cast that includes Toby Wallace, Lola Petticrew, Claes Bang and Noomi Rapace.

Translation for history fans: the show’s “Templars” won’t wear white mantles — expect the franchise’s proto-Templar faction, the Order of the Ancients, in Roman dress. If the series lands (no release date yet; late 2026 at the earliest), millions of viewers will meet the idea of the Templars before they ever meet the real knights. You, at least, will know the difference.

Wear the Real Legend

Be honest: half the reason the Templars headline games and streaming series is that no order in history looked better. The white mantle, the blood-red cross, the war banner — iconography so strong that nine centuries later it still reads instantly. If you’d rather wear the real thing than the video-game version, our Raven Templar limited-edition collection puts the authentic emblem on modern apparel — no Animus required.

FAQ: Templars and Assassins

Did the Knights Templar really fight in the Third Crusade?
Yes. Templar knights fought at Arsuf (1191) and screened Richard the Lionheart’s army throughout the campaign — the exact war the first Assassin’s Creed game depicts.

Did the real Assassins and Templars fight each other?
Less than the games suggest. Their documented relationship was mostly tribute, negotiation and the occasional murder — including a Templar knight killing an Assassin ambassador in 1173.

Is the Netflix Assassin’s Creed series about the Knights Templar?
Not directly. It’s set in 64 AD, a millennium before the order existed, so it will feature the franchise’s fictional forerunners rather than the historical knights.

The real rivalry needed no science fiction: two secretive orders, born within thirty years of each other, trading gold and daggers across the Holy Land until history swallowed them both. The games got one thing exactly right — it’s a story worth obsessing over. For more of the history behind the legends, see the lost treasure of the Knights Templar.