Darwin's Life, His Descendant and The Theory of Evolution
CHARLES DARWIN was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his work on Evolution. At some point, he met the Assassin Jacob Frye.
Here’s a timeline of the most notable moments in Darwin’s life, starting from the year 1868, which marks the start of the events of Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, where Darwin and Frye could’ve likely crossed paths: 1868 July Visits Isle of Wight and meets Alfred Lord Tennyson and Julia Margaret Cameron. Is photographed by Cameron. Publishes The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.
1869 Publishes 5th edition of Origin. Continues work on descent of man.
1870 Whole year working on descent of man. Various visits to relatives.
1871 Publishes The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex. Engages in dispute with St George Mivart, adds a new chapter to sixth edition of Origin of Species to rebut Mivart’s claims. Daughter Henrietta marries Richard Litchfield and moves to Bryanston Street in London where Darwin becomes a regular visitor.
1872 Publishes 6th edition of Origin. 13 February to 21 March rents London holiday house at 9 Devonshire St. In October takes a family holiday in a rented house in Sevenoaks, Kent. Is impressed with the veranda and on returning to Down House builds one there. Publishes The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
1873 Attends a soiree at George Eliot’s house. Worked on climbing plants and 2nd edition of Descent of man.
1874 A séance is held at his brother’s house in January but Darwin does not attend. ‘The Lord have mercy on us all, if we have to believe in such rubbish.’ 2nd editions of Descent and Coral Reefs published.
1875 Publishes Insectivorous Plants. Gives evidence to the Royal Commission on Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments. Sits to the portrait painter Walter William Ouless, for the family. A copy later made by Ouless for Christ’s College, Cambridge, etched by Paul Rajon. ‘I look a very venerable, acute melancholy old dog’.
1876 During the summer begins to write an autobiographical memoir for his children and future grandchildren. ‘I know that it would have interested me greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how he worked.’ This memoir published in edited form in Francis Darwin’s Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887) Publishes The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom. In September Darwin’s first grandchild is born to Francis and Amy Darwin. Amy dies in childbirth and Francis goes to live with his parents at Down House with the baby, Bernard Darwin. Francis becomes Darwin’s secretary and botanical assistant.
1877 Awarded Honorary LLD from Cambridge University. Publishes The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the same Species and ‘A biographical sketch of an Infant’ in the journal Mind which was written up from notes made in 1839-41 on his firstborn, William Darwin. 1878 'The whole of this last year [working on] on the circumnutating Movements of plants & bloom.'
1879 In August takes a family holiday in Coniston in the Lake District. Meets John Ruskin. Publishes a biographical study of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Translated from the German by W.S. Dallas, with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin, followed by bitter controversy with Samuel Butler after he accuses Darwin of plagiarism. Is painted in oils for the Cambridge Philosophical Society by William Blake Richmond, dismissed by Emma Darwin as ‘quite horrid, so fierce & so dirty’.
1880 Publishes The Power of Movement in Plants…Assisted by Francis Darwin.
1881 July, takes another holiday in the Lake District, based in Ullswater. In August his brother Erasmus dies, and is buried in Down churchyard. Publishes The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with observations on their Habits. Bestows money to Kew Gardens for publication of Index Kewensis. Arranges a civil list pension for Wallace. Defends right of scientists to experiment on live animals.
1882 Dies 19 April, aged seventy-three. Buried in Westminster Abbey, 26 April. See his last will and testament here.
The Beagle 2 was a landing spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency to search for evidence of life on Mars in the year 2000. It was named for the HMS Beagle that Charles Darwin sailed on.
Two years prior, Vanessa, a worker at the British Landing Operations Control Centre was bribed by Robert Getas so she could quit her job and spend more time with her children. When the Beagle 2 landed on 25 December 2003, Vanessa routed all signals to her laptop, causing her fellow employees to assume the landing was a failure.
Using the holidays as an excuse to leave early, she then handed over the laptop to Getas. Getas subsequently thanked her by having a man from Abstergo's Lineage Discovery and Acquisition division kidnap her, after she had mentioned she was actually descended from Darwin.
The Beagle 2 was believed to have crashed until 16 January 2015, when HiRISE imagery revealed the probe had landed on Mars, and that it had only partially deployed its equipment.
Vanessa was a scientist working in the Landing Operations Control Center of the National Space Centre. In the year 2003, she was involved with the launch of the Beagle 2. She was also a descendant of Charles Darwin.
Her genetic memories were relived and studied by an agent of Abstergo Industries in their Project Legacy in 2012. Around 1998, Vanessa was contacted by Robert Getas, who showed great interest in the LOCC's missions. After being offered a large amount of money, Vanessa agreed to work with him; though over the five years they kept in contact with each other, they never met face to face.
During the holiday season of 2003, Vanessa stayed at the control center with several of her colleagues, as they nervously awaited news of their landing spacecraft, the Beagle 2, which had been launched six days previously. Vanessa intercepted the Beagle 2's signal, and secretly routed the results and control codes to her own laptop. To everyone else, the Mars Express mission was slated to have been a failure.
Immediately after, Vanessa left the building to deliver the laptop to Robert Getas, though she was halted by a security guard. Initially nervous, as she had stolen valuable information, Vanessa calmed down once the guard asked for her signature so that he could clock her out. Following this, Vanessa traveled to meet her contact at a preordained location, a café. Though she had researched his appearance, she had some trouble spotting Robert in the crowd, which amused him.
Afterwards, the two of them sat together and amiably began discussing Vanessa's payment, as well as the Beagle 2's actual progress. As she and Robert left the café, Vanessa laughed at the irony of her trading off the Beagle 2, as she was a descendant of Charles Darwin, who had formulated the theory of evolution after his expeditions on the HMS Beagle, from which the spacecraft had taken its name.
In response, Robert stared at her for a moment, before proposing a new deal for Vanessa. After Robert offered her the chance to work for him at his office, Vanessa was hesitant, as the money he had just paid her was more than enough for her retirement, though the man was eerily insistent.
Robert advanced on her, saying that "money [was] too easily spent," and that the two of them could "make history" together.
Even as Robert insisted that he would fly her with him back to his facility, Vanessa was unnerved by his sudden interest. However, she was equally hesitant to refuse, as Robert still had connections with the money she had been paid. Upon stepping backwards, Vanessa bumped into a large man, who then covered her face with a cloth, presumably soaked with a drug or sedative, that caused her to lose consciousness. From there on, Vanessa's fate remained a mystery.
January 3, 1997: “I’m writing to in response to your concerns about the rising alarm in the press and the scientific community. The lack of a transitional ancestors from archaic hominids to modern mankind (Homo Sapiens) is no longer safe.
As you wrote, we have to act. We can’t let the truth get out. They’ll find out about the artifacts. It will cause too much disruption, too much chaos. Bury our constructed skeletons near Tim White’s expedition in Ethiopia. We’ll give them their missing link.
The birth of humanity. The truth makes me sick”
"The Tetragrammaton. The 72 names of God. You see? They're all contained within three verses: Exodus 19 through 21. And, get this, you'll like this. If you arrange the four Hebrew letters in God's name within an equilateral triangle, their numerical values add up to the same number: 72.”
―Shaun explaining the password to the other Assassins.
