000 SOURCES

[assassino]

SOURCES

As a foreword, I’d like to note that I’m not claiming or insisting on the accuracy of any source listed below, nor am I striving for complete, total accuracy to Italian culture in the late 1400s. I read in an interview that some historian feels Assassin’s Creed’s depiction of Italian culture is very true to life, but given the fantasy element of the game and a few choice departures, I feel it makes more sense to stick to general ideas and concepts enough to make Ezio come across as a man from another era, but not be so rigid that I am spending more time researching than actually writing. It’s just for fun, you know?

If you have any ideas or sources or interesting reading material, I’d love to hear about it! :)







SEX AND COURTSHIP

First syphilis outbreak came in 1494/1495 in Naples, Italy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_syphilis#European_outbreak

Sexual Relations in Renaissance Europe
http://garnlebaron.wordpress.com/sexual_relations_in_renaissance_europe/
http://theborgias.wetpaint.com/page/Sex+and+the+Renaissance

Sex and Nuns
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article09190701.aspx

Renaissance Courtship and Marriage
http://lorribrown.suite101.com/renaissance-courtship-and-marriage-a19689







FAMILY LIFE


Family Life During the Renaissance
http://lorribrown.suite101.com/family-life-during-the-renaissance-a19993






ART, FOOD AND CLOTHING


Renaissance Life, Fashion and Swords
http://www.realarmorofgod.com/renaissance-era.html

Food and Drink
http://www.lepg.org/food.htm

Cookbook, 1420-1440
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/lcc/parallel.html





FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI FAMILY


Significance of the Medici Family
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/Student/Florence/index.html

Focus on Florence
http://www.learner.org/interactives/renaissance/florence.html
http://www.learner.org/interactives/renaissance/florence_sub.html

Journey through the Renaissance
http://library.thinkquest.org/C005356/index2.htm

The Powerful Families of Renaissance Italy
http://theborgias.wetpaint.com/page/The+Powerful+Families+of+Renaissance+Italy

The Italian City-States of the Renaissance (re: Florence)
http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/03.html



HISTORY / RENAISSANCE PERSPECTIVES

"The Romans adopted this name, "Europa" to describe the whole of European continent, separating it from the older continent of Asia. The name was adopted by all the languages that evolved from Latin, and spread to the other European languages."
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029102332AAcYIAU

The Fra Mauro map. Map of the WORLD circa 1450 -- the one they would have been using until a new one in the 1490. Also features the first known Western depiction of Japan, then known as Cipangu.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/FraMauroDetailedMap.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/FramauroJava.jpg

English names for Italian things. Modern age, but okay at a cursory glance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_exonyms_for_Italian_toponyms

Map of Italy circa 1500
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltgsoccHrh1qesjkxo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1319394536&Signature=hdtK43nRtx0TCRwAy1vl0sE9Z5U%3D



TIMELINE OF IMPORTANT INVENTIONS

1400 Piano invented
1421 Hoisting gear invented in Florence
1445 Invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg
1450 Nicholas of Cusa invents spectacle lenses
1459 **EZIO’S BIRTH**
1475 Muzzle-loaded rifles invented in Italy, screwdriver invented
1485 Leonardo da Vinci finishes the first functioning flying machine
1487 Bell chimes invented
1488 **EZIO’S CANONPOINT IN PARADISA**
1492 Martin Behaim invents first spinning map globe.

Comments

[lawgiver]

If you're looking for literature, there's Daily Life in Renaissance Italy by Elizabeth S. Cohen and Thomas V. Cohen? I bought it last year and I found it quite interesting.

[assassino]

Ooh, I'll put it on my hunting list, thank you! I've barely touched the library yet (aside from textbooks left over from yeaaaars ago) so it's nice to have places to start.

Also, it is awesome to see a Suleiman *_* My hat off to you.

[lawgiver]

You're welcome! I've learned some neat things like what people put on their pasta back then and other silly stuff from it so I definitely recommend it. Also, Here's the google preview.

Why, thank you! I haven't had the chance to play him yet (mostly because I feel compelled to do a ton of research first) but I hope I get around to soon. The minor characters do not get played enough.

[assassino]

Hahaha, I keep getting BOGGLED by weird stuff. I'll be sitting in front of the TV or in a subway car or wandering around the apartment and suddenly think "wait, when was ____ invented?" or "how would they react to ____?" and rush to the computer for googling. I haven't put it up yet, but I made a brief list of when certain foods were discovered so I have at-a-glance reference so I don't miss out on one of those charming Teachable Moments you get in panfandom games.

Oh man, AC has so many amazing characters, but it felt depressing to put together the list of RP accounts on LJ and have more Ezios than any other female character combined, and have so many big characters go almost entirely unrepresented. Boggling.

[lawgiver]

Oh, those teachable moments. Has Ezio tried tomato sauce yet? Or... junk food, or would that upset his Renaissance stomach? :) Has he learned to take a shower frequently because lol what is hygiene in the 1400s

Geez. :( Maybe Ezio is just popular for whatever reason and the other characters don't have that much characterization in comparison? Historical characters like Machiavelli or Cesare kind of require more research than the rest so there's that, too.

[assassino]

He figured out showers very fast, courtesy the one attached to his room, but a month later he's still getting confused at every other turn. Most of his friends have ended up being modern day Americans, so they've been steering him in the right directions, haha. No tomatoes or chocolate or junk food yet, though! Stephanie Brown took him grocery shopping and he doesn't understand the interest in dried or preserved food when he has easy access to everything fresh, which he wouldn't always have in a 15thc city.

The majority of the journals are concentrated on Ezio, Desmond, Altair, Malik, Leonardo and Shaun. I can't really talk -- this is an Ezio journal, too, after all -- but I expected more? Machiavelli and that may require a bit more research (even if you can disregard is as "not AC-verse canon" in a lot of places) but it's funny that things swing in either direction: people seem either afraid of too much research, or afraid of too much free rein!

[lawgiver]

Sounds like it's gonna take a long time for him to get used to all these new things -- pretty much everything has changed to some extent in 500 years, after all. I don't play anyone from AC in a game but if I did, I would have oodles of fun with exploring how they'd adapt to modern technology, values, pretty much everything.

Man, that is kind of depressing. Nothing wrong with those characters, but it's still saddening to see the others go underrepresented. The series has three different eras (four with the comics) with different and interesting characters so there really should be more. :(

I expected a ton of Yusufs after Revelations was released (I even made a journal for him about three missions after his introduction) but so far I've only seen three or four of him -- though to be fair, Yusuf didn't do much aside from explaining things so we didn't get to see as much of him as I would've liked.

[assassino]

Generally-speaking, I've played a lot of characters from the fantasy world equivalent of the Iron Age or Bronze Age, sometimes with technological embellishments, but no one from that middle period, so it's interesting to play from a period where humanity is sort of patting itself on the back for its accomplishments. I mean, with the Renaissance being a time period in Europe where people are starting to see Earth and people as valuable, interesting things with their own merits apart from God gives it all an extra edge of DISCOVERY!!!1, and Ezio's feeling like... despite not being an inventor, or a sailor, or a traveling merchant, not having ANY assassin work to do isn't so bad when he has other stuff to keep him busy.

I think another thing that slows people up from picking up characters is because of that huge time span -- I mean, you could play Nikolai Orelov and have half a dozen castmates and not know any of them. The earlier back you go -- Altair's age, for example -- the more people come after you who might know you, but you have zero knowledge of them. Imho, I think most RPers would rather have castmates than not, and when most people play the protagonists everyone gets divvied up between games really fast.

I also expected a lot of Yusufs, but like you, I found Yusuf didn't end up doing much beyond lobbing (rather entertaining) tutorial-speak at Ezio. It hurt especially when Revelations felt so bare, character-wise; AC2 had a huge cast, ACB had a few new guys and a good chunk of the old cast returned, aaaaand then ACR... had a few new allies, a few new antagonists, aaaaand no returning cast members.

[lawgiver]

Oh, that's an interesting point. Not many canons span over 800+ years with different casts in different times. ICly sorting out the whole mess with people from another century knowing all about one's character and other things could get a little tedious, I imagine.

What are your thoughts on the Assassin/Templar divide that would come up in a game since they'd still want each other dead? Sometimes I contemplate picking up Daniel Cross and dumping him in a game but he'd most likely end up on the assassin hit list once they found out about what his actions did to the brotherhood.

Duccio made a return, but he probably doesn't count. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it bare character-wise. The previous two games had a plethora of them and I love them all to bits while this time it was kind of just Oldzio strutting around Constantinople, occasionally stopping for a little chat with Yusuf/Sofia/Suleiman and a side dish of Desmond and Sixteen... who didn't do much, either. Why didn't you ask him about what those glyphs and rifts meant, Desmond?

[assassino]

And it causes confusion, ahaha! The previous Ezio at paradisa told a girl that he was a descendant of Altair... but now we have Word of God that they're from different branches of Desmond's family tree, and my Ezio has been told (by the same girl) that he's descended from Altair. Because of time differences and a lack of info, he's gonna be stuck with that idea until we get a 21st century character who is in the know, ahaha.

Hmm. I think it'd really depend on the game –– I mean, if we got Templars in Paradisa, it wouldn't matter long because death is irrelevant; the castle brings residents back to life after a few weeks after taking a price for doing so. In another game, it might be completely different -- maybe some mutual conflict (getting out of a jamjar?) would cause them to call a temporary truce while still keeping at loggerheads over everything else. I doubt "we're outside of space and time" would matter much to them as an excuse, because I don't think many of them would have the same "the timeline must be preserved so I can't kill you while we're outside of it" holdups that modern or more fantastical people might.

Lmao I've yet to see anyone play Duccio, but that's true... he got more screen-time than Rebecca and Shaun, agh!

See, if they had actually made up for the lack of characters with more character development and cutscenes, I could have really dug it, but it was like... oh... Dilara for like five lines... Yusuf teaches you something... Sofia and Ezio's interaction is allllll framed around getting books, Piri Reis for a few seconds, faffing about some more. I looove Revelations for what it was, but I felt it could have had more to it. I honestly feel Embers should have been consolidated into it, too.