Altair Middle East Fze

[Bartolome Beacham]

Ijust thought of something. It's assumed that Altair mainly speaks Arabic. We can't tell from his voice (so monotone!). Almost everyone Altair interacts with has a middle-eastern accent (except for the 3 targets in Acre, Richard, and Robert). I just thought, after he assassinates Robert, he speaks with King Richard with no problem. Were they taught multiple languages as they were trained? This would make sense for an occupation that requires one to adapt continuously, but I'm just curious. If not, then that's a very convenient loophole.

Maybe. French in the game is not translated most of the time but Sibrand and Garnier would have most likely spoken french so it's clear he must have spoken french if why try to make sense of it. Then comes the doubt if Altair could have known English, as King Richard most likely was able to speak French as well.

It's possible that Altair and Richard might have been able to speak in French, which was Richard's natural language anyway. Because Richard was a second son, he was intended to rule the duchy of Aquitaine (modern Provence) as the heir of his mother. He certainly spent most of his life in France (or what we think of today as France).

There was quite a bit of travelling between Europe and the Middle East. Due to the large numbers of Frenchmen who served in the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitallers, France had a permanent French-speaking population base and consequently an enormous influence there. Richard's mother's uncle, Raymond, had been invited to become king in Antioch, where he modeled his court after the Duke of Aquitaine and used the langue d'oc as the official language. Eleanor of Aquitaine's neighbor, Count Alphonse of Toulouse, was also Count of Tripoli for a time.

A lot of cross-cultural fertilization is what I'm suggesting. Not just with the nobility. Going to the Holy Land on pilgrimage was manageable for more "middle-class" people as well. I believe Chaucer's Wife of Bath went to Jerusalem twice, and this was not treated as especially remarkable.

Bilinguility (which is now a word) would be an extremely useful skill for an assassin to have, and although the animus automatically translates everything into English, I still think it would make sense for Altair to speak a second language if not more.

Mars is now about halfway between Regulus and Saturn in the west side of Virgo. It will catch up to Saturn by the first of August. In the east you can now see the "Summer Triangle" formed by the brightest stars in Cygnus, Lyra, and Aquila. See the second chart below. Deneb, at the tail of Cygnus ("Deneb" comes from the Arabic word meaning "tail") is a white supergiant over 1400 light years away and it is the lower left end of the triangle (the Deneb link takes you to Jim Kaler's Deneb page on his "Stars" website). The top middle part of the triangle is Vega, a young white-hot star about 25 light years away. The lower right corner of the triangle is Altair in Aquila. Altair is also a white-hot star but only 17 light years away. Compare the brightness of the three stars. Although Deneb may be the dimmest of the three, remember it is almost 60 times as far away from us as Vega. If Deneb was as close as Vega, Deneb would be brighter than Venus and we would be able to see it in broad daylight! Deneb puts out over 54,000 times as much energy as the Sun and it is in its dying stages. It has enough mass so it will go supernova sometime in the future (sorry, we don't know when).

Jupiter and the Third Quarter Moon will rise a little after midnight. The Moon will be in the middle of Pisces and Jupiter will be to the lower right of the Moon (see the third chart below). On July 8th in the early morning, look for a thin crescent Moon just to the left of the beautiful Pleaides star cluster. The two will be close enough together to fit within the field of view of your binoculars. Three days later the New Moon will pass right in front of the Sun to make a total solar eclipse. I got clouded out at last summer's total solar eclipse in China. This year's solar eclipse will be visible in a more expensive part of the world (Tahiti, Moorea, Easter Island) so I'm going to miss that one. I hope you have a safe and festive 4th of July!

Want to see more of the stars at night and save energy? Shield your lights so that the light only goes down toward the ground. Visit the Dark Sky International website for more info.

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Nick Strobel

Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College

Author of the award-winning website www.astronomynotes.com

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