Maria Thorpe

An Englishwoman who fled a gentlewoman's marriage into the Third Crusade, Maria rose through the Templar ranks on competence the Order half-acknowledged — she was Robert de Sablé's steward and decoy, the one who wore his armor under Altaïr's blade at Arsuf and survived by being spared. Cyprus made her his reluctant companion; argument by argument across Limassol and Kyrenia she stopped going back. Her conversion was never to the Assassins exactly — it was to the questions, which made her Altaïr's true equal and, eventually, his wife and the mother of his sons.