Aveline de Grandpré

Aveline de Grandpré is a fictional character in Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed video game franchise. She first appears as the protagonist of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, originally released for PlayStation Vita in October 2012, and also appears in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. She is voiced by Amber Goldfarb.

Aveline de Grandpré
Assassin's Creed character
First appearanceAssassin's Creed III: Liberation (2012)
Last appearanceAssassin's Creed III: Remastered (2019)
Created byUbisoft Sofia
Voiced byAmber Goldfarb
In-universe information
OccupationAssassin
Businesswoman
AffiliationBrotherhood of Assassins
RelativesPhilippe Olivier de Grandpré (father)
Jeanne (mother)
Madeleine de L'Isle (stepmother)
OriginNew Orleans, French Louisiana
NationalityFrench

Within the series lore, Aveline is a Louisiana Creole member of the Assassin Brotherhood who was active in New Orleans during the French Louisiana era as well as the subsequent Spanish occupation in Louisiana, which took place during the same time period as the French and Indian War (1754–1763) and the subsequent American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).[1] Her primary objectives are to defend abused slaves and fight for their freedom, as well as eliminating members of the opposing Templar Order she encounters when necessary.

Critical reception towards Aveline has been mostly positive, particularly for her status as a prominent female character of color and her role in the fictionalized depiction of the Atlantic slave trade in the Assassin's Creed series. She is the first female protagonist of the series and is well received as a positive example of ethnic minority representation in video games.

Creation and development
"We are aware that colonial history was recorded by colonizers, and that it is inadequate to the task of representing the genuine experience of slaves, native people, and a host of others denied a voice in recorded history. The more complicated reality is that there is no one living today who knows what it felt like, in their own body, to live in the eighteenth century. If you want to really delve into authenticity, we also don't have ready access to young women political Assassins. At some point, a character must be invented—a responsibility we approached with enthusiasm, curiosity and, I hope, compassion. "

Jill Murray, "This Assassin's Creed Heroine Is a Great Black Game Character. Here's How It Happened." [2]

During an interview with Evan Narcisse from Kotaku, Liberation writer Jill Murray explained that Aveline was concepted by developmental staff at Ubisoft Sofia at the beginning of the project, which predated her involvement.[2] She noted that the studio "did their research and decided from the beginning that a woman Assassin of French and Haitian descent would be a compelling character".[2] Along with co-writer Richard Fareze (sic), the formal research they relied on were official documents from the era that directly impacted life for the characters of Liberation, in particular the Code Noir, a French legal document which defined the conditions and rules of slavery in territories under French sovereignty.[2] Murray also read slave narratives from various eras to immerse herself into their experiences and reactions people, along with their use of written language.[2] Murray said she also took inspiration from informal conversations with people, particularly if their own experiences are relevant to the subject matter she explores as part of her work.[2]

In response to a line of questioning from Narcisse as to whether it was a conscious decision or a coincidence that Aveline's character arc incorporated tropes such as the "tragic mulatto", "slave revenge" and the "Back-to-Africa movement", Murray indicated that her approach to text, as informed by her work background in theatre production, is with an eye for how to bring worlds and characters to life, rather than critical analysis for its own sake from an English or cultural studies perspective.[2] Murray explained that Aveline's arc should not be interpreted as an attempt to reflect the entirety of the 18th century black experience as she is "an individual, not a people or an issue".[2] Thus, Murray and her co-writer would look for other opportunities to represent different points of view through the characters Aveline meets, who are depicted as an array of individuals attempting to survive and carve out their own destinies in diverse ways.[2] For example, the backstory of Aveline's mother Jeanne, from her abduction into a life of slavery and becoming the placée of Aveline's French father Philippe Olivier de Grandpré, is recounted in a series of diary entries which Aveline could collect in the game world. Aveline also meets a man who has no territory he feels he can call home, and comes into conflict with a former slave who has opted to fight for the English as a soldier in exchange for his freedom.[2]

With regards to Aveline's presentation as a female protagonist in the Assassin's Creed franchise, Murray noted that it has not changed how the game itself is presented, though the actual game mechanics introduced "some fresh energy and some new opportunities" into the game's design.[3] Murray was of the view that it is necessary to rebut incorrect assumptions and misconceptions about the perceived risks involving the creation and inclusion characters from minority groups, noting that writers should have to rise to the occasion if they believe in their characters, and show themselves and people they work with how to portray them successfully. She emphasized that "this does not require magic, scary effort—it's effort anyone can put in. It's fun, it adds variety, and it makes a lot of players feel good."[2]

Aveline has access to three personas in Liberation: besides her well-armed Assassin persona, she also has the "lady" persona, a respectable businesswoman who is following in her father's footsteps, and a "slave" persona where she is able to blend in among black slaves who have similar backgrounds as her mother.[3] Each persona is more than a change in physical attire as she exhibits different abilities, and alters the way she interacts with her environment as well as how characters respond to her; guards will attempt to protect her from danger when Aveline assumes her "lady" persona, whereas they will react with hostility if she is encountered as an Assassin.[3] Murray suggested that with each persona, Aveline attempts to see where within the society of New Orleans she fits, and that she truly becomes herself whenever she assumes the Assassin persona, as it is a combination of every aspect of her identity which she grows into and comes to inhabit.[3] Many of Aveline's in-game movements for Liberation were taken directly from those designed for the lead character of Assassin's Creed III: only a handful of her animations, such as walking and running, were replaced.[4] Weapons employed by Aveline include dueling pistols, a cane knife, a whip she appropriates from a slave master at a predetermined point in the narrative of Liberation, poison darts fired from a blowgun or a modified parasol, and the Brotherhood of Assassins' signature Hidden Blade.

Appearances

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

Aveline is an ancestor of "Subject 1", the first participant of the experimental phase of the Animus Project conducted by a corporate front of the Templar Order in the modern era, Abstergo Industries. The story of Liberation is presented as a story within a story in the form of a video game created by Abstergo using the genetic memories of Subject 1. Aveline was abandoned by her mother Jeanne at a young age, and was raised by her father Philippe Olivier de Grandpré and stepmother Madeleine de L'Isle at their family mansion in New Orleans.

Aveline's backstory reveals that she was originally recruited by Agaté, a member of New Orleans' Brotherhood of Assassins guild, along with the accountant of her family business Gérald Blanc. He trained them to be his agents in New Orleans to counter the Templar Order's activities, with Aveline handling field work while Blanc operates an information network within the city. After the Templars' presence in the bayou notably increased by 1766, Agaté went further into hiding deep within the swamp.[2] Due to Aveline's natural impulsiveness and disinclination to follow orders, as well as her resentment of the secretive nature of Agaté's dealings with her and Blanc, Agaté frequently clashed with her and eventually began to doubt her loyalty to their cause. Their relationship severely deteriorates after Aveline changes her mind about assassinating the governor of New Orleans Antonio de Ulloa and spares him, even though Agaté ordered his death.

Aveline's mission to dismantle the slave trade in French New Orleans eventually leads her to cross path with a number of Templars and their allies, including a fictionalized version of Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie reimagined as a Templar ally whom she assassinates in 1765 as well as an imposter posing as the deceased François Mackandal. She discovers a plot by an associate of d'Abbadie, a Spanish Templar named Rafael Joaquín de Ferrer who is working for a high ranking leader known only as the "Company Man", to assume control of New Orleans following its transition to Spanish rule. Aveline infiltrates his labor camp of seemingly liberated slaves in Chichen Itza, where he is conducting archaeological research in order to recover an Isu artifact called the Prophecy Disk, and is killed when he attempts to take it from Aveline by force. From de Ferrer, Aveline learns of Diego Vásquez, a Templar who she assumed to be the Order's "Company Man", and successfully assassinates Vasquez at a soirée in New Orleans years later. On his death however, Vásquez reveals that he is not the Company Man and implied that the individual was a female in reality. Aveline later discovers that her father has passed away while she was at the ball and Madeleine de L'Isle had assumed control of his estate, though the family business itself had remained in Blanc's name.

During the American Revolutionary War, Blanc sends Aveline to New York to assist her fellow Assassin Ratonhnhaké꞉ton, better known by his alias Connor, to take down a British Officer of the loyalist Ethiopian regiment of Lord North, who had information on the identity of the "Company Man". She is shocked to discover that he is George Davidson, a former slave she had previously liberated on her stepmother's instigation and passed into the care of the American patriot faction, who have since pledged his allegiance to the loyalists and leads their forces at a fort located in the New York Frontier. George dies by Aveline's hand, and in his dying breath, he told her that "the answer has been in her own backyard all along", prompting her to realize that the Company Man was her own step-mother all along.

Following a confrontation with de L'Isle where she forces Aveline to yield at gunpoint, Aveline travels to the bayou to meet Agaté, who attacks her on the belief that she had betrayed the Assassins. After being defeated by his former protege, Agaté is overwhelmed with humiliation and leaps to his death from the pinnacle of his hideout. Aveline returns to de L'Isle with a memento of Agaté to prove her loyalty, and deceives L'Isle into believing that she genuinely intends to pledge herself and the Prophecy Disk to the Templar Order. Aveline successfully ends the Company Man by killing her at a Templar meeting within a cathedral building.

Other appearances

Aveline is the playable protagonist of a DLC expansion pack for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag titled Aveline, which is a sequel to the ending of Liberation.[5] She was also featured as part of Assassin's Creed: Initiates, a discontinued community-oriented social application website operated by Ubisoft which was online from August 2012 to December 2015.

Promotion and merchandise

Like other protagonists in the series, Aveline has been subject to merchandise. A promotional video featuring a limited edition figurine of Aveline was uploaded to Ubisoft's official YouTube account in November 15, 2018.[6] Aveline's likeness, along with five other series protagonists, was used for a line of character-themed wine labels as part of a joint collaboration between Ubisoft and winemaker Lot18; the full name of her label is "2017 Aveline de Grandpré Appellation Côtes du Rhône Contrôlée".[7]

Reception

As a character, Aveline has been mostly well received. She is considered to be one of the most notable black characters in video game history.[8] Evan Narcisse from Kotaku wrote positively of the character on more then one occasion, and believed that she is a "great black game character".[9][2] He was intrigued by the idea of Aveline because of her ethnic background and that it is uncommon for a character like her to be in the leading role of a major video game.[9] In an article published for Kotaku in February 2013, Narcisse considered Liberation to be the "best example of how to craft a character descended from African heritage in a video game", as it takes a historical moment where the action happens and finds ways to integrate the experience of being a mixed-race woman in 18th Century New Orleans into an interesting playable adventure.[2] Conversely, Narcisse expressed disappointment that Aveline was voiced by a white actress, and contrasted the decision to the casting of an actor who has Blackfoot heritage for Connor, a character of Native American descent.[10]

Chris Suellentrop from The New York Times suggested that Aveline may have been "the greatest black heroine in the history of video games" in an article dated January 2014, and that she is deserving of a wider audience which he believed the early 2014 release of the high-definition makeover of Liberation for platforms far more popular then the PlayStation Vita should provide.[11] Suellentrop commented that while neither the original version of Liberation nor the remastered version were very good, with aspects such as gameplay, storytelling and voice acting being of questionable quality at best, he has yet to encounter a game which deals with the history and imagery of slavery in the New World in intimate detail through Aveline's story arc, and that the game demonstrates a level of sensitivity and intelligence in its approach.[11] Mike Williams from US Gamer agreed that Liberation is a flawed game, though he enjoyed the exploration of Aveline's role in New Orleans as an assassin and as the free daughter of a former slave, and expressed hope that the remastered version of the game would enjoy a new, wider audience.[5] Jef Rouner from Houston Press noted that Aveline was discussed extensively during the controversy surrounding gender options for the cooperative mode of Assassin's Creed Unity in 2014, as some quarters considered her to be an inferior series protagonist as the original version of Liberation was perceived to be a portable spin-off which lacked the distinctive gameplay of the mainline console entries, though Rouner emphasized that she is still "pretty badass".[12] On the other hand, Tobias Kraft criticized Aveline's characterization in his chapter of the book New Orleans and the Global South: Caribbean, Creolization, Carnival as "shallow" and that her motivations never goes beyond the "obvious trail" of heroic solidarity and individual sacrifice, and said that she falls short of the standards set by Jean Genet's Les Negres".[13]

The Guardian staff included her in their list of "30 truly interesting female game characters", commenting that her ability to change her appearance in order to alter how other characters treat her is apt for the nature of her position as the series' first female protagonist, and noted that while Ubisoft may have received criticism for its attitude towards female characters, she was never reduced into being a mere love interest to Connor at the very least.[14] Aveline placed favorably in ranking lists of Assassin's Creed series protagonists; PC Gamer said she is "infinitely more interesting than boring old Connor",[15] while GAMINGBible praised her inherent badassery and her ability to exploit contemporary expectations of her race and gender to achieve her goals.[16]

For their work as co-writers of the script for Liberation, Richard Farrese and Jill Murray were awarded Outstanding Achievement in Writing Videogame Writing at the 2013 Writers Guild of America Awards.[17]

Analysis

In a 2015 panel titled "The Visual Politics of Play: On the Signifying Practices of Digital Games", Professor Anna Everett was of the view that Ubisoft's decision to feature Aveline as a lead character of a major video game franchise, while commendable, is undermined by the fact that Liberation is set in the colonial period of slavery which is "overdetermined in both its willingness to address this ignoble past and, arguably, its unwillingness to craft a powerful contemporary black shero tackling racial justice issues in the 21st century".[18] The panel's chair, Professor Soraya Murray, devoted the first chapter of her 2017 book On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space to analyze Aveline's role within the narrative of Liberation and the franchise as a whole.[19]

See also

References
  1. Barba, Rick (25 October 2016). "Assassin's Creed: Liberation". Assassin's Creed: A Walk Through History (1189-1868). Scholastic Inc. p. 80. ISBN 9781338099157.
  2. Evan Narcisse (February 27, 2013). "This Assassin's Creed Heroine Is a Great Black Game Character. Here's How It Happened". Kotaku. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
  3. Kaszor, Daniel (October 21, 2012). "Assassin's Creed III: Liberation writer Jill Murray on how story and gameplay can go hand-in-hand". Financial Post. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  4. Megan Farokhmanesh (June 11, 2014). "Animating women should take 'days,' says Assassin's Creed 3 animation director". Polygon. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  5. Mike Williams (October 9, 2013). "AC4's Extra Content Explores the African Side of the Brotherhood". US Gamer. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  6. "Assassin's Creed Liberation - Aveline figurine (The Assassin of New Orleans) Launch trailer". Ubisoft. YouTube. November 18, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  7. Brittany Vincent (November 16, 2018). "Ubisoft announces Assassin's Creed wine collection". Shacknews. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  8. Chella Ramanan (November 3, 2017). "30 YEARS OF BLACK VIDEO GAME CHARACTERS". Game Industry. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  9. Evan Narcisse (July 23, 2012). "Assassin's Creed's New Black Heroine Represents a New Kind of Liberation". Kotaku. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
  10. Evan Narcisse (August 29, 2012). "White Actress Will Voice Assassin's Creed's Black Heroine [Correction]". Kotaku. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  11. Suellentrop, Chris (January 27, 2014). "Slavery as New Focus for a Game". The New York Times. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  12. Jef Rouner (June 5, 2015). "Would You Believe There Have Been Only 14 Playable Black Women in Gaming?". Houston Press. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  13. Ottmar Ette; Gesine Müller, eds. (December 1, 2016). New Orleans and the Global South: Caribbean, Creolization, Carnival. Georg Olms Verlag. ISBN 97834-8715-504-3. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  14. "Beyond Lara Croft: 30 truly interesting female game characters – part one". The Guardian. January 25, 2016. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  15. Andy Kelly (October 23, 2018). "The assassins of Assassin's Creed, ranked from worst to best". PC Gamer. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  16. Ewan Moore (April 30, 2020). "Assassin's Creed: All Assassins Ranked From Worst To Best". LADBible. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  17. "2013 Nominees & Winners". Writers Guild of America Awards. Archived from the original on February 21, 2013. Retrieved November 16, 2020.
  18. Various (2015). The Visual Politics of Play : On the Signifying Practices of Digital Games (PDF). Semantic Scholar. ISBN 9781338099157.
  19. Murray, Soraya (December 30, 2017). "Poetics of Form and Politics of Identity; Or, Games as Cultural Palimpsests". On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 9781-78453-741-8.
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