Preface

The Order of the Knights Templar has appeared in popular fiction dating back to the 13th century. The Templars first appeared in Arthurian literature as guardians of the Holy Grail before emerging in the ­19th-century novels of Sir Walter Scott, this time as the evil extremist knights. Scott’s books did not include the Templars as guardians of the grail but reintroduced the Order to popular culture as antagonists to the chivalric hero. This story theme has been repurposed for other fictional works such as the Hollywood film Kingdom of Heaven (Scott, 2005) and the computer game Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft, 2007). The Templars’ role within popular fiction would become more contradictory as the Knights Templar became the subject of medieval conspiracies in novels such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) and as the chivalric multicultural hero in Jan Guillou’s book, The Road to Jerusalem (1998). The Order of the Knights Templar continues to be a popular theme for directors and producers to draw upon, with the multifaceted Templar knight being recycled to produce new Templar texts. These new texts have further embedded popular perceptions of the historical order and created different Templar representations within popular culture.

The ­21st-century legacy of the Knights Templar is not only confined to recycling and expanding Templar aspects for fiction but has a new association with extreme ­right-wing groups. The most horrific and infamous of these associations are the claims made by the mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, who carried out two terrorist attacks in 2011. After the attacks, a manifesto appeared in which Breivik claimed to be “ordinated as the 8th Justiciar Knight for the PCCTS, Knights Templar Europe” (BBC News, 2011). Breivik’s identification with the order of warrior monks is not the only instance of extremist propaganda. Groups such as The Knights Templar–UK ignore “the monastic lifestyle of the order and [use] it as a platform for the ­right-wing views” (Masters, 2017). Although significant, the Templars’ ­right-wing appropriation is not the object of this study; instead, the book examines the Knights Templar as a multifaceted, thematic narrative recycled within popular culture. The Templar phenomenon as depicted in film, television and computer games is based on contradictory historical perceptions through the emergence of four defining thematic aspects: the good Templar, the bad Templar, the quest of the knight and the quest to follow in the Templars’ footsteps. This study consists of two narrative parts: the narrative of the knight and the narrative of the quest. This book addresses the gap of understanding in Templar scholarship by linking the historical Knights Templar to their depiction in popular culture. How the historical Templar influences the myth has been well documented, but this study argues how that myth influences the popular culture depiction. This book establishes the key Templar archetypes in fiction and investigates how this narrative has evolved over the centuries within popular culture, thus addressing the gap of understanding of the Knights Templar phenomenon.

Introduction

The Knights Templar—Rise and Fall

To understand the significance of the contradictory popular perceptions of the Templars it is vital to establish the Order’s origin, the organization’s role and their untimely demise as this will inform how far the depictions of the Templars have evolved through the centuries. The Order of the Knights Templar was a revolutionary form of knighthood: noblemen who would live their lives as monks, dedicated to protecting civilians traveling the dangerous roads of the newly conquered Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the early 12th century a group of French knights led by Hugh de Payns arrived in Jerusalem wishing to live a monastic lifestyle but were persuaded by the King of Jerusalem, Baldwin II, “alive to the urgent dangers confronting travellers in his kingdom … to save their souls by protecting pilgrims on the roads, or as one chronicler put it, they were to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but were also ‘to defend pilgrims against brigands and rapists’” (Haag, 2009, pp. 95–96).

This new order was formed on Christmas Day 1119 and was named The Poor ­Fellow-Soldiers of Christ, and due to their vows of poverty, the Order’s original symbol emphasized two knights riding a single horse. From these humble beginnings, the Order would grow to become one of the premier Christian military forces of the Crusades. Because this new order was impoverished, Baldwin II gave the new knighthood quarters in his palace at Jerusalem, a section that was believed to be built upon the foundations of the Temple of Solomon. The site of the Order’s headquarters holds great significance as the Order became known as The Poor ­Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, from which the Order eventually became known by the infamous name the Order of the Knights Templar.

The Templars’ first grand master, Hugh de Payns, and Templar Knight Godfrey de St Omer traveled to Europe as part of a delegation sent by Baldwin II, where this new concept of knighthood could find validation among the European elite. This revolutionary notion of monk and knight was well received in Europe as “Hugh and Godfrey reminded people of the purpose of the crusades. The Templar knights were not looking for individual wealth or land or political power” (Newman, 2007, p. 21). The Templars returned to Outremer with papal approval, donated wealth and increased the workforce. Newman proposes that the success of the Templars’ reception was, “Europe saw men of good birth who had abandoned their lands and families in order to defend the places where Christ had lived and died for all people. The example of the Templars was a shaming reminder to those who had stayed behind” (2007, p. 21).

Bernard of Clairvaux’s early ­12th-century work In Praise of the New Knighthood demonstrates the ­well-received virtuous perceptions of the Order, writing, “The knight of Christ may strike with honor and perish with honor. For when he strikes he serves Christ, and when he perishes in Christ he serves himself. He does not carry a sword without just cause, for he is a minister of God, and he punishes malicious men for the praise of the truth” (Wasserman, 2001, p. 280). Concerning the Templars’ monastic culture, Bernard wrote, “They live like monks in delightful and sober community, without wife and without children. And indeed that evangelical perfection is not lacking, for they live apart from the world in one family. Anxious to guard the sole unity of spirit in the bonds of peace” (Wasserman, 2001, p. 282). Bernard’s writing is not only significant as a critical source to identify the virtuous perception of the new knighthood but also played a “central role in popularising the Templar movement across Latin Europe” (Asbridge, 2012, p. 169).

This new type of knighthood’s financial success prompted an older charitable organization to take on military aspects. In Jerusalem, the Hospital of St John provided hospital care for pilgrims and grew in stature following the city’s conquest in the First Crusade and would emerge as the second military order in the middle 12th century. These military orders provided the wealthy Christian nobility with a financial option for serving Christ in the Holy Land by donating land and funds to the Christian cause. Crusades historian Thomas Asbridge explains, “the Templars and Hospitallers brought a desperately needed influx of manpower and martial expertise to crusader states starved of military resources. Crucially, they also possessed the wealth to maintain, and in time extend, Outremer’s network of forts and castles” (2012, p. 170). The significance of the military orders was “they were the only authority in the Christian East to hold a standing army always in readiness” (Mayer, 1972, p. 82).

The Knights Templar were one of the premier fighting forces of the Christian factions during the Crusades period. They played a significant role in the majority of the Crusade campaigns, such as in the Second Crusade (1147–1150), where they demonstrated their invaluable military prowess when 300 Templars escorted the remainder of the Christian army across Asia Minor. The Crusade would have ended before reaching the Holy Land were it not for the Templars’ leadership, which Jonathan Phillips asserts shows “just how soon after their foundation the Templars had become a highly respected fighting unit” (2010, p. 202). The Templars played a similar role during the successful long march from Acre to Jaffa during the Third Crusade (1189–1192). The Crusaders, led by King Richard I of England, were vulnerable to harassing strikes from Saladin’s forces, drawing a similarity to the journey across Asia Minor in the Second Crusade. Once again, the Templars, along with the Hospitallers, played a critical role in the Christians’ Holy Land military campaigns’ successes by repelling their attackers and keeping the Crusaders’ columns’ shape intact (Haag, 2014, p. 297).

The Templars as a force were vital to Crusader victories; however, they were involved in their many defeats as the majority of the Crusaders’ military campaigns in the Holy Land would ultimately fail. The Knights Templar were involved in the Fifth Crusade’s (1217–1221) strategic disaster, influencing the decision to reject a treaty from the Sultan of Egypt, ­al-Kamil, for the Crusaders to return the newly conquered, fortified port city of Damietta in exchange for control of Jerusalem. The Crusaders’ goal was to conquer Egypt, so they marched south in search of greater victory, where their campaign collapsed. The Sultan ordered the Nile sluice gates to be opened, which left the terrain so waterlogged it was almost impossible to traverse. The humiliated Crusaders had no choice but to surrender and relinquish Damietta in exchange for their lives and leave ­empty-handed. The Seventh Crusade (1248–1254), led by French King Louis IX, would also capture Damietta but fail to conquer Egypt, not learning from the Fifth Crusade’s failings. The Templars were involved in the disastrous Battle of Mansurah (1250), where hundreds of Templar knights followed the king’s brother, Count Robert of Artois, on his ­ill-judged charge into the town chasing the routed Egyptian forces, only for themselves to be trapped and slaughtered by regrouped forces under the command of infamous Mamluk general and future Sultan, Baibars. The battle resulted in a stalemate and left Louis in a weakened position due to heavy losses, so failing to agree to a treaty for his troops’ lives, the Crusaders attempted to retreat to Damietta. However, the remnants of his army were slaughtered and Louis himself captured.

The Templars’ military reputation among their enemies was notorious, which is demonstrated by the mass execution of the captured Templars after the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Ibn ­Al-thīr was an eyewitness to the aftermath of Saladin’s total victory at Hattin, and he recounted that Saladin “had these particular men killed because they were the fiercest of all the Frankish warriors, and in this he rid the Muslim people of them” (1969, p. 124). The desire to execute the Templar prisoners was not due to their mistreatment of Muslims but their effectiveness in battle. Syrian contemporary writer Usama provides an example of how the Templars were respectful of the Islamic faith and protected the Muslim citizens of Jerusalem’s right to practice their religion. He recounts an incident where he was harassed at the Masjid ­al-Aqsa by a Christian, saying that the man “threw himself on me from behind, lifted me up and turned me so that I was facing east. ‘That is the way to pray!’ He said” (Usama, 1969, p. 80). Usama then describes how the Templars, who he says, “were friends of mine … intervened, seized the man and took him out of my way, while I resumed my prayer” (Usama, 1969, p. 80). Although the account by Ibn ­Al-thīr highlighted the desire for the execution of Templars, Usama’s anecdote coincides with Ibn ­Al-thīr’s explanation that they were killed due to their abilities and not because of oppression or violent crime.

The Christian ventures in the Holy Land ended in 1291 after Acre (the Christian capital) fell to the Mamluk forces. Following this, the Templars abandoned their final strongholds of Sidon and Tortosa with the surviving Templars taking refuge on the island of Cyprus. The island was a Frankish Kingdom Richard I seized from Byzantines in 1191 and sold to the Templars. Michael Haag argues, “The entire future of the Templars might have been different had they devoted more resources to the island, but they placed only twenty knights on Cyprus and another hundred men at arms, insufficient to secure it, and so they gave it back to Richard” (2009, p. 183). The second military order, The Hospitallers, secured their independent state on the island of Rhodes in 1309, and, without the war for Outremer, the Order fell back on its original operation of providing humane treatment. The Templars found themselves in a redundant position, as despite their wealth and European holdings their reason for existence was to wage war in defense of the Holy Land, which they could not, due to the recent loss of all Christian lands in what was once Outremer.

The French King Philip IV capitalized on the Templars’ vulnerability, to whom he was in financial debt, as he knew they possessed a significantly large amount of liquid wealth due to their banking services. Philip IV had inherited huge debts and accumulated higher still from his wars with Flanders and England. Phillip had already stolen from and exiled the Italian bankers and resident Jews and viewed the Templars as the next means to an end. The Templars were arrested in France on Friday, October 13, 1307, in a dawn raid on the Paris Temple and residences. Haag proposes: “the efficiency of the operation probably benefited from previous raids against the Italian bankers” in 1291 and “Jews in 1306” (2009, p. 217). This attack on the ­once-powerful Templars was possible due to a 1230 law created by Pope Honorius III to suppress the Cathari heresy. In keeping with that ­77-year-old law, the Templars could be arrested by the French king if they were accused of heresy, “so heresy it had to be” (Haag, 2009, p. 219). Peter Partner notes, “around the year 1307, magical charges became one of the standard methods of aggression among the jealous and competitive servants of King Phillip the Fair” (1982, p. 54).

The Catholic Church exonerated the Templars as documented by the Chinon Parchment, discovered in the Vatican archives in 2001. Despite this, due to the defamation, the Templar Order was abolished in 1312 by papal decree, and the Templars’ property was then redistributed to the Knights Hospitaller. Now, without papal protection, the former Templar prisoners were at the mercy of royal sentencing, and in 1314 the French king had the last grand master, Jacques de Molay, and three other Templars burned at the stake in Paris. With the Order abolished, the surviving former members joined other orders or monasteries. Although, due to the prominent role of Templars in creating the kingdom of Portugal in 1319 with papal permission, King Diniz reconstituted the Order as Ordem dos Cavaleiros de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo/The Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ. The new knighthood moved into the Templars’ former headquarters at Tomar. For Haag, this new order “was the Templars under another name, the main difference being that, in addition to their vows of poverty and chastity, the knights pledged obedience to the king” (2009, p. 246). The essence of the Order of the Knights of Jesus Christ exists today in ­21st-century Portugal as an order of merit for outstanding service.

Legacy in Popular Culture

Although the Templars survived in the form of the Portuguese military order, the Templars’ legacy seen in popular culture is far removed from its historical roots. The Order’s seemingly unexplained sudden fall created a vacuum in public perception of the Order, and it became filled with associations of the occult and secret treasures. Many of the Templar myths trace back to the French king’s accusations of heresy, as the king extracted confessions under torture where some Templars confessed to worshiping an idol dubbed Baphomet (Newman, 2007, p. 338). Modern literature draws upon the myth that the Templars discovered secret knowledge within their headquarters upon the Temple of Solomon and therefore had to be repressed by the church. The myth also ties into the Templars’ medieval literature role as guardians of the Holy Grail.

The Templars’ total suppression meant that there remained no authority or safeguarding over the Templars’ legacy. The destruction resulted in the appearance of false associations that went unchallenged and became myths that continue to be fashionable without authorization over the narrative. Without an influence over the Templars’ legacy, the infamous Order has been appropriated by other organizations, most notably as ancestors to the Masonic order in the 18th century and more recently by ­right-wing extremist groups such as the Knights Templar–UK. However, medieval romantic notions and the Templars’ infamy provided a rich tapestry for artists and producers to draw upon with the Templars’ presence in fiction stretching from the 13th century into the 21st century. I have identified that the Templar phenomenon in popular culture is encapsulated into four story themes listed here in order of appearance in fiction: the Holy Grail, the villainous knight, the Templar conspiracy, and the heroic knight. This book examines these four types to define the thematic Templar narrative and then articulate how the Templar narrative has evolved through centuries of popular representations, across emerging media platforms that expand the multifaceted perceptions of the Knights Templar in popular culture.

The Templars have been referred to by many names throughout history since their ­12th-century debut, with the most recent being commonly known as the Knights Templar in popular culture. This book follows the scholarship trend and refers to them as a collective as Knights Templar or the Templars. When mentioning a single knight of the Order, this book addresses them as a Templar knight, as they are a knight of the Temple, or simply as a Templar.

Templar Archetypes and the Urtext

The popular perceptions of the Knights Templar are built upon two archetypal pillars that date back to the 12th and 13th centuries: the archetype of the Templar warrior monk and the Templar grail guardian. The warrior monk archetype depicts the Templar as a crusading knight in medieval warfare. The grail guardian archetype features the Templar as the guardian of a powerful treasure. Both of these archetypes feature the infamous Templar iconography of a red cross on a white background. It is these two medieval archetypes that provide the foundation for what this book defines as the Templar narrative. It is not just the historical Templars but also the Templar story that is recycled. These reoccurring archetypes include the thematic aspects of the bad/good knight as well as the quest of the knight/quest to follow in the Templars’ footsteps, which appear across multiple genres and media platforms, further evolving the depiction of the Knights Templar. The four thematic Templar aspects I have identified will be used to analyze their continual evolvement into and throughout the 21st century.

The two Templar archetypes can be seen as major components of the Templar story, the urtext. The historical Templars receded into memory in the 14th century; after that came multiple stories of Templar villainy and violence which became part of their urtext. Conspiracy theories, narrative archetypes and stereotyped imagery further added to the original story of the Templars. Sarah Cardwell argues that an urtext “stands outside and before retelling of the story, and which contains the most fundamental parts of the tale” (2002, p. 26). Cardwell uses Shakespeare’s play Macbeth as an example of how various productions draw from the Macbeth urtext and further develop the story through retelling and adaption, which means that every version changes the original through expanding and altering reader perceptions. It is in this way that the Templars’ presence in popular culture can be understood and analyzed because the story of the Templars includes (or chooses not to include) key aspects of the Templar urtext such as archetypes and iconography. The continual recycling of these aspects further expands the representation of the Knights Templar in popular culture and therefore expands and alters the urtext. Cardwell explains that the urtext “does not exist as a separate, concrete entity outside these texts” (2002, p. 26), meaning that the Macbeth urtext is not separate from its various adaptations. The Templar narrative is also not separate from the Templar urtext, as it consists of the central thematic aspects identified in this study, the two Templar archetypes of the warrior monk and of the grail guardian that are the foundation of the popular depictions of the Knights Templar. The two archetypes will be used as a thematic structure to examine the Templar narrative by constructing the book into two parts: first what I call the narrative of the knight and the second part called the narrative of the quest.

Templar Scholarship

The historical significance of the Order of the Knights Templar is addressed in numerous accounts detailing the Order’s existence from the 12th–14th centuries and their impact on medieval Europe and the Middle East. However, the Templar legacy continued after the Order’s abolishment with myths attributed to their untimely demise. These myths have been addressed by historians such as Peter Partner in his book The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and Their Myth (1981), as well as authors of ­quasi-historical works such as Steven Sora’s The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar: Solving the Oak Island Mystery (1999). However numerous the amount of academic and popular historical works addressing the historical Templars and examining the Templars in fiction, there is minimal exploration by academics of the Templar phenomenon in popular culture.

Historian Michael Haag provides a useful study that examines the Templar history alongside the mythical legacy and offers a brief overview of consumable Templar fiction in his book The Templars: History and Myth (2009). The majority of this book addresses the historical Templar and the myths and falsehoods following their abolition, with Haag highlighting the primary Templar texts within popular culture. Haag attributes the Order’s resurgence in popular culture to Steven Spielberg’s third Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), stating that after its release, “an order that had officially died out seven hundred years ago suddenly came to feel like part of the zeitgeist” (2009, p. 331). However, for each of the Templar texts listed, Haag provides only a brief synopsis of the text and informs us of what role the Templars played in the story. Haag’s overview ends with addressing the Templars’ appearance in the computer games Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft, 2007) and Medieval: Total War (Creative Assembly, 2002) concluding, “There is clearly pop culture life in the order yet” (2009, p. 346).

Historian Sharan Newman briefly mentions the appearance of the Knights Templar in popular culture in her book The Real History Behind the Templars (2007), where she concludes the brief chapter with the observation, “The last part of the twentieth century saw an explosion of myths and theories about the Templars, most of which can be categorized with Bigfoot and UFOs. These unhistorical theories yielded a gold mine of plot ideas that are still being refined into fun and exciting stories” (2007, p. 356). The Templars’ significance within popular culture is not addressed in any detail in these works as their focus is how the Templar myth is related to history. This focus, Newman states, is to “make it easier for people who are reading the latest Templar book, either fiction or history, to separate fact from fiction and give them a base from which to evaluate the ideas presented” (2007, p. xv). This study addresses the latter part of these works, building on the evaluations of how Templar history influences Templar myth. However, this study adds new depth to that knowledge by addressing in particular why that myth has been adapted to forge the Templars’ prominence within popular culture. The book will examine the Templars’ place in popular culture via a close analysis of how they evolved over the centuries from popular perceptions to create a multifaceted Templar narrative in popular culture. This book complements Newman’s work by addressing specific fictional Templar tropes within popular culture and mapping out how these popular depictions have evolved through the centuries.

Although not focusing on the Templars or entirely on the Crusades, John Aberth examines depictions of the medieval period on film in his 2003 book, A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film. Aberth examines the representations of the Crusades in cinema but also provides a concise overview of the Crusades’ ­200-year history as the first part of his chapter. As well as providing a historical context, Aberth examines the major Crusade film productions, starting with Cecil B. DeMille’s The Crusades (1935) as the first case study. Aberth carries out a detailed textual analysis of the film and articulates how the film promotes a message of peace, noting, “the word ‘peace’ is mentioned on no less than eleven occasions” in one scene (2003, p. 91). Aberth’s final crusade film case study is El Cid (1961), for which he analyzes the film’s production alongside the political climate, arguing, “El Cid itself can be viewed as among Bronston’s propaganda ‘presents’ to Franco, a movie designed to put Spain’s best face forward on the international stage” (2003, p. 136). Although Aberth does not cover Kingdom of Heaven (as it came out in 2005), his work demonstrates the significance of analyzing medieval films concerning the political climate at the time of production, which is an approach that this book uses to ascertain the influences behind differing Templar depictions in the media.

Although the Templars’ presence in popular culture has not been addressed with significant detail in the works by Haag and Newman, Kingdom of Heaven, which features the Templars in a major way, has been critically examined alongside the post 9–11 political climate. Matthew Richard Schlimm examined “how Kingdom of Heaven participated in a discourse that convinced many of the necessity of invading Iraq, upholding fanciful visions of the invasion’s aftermath that blinded viewers to the potential difficulties that lie ahead” (2010, p. 132). In his argument of the film’s justification for the invasion, Schlimm asserts, “the movie presents two types of colonizers/Crusaders, each with clear parallels to American culture, so that the viewers clearly identify themselves with one type but not the other” (2010, p. 135). Schlimm explains that the unpalatable type is Scott’s depiction of the Order of the Knights Templar, who epitomizes the notion of the “malevolent Crusader” (2010, p. 135). In an article for Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East, Brian Johnsrud examines how the cultural relationship with the Crusades supersedes fiction and that it was senior political figures making such comparisons between the Iraq War and the Crusades. He asserts, “there have been a number of events that have aided in stirring the conspiratorial coals suggesting that the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were religious wars continuing the medieval Crusading legacy” (2014, p. 101). Johnsrud gives examples including figures such as President George W. Bush and Lt Gen William G. Boykin (2014, p. 101), directly comparing themselves to Crusaders.

Nickolas Haydock addresses the political connotations of Kingdom of Heaven in the book, Movie Medievalism: The Imaginary Middle Ages (2008), explaining the film’s controversy by citing Professor of Islamic Law Khaled Abou El Fadl, who stated: “I believe this movie teaches people to hate Muslims.” He also highlights the British Crusades historian Jonathan ­Riley-Smith, who asserted that the film was the result of Scott’s “misunderstanding of the Crusades” which was “an invention of ­nineteenth-century medievalism, exemplified in the works of Sir Walter Scott and Joseph François Michaud” (2008, p. 137). Although Haydock mentions the influence of Sir Walter Scott, like Schlimm the analysis is focused on the film’s relationship with the Iraq War and not the Order of the Knights Templar as a reoccurring story theme or medieval archetype.

The analysis of Templar texts depicting current political zeitgeists and policies has been addressed concerning Richard Thorpe’s 1952 adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. In an article for Film & History (1999) Walter Srebnick explores the film’s significance, stating, “the film is a product of the culture of early Cold War period in America, a culture that included McCarthyism, the Hollywood ten, and blacklists, as well as the problem of intolerance and of anti–Semitism in particular” (1999, p. 47). However, most significantly for this study, Srebnick’s notion of Thorpe’s intention for Rebecca’s trial to “reflect the 1950s witch hunts and the contemporary paranoia about the spread of Communism” (1999, p. 51) suggests why the role of the Templars was reduced for Thorpe’s adaptation. Jonathan Stubbs addresses the conflation of the corrupt court of Prince John with the House ­Un-American Activities Committee in an overview of the production history in Exemplaria. He argues, “the court’s spurious and politically motivated identification of Rebecca as a witch neatly echoes the popular disparagement of the HUAC’s activities as a ‘witch hunt,’ a term popularly applied to HAUC activities since the committee’s inception in 1938” (2009, p. 408).

Andrew Elliott’s recent publication revisited the Templars’ perception with the political climate in Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the ­Twenty-First Century (2017). This publication highlights the current associations of the Templars with ­far-right extremism such as Anders Breivik and the English Defence League. Elliott’s work examines the politicization of medievalism, and he highlights Breivik’s perception of the medieval citing from Ravndal to inform “while seemingly much of his ‘research’ into the Middle Ages came from medieval games such as World of Warcraft, Age of Conan or Lord of the Rings Online” (2017, pp. 149–150) and not actual medieval history. However, Elliott’s study of Templar medievalism focuses predominately on the politicization of the Order while not concentrating on specific Templar fictional case studies. Elliott draws upon examples of Templar memes that are used to promote extremist ideology. He asserts that these demonstrate “a movement rooted around English identity as Templar Knights fighting in the Holy Land, online ­copy-and-paste culture has embedded the Middle Ages at the very heart of the English Defence League” (2017, p. 167). Distinct from this focus, my study examines the use of the Templars to create the reoccurring thematic narrative. Although radical fringe movements have politicized aspects of the Templar narrative, the overtly political activism is not my emphasis. It is how the Templar narrative has evolved to become embedded within sociopolitical and popular culture.

To analyze the depiction of the fictional Templar, this project will first build on Elliott’s work examining representations of the medieval knight in film. Elliott’s book Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World (2011) offers a way for studying the Templars’ unique role as both warrior and monk. Elliott examines the archetype of the fictional knight in his chapter, “When Knights Were Bold: Those Who Fight” and the archetype of the fictional priest in the chapter, “Clergy and Saints: Those Who Pray.” Elliott’s examination of the depiction of knighthood provides a useful approach to address the different aspects of the heroic and villainous portrayal of the medieval Knights Templar. Elliott proposes that it is how the knight wields their knightly abilities noting, “harnessing the shocking power of raw, unrestrained violence, these qualities are transferred to the villains who as a result come to embody its negative elements” (2011, p. 60). Elliott’s assertions that the level of violence is a major defining part of the evil knight provide a fundamental approach to analyzing the villainous Knights Templar archetype. However, Elliott’s notion of the depiction of violence also enables us to examine the heroic Knights Templar archetype. Elliott argues, “codes of chivalry were added to later medieval imaginations of knights to play down their violence and emphasize their servitude, even when attempting to ‘faithfully’ render the medieval knight, a modern film must try to convey the same values in order to align the knight with a modern understanding of a hero” (2011, p. 60). This book uses this model of analyzing depictions of medieval knights but uses it to provide a more specific analysis of Templar depictions when defining my original concept of the Templar thematic narrative.

Lesley A. Coote addresses the thematic use of violence in medieval fiction in the chapter, “Remembering Dismembering: Reading the Violated Body Medievally” in the edited book Neomedievalism in the Media: Essays on Film, Television, and Electronic Games (Robinson & Clements, 2012). She addresses the prominence of the thematic use of violence in medieval literature. Coote explains the significance of analyzing violence as a theme, writing, “In epic, both medieval and modern, literary and cinematic, the hero is validated, redeemed, saved, or all of these, by violence against the person of others. Chivalric honour is gained by the dishonouring of others, and masculinity is displayed, maintained and enhanced by their emasculation” (2012, p. 23). The thematic analysis of violence in medieval fiction showcased by Elliott and Coote provides a framework to approach the contrasting hero and villainous Templar archetypes in fiction.

Analyzing violence as a theme provides an approach to examine the different Templar knight archetypes, but this is only half of the Templar’s role, as the Templar also lived as a monk. To address the depiction of the secondary temperament of this unique form of knighthood this study draws from Elliott’s analysis of the representation of medieval clergy. Elliott’s chapter identifies key traits for the archetypes of the good and bad religious characters, which will apply to define the heroic and villainous Templar archetypes. For the villainous religious figure, Elliott summarizes the archetype as “linked to all types of consumption, such as an insatiable appetite, monetary greed, and unchecked concupiscence boarding [sic] on lechery, as he remorselessly ‘consumes’ the poor man’s goods—his wife included” (2011, p. 117). However, there is not the same clarity when pinpointing the archetype of the good priest, as Elliott asserts that the priest depicts authority. This is encapsulated in what he defines as “the two dominant forms of priesthood” (2011, p. 118) and explains that these two forms of “high earthly status and ‘feudal’ leadership, risk becoming two critical extremes of the same function when intended to continue this ­anti-clericalism, giving away two symbols which the cinema has favoured: the rich priest and the powerful priest” (2011, p. 118). This further enables an original approach for identifying the archetypal depictions of the Templar knight, which has not been established in academic study and is essential to examine how Templar depictions have evolved through the centuries.

While Elliott’s two forms of priesthood coincide with aspects of villainy, an approach to the religious aspects of the archetype of the good Templar knight is provided by Christopher Roman’s chapter, “The Use of Nature: Repressing Religion in Medieval Film” in the edited book by Robinson & Clements (2012). Roman proposes that in the Western medieval film, “the Catholic Church is portrayed as a totalitarian institution and medieval religiosity as reactionary; the only way for the hero of the film to practise an authentic spirituality is to reject the trappings of the church for a greater freedom found in nature” (2012, p. 56). Roman’s research indicates an approach to address the religiosity of the hero Templar knight and how the hero relates to the authority of the church. Roman proposes that the religious hero must be an outcast from the church and that the heroes are “Othered by the institution of the church, although they are rebels with whom the directors want the audience to empathize” (2012, p. 77). The relationship of the archetypical Templar character with the church provides a framework to define further the conflicting traits of the good and villainous Templar in medieval fiction. To identify the Templar knight character, this study draws from Elliott’s and Coote’s thematic analysis of violence and Elliott’s and Roman’s overview of medieval religiosity in medieval films to illustrate the multifaceted narrative of the fictional Templar knight character. In examining the fictional Templar knight using this approach, it enables the study to pinpoint the key tropes of the archetypal Templar, thus allowing the analysis of medieval set films and literature to trace how the thematic narrative archetypes have evolved through popular culture. These studies have focused on case studies of individual films and games; however, this book cuts across centuries of Templar adaptations, and to define my Templar urtext concept, the approach needs to be more historically grounded and address the historiography of the Templar myth.

The next part of the book is structured to examine the second half of the Templar narrative, which focuses on the use of the Templar myth, including the Templar conspiracy story and Holy Grail associations. The Templar myth incorporates aspects of the Arthurian grail legends, and though Arthurian literature has had much scholarly attention to address how the modern grail legend includes the Templar narrative, this project will draw from academic works that examine how the grail myth is retold and featured in contemporary media. In the book, The Use of Arthurian Legend in Hollywood Film: From Connecticut Yankees to Fisher Kings (1996), Rebecca A. Umland and Samuel J. Umland provide an overview of the grail legend adaptations by Hollywood. They claim, “Hollywood has rarely attempted, or even wished to create an actual ‘Arthurian film,’” and “[t]hey have very different purposes and use the legend—or, more accurately, activate only certain features of it—to achieve their particular ends” (1996, p. 4). Although Umland and Umland’s work does not address the Templars’ role in the Arthurian legend, it does examine how the grail story has been repackaged over the 20th century, which bears a resemblance to how producers have drawn upon the Templar myth to create new media texts. This study builds on the analysis of the ­20th-century grail stories in articulating how the Templars’ role has further evolved popular perception of the Templar into a new type of grail story set in the modern day, with the Templar conspiracy replacing the physical grail concept with a symbolic one in the form of a forgotten Templar secret. This transition of the Templar myth into the 21st century completes the last significant aspect of the Templar narrative that this book not only identifies but also analyzes in culturally relevant texts dating from the 13th century to the 21st century to map its continual evolution.

The inclusion of the pseudohistorical Templar myth within fiction was examined by Susan Aronstein and Robert Torry in their chapter, “Chivalric Conspiracies: Templar Romance and the Redemption of History in National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code,” in Haydock’s and Risden’s edited book Hollywood in the Holy Land: Essays in Film Depictions of the Crusades and ­Christian-Muslim Clashes (2009). In it, they explain, “Templar history was almost immediately identified with American history, this legend of the Templars’ hidden truth merged with the myth of America’s privileged destiny” (2009, p. 226). Aronstein and Torry argued that the protagonists’ discovery of the Templar myth would “restore faith—whether in a miraculous divine or in America’s privileged destiny” (2009, p. 226). Aronstein and Torry compare the Templar myth with the concept of typology to explain the Templars’ pseudohistorical relationship with American history, explaining, “Templar romance that relocate both the Templars and treasure to the New World identify America as the end of history, the repository of truth and revelation” (2009, p. 229).

Aronstein and Torry propose that the Templar conspiracy has a beneficial revelation that restores faith in the Western foundations and is empowering, which is the polar opposite of the conspiracy concept of powerlessness addressed by Timothy Melley in his 2000 book Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America. However, according to Melley, the popularity of dark conspiracy is due to “an odd sort of comfort in an uncertain age” (2000, p. 8) for feelings of powerlessness. However, Aronstein and Torry propose that the Templar conspiracy is empowering as it provides historical legitimacy and a direct link for America to the Knights Templar. Although not a negative conspiracy, the Templar conspiracy Aronstein and Torry propose coincides with Melley’s concept that conspiracy themes provide a sense of ease. The relationship of the Templar myth with popular perceptions proposed by Aronstein and Torry will be incorporated as a model to address how the Templar narrative has evolved in the modern day and used as a reoccurring theme within popular fiction such as The Da Vinci Code. The Templar typology provides a link between Western values and the West’s historical heritage, which this book identifies as the quest narrative. The study of the Templars’ relationship with heritage tourism will determine how fan participation with the Templar text creates tensions between the mythical and the reality of the heritage site by using the tourist experience of Rosslyn Chapel and Independence landmarks of Philadelphia as case studies.

In terms of examining the depiction of the Templar in participatory media, the Order’s appearance in computer games is discussed in greater detail than their role within feature films. In the chapter, “Medievalism and The Epic in Assassin’s Creed: The Hero’s Quest,” in the edited book The Middle Ages in Popular Culture: Medievalism and Genre (Young, 2015) Elisabeth Herbst Buzay and Emmanuel Buzay examined the computer game Assassin’s Creed as a contemporary take on the hero’s quest story function. Buzay and Buzay draw a comparison between the hero’s quest of game protagonist Desmond Miles and Balian of Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven. Although the chapter does not specifically address the significance of the Templar knight’s role nor provide a definition of how digital games utilize the Templar, it does include interviews with the game’s producer. These interviews will enable this book to argue for the reason behind the game’s inclusion and changes to Templar depiction, which previous academic Assassin’s Creed studies have not examined.

The chapter, “The Consolation of Paranoia: Conspiracy, Epistemology, and the Templars in Assassin’s Creed, Deus Ex, and Dragon,” in the edited book Digital Gaming ­Re-imagines the Middle Ages (Kline, 2014) by Harry J. Brown examines the ­re-emergence of the Templar conspiracy theme with the computer games listed in the chapter title. Brown provides a brief overview of the historical Templars, drawing from the contentious recordings of William of Tyre, and then highlights the events of the Order’s demise before introducing how they became associated with conspiracy, mentioning the appropriation of the Masons and theories of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982). While Brown provides context for the emergence of the Templar conspiracy theme, Brown does not provide the historical context for the Templars’ emergence in popular culture nor focus upon the changes Assassin’s Creed made to the established fictional depiction of the Knights Templar as villains. This is an evolution of the Templar archetype that my book addresses.

Accounting for the continued popularity of digital media alongside traditional entertainment will provide a complete evaluation of the Templar phenomenon within popular culture. This book examines how fans of these texts engage with the thematic Templar narrative by acts of tourism, digital gaming, ­fan-generated content to ascertain how these interactions further embed and evolve the fictional narrative of the Templar. To provide an analysis of the immersive interaction and ­fan-generated texts produced during Templar participation, this project draws from Kurt Lancaster’s book Interacting with Babylon 5: Fan Performance in a Media Universe (2001), which addresses the immersive experience generated from fan performance. Lancaster asserts that for fans of Babylon 5, “the only way they can get out into space is through immersive simulations. The ­role-playing game allows players to enact, through surrogation, unfulfilled romantic dreams of space colonization” (2001, pp. 41–42). Although Lancaster does not use fan tourism or fan film as examples, his theories around the transformative nature of performance will help to address the performance aspects of immersion within the Templar fan film and Templar fan tourism. This creates a transmedia coverage of the Knights Templar and gives the phenomenon an original level of analysis. This study is also useful to help examine how the Templar narrative expands through fan participation with texts such as video games like Assassin’s Creed and the massive ­multiple-player online game Secret Worlds. Lancaster explains that taking on an immersive ­role-playing experience enables fans to “create and perform in their own stories—enacting plots and character behaviours similar to those found on the television series” (2001, p. 37). This notion of performance helps to understand the immersive experience for fans of these Templar texts and how the Templar narrative has further evolved within popular culture through character emulation and creation of new stories through digital and ­user-generated content.

For fan participation, this study focuses on fan tourism, as the Templar enthusiast can recreate the thematic quest journey, venturing on their quest to interact with the myth and history. ­Modern-day films set the quest narrative focus on a search for Templar truth, which is emulated by the fans who venture to associated heritage sites to discover the truth behind the Templar myth. This activity of Templar text tourism coincides with heritage tourism, as the sites featured in the films such as The Da Vinci Code are significant heritage sites. Although not a Templar tourism article, David Martin Jones examines the relationship between film tourism and heritage tourism in “Film tourism as heritage tourism: Scotland diaspora and The Da Vinci Code” (2006). In the article, Jones analyzes the Scottish Tourist Board’s use of the release of Howard’s The Da Vinci Code to promote the heritage site of Rosslyn Chapel. Although not examining the sites focused on in this study, Jennifer Laing and Warwick Frost examine tourism and historical reimagining in their chapter, “Imagining the Medieval in the Modern World: Film, Fantasy and heritage,” in the edited book The Routledge Handbook of Popular Culture and Tourism (Lundberg & Ziakas, 2018). Laing and Frost’s chapter examines the tourism around the iconic fables of King Arthur and Robin Hood, which provides an interesting parallel to this Knights Templar study, as Laing and Frost highlight how tourist sites cater the experience to popular perceptions of the Arthurian and Robin Hood stories. To examine how these sites are perceived as sites of history and popular culture, this study draws upon Foucault’s concept of heterotopia incorporated for a study of fan tourism in Lincoln Geraghty’s chapter, “‘I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore’: Examining Smallville’s Canadian Cult Geography” in the edited book The Smallville Chronicles: Critical Essays on the Television Series (Geraghty, 2011). It provides a method to analyze the significance of coexisting realities within a site, which for the Templar tourist is the conflicting reality of the myth and history come together.

Fan tourism provides a particularly immersive experience for fans, and this experience Will Brooker discusses in his chapter, “The Blade Runner Experience: Pilgrimage and Liminal Space” in the edited book The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic (Brooker, 2005). This chapter examines the immersive experience for fans, drawing from the concept of liminality to explain how fans attempt to gain a more profound sense of immersion. The methods to gain a deeper sense of immersion are addressed by Matt Hills in his book Fan Cultures (2002), which examines practices of The ­X-Files fan tourist and the use of scene recreation to feel closer to the text. Stijn Reijinders’s article “On the trail of 007: media pilgrimages into the world of James Bond” (2010), examines the use of fan performance to achieve that more profound sense of immersion within the world of James Bond. Although not addressing the Templar case studies or heritage tourism, these works provide useful ways to address the experience sought out by fans of Templar narratives featured in film texts.

The literature addressing the Templars as a widespread cultural phenomenon is therefore scarce, aside from the brief overviews of Haag and Newman. The academic literature available on the Templars in popular culture is featured around the major ­Templar-themed films like Haydock and Schlimm’s work on Kingdom of Heaven, which focuses on the depiction’s relationship with the political climate but is useful when analyzing the text’s use of the Templar knight archetype. However, these studies mentioned above provide little cover regarding the scope of the Templars’ appearance in popular culture. Even though Buzay and Buzay and Brown provide an analysis of Assassin’s Creed, it is not Templar focused but rather compares the game’s protagonist to Balian from Kingdom of Heaven. From examining the literature, it is clear that by providing a transmedia analysis of ­Templar-themed texts, this book provides an original contribution and addresses a missing part of knowledge around the Knights Templar. Academia has addressed the history of the Templar and how history has influenced the myth but not how the myth has influenced popular culture texts. The Templar thematic narrative addresses the gap in knowledge of the Templar phenomenon, as it analyzes how the popular perception of the Templar has expanded and evolved within popular culture through the centuries.

The Structure of This Book

To analyze the Templar narrative of the knight this book selects four major films as case studies to firstly identify the aspect of the good Templar knight and the aspect of the bad Templar knight. This will be done by using textual analysis to determine how the level of violence used by the fictional knight highlights the separation of the two aspects of the Templar urtext warrior monk archetype. To define how the depiction of the thematic narrative has evolved in popular culture, the book examines production sources as well as interviews with directors to ascertain the creative impetus behind the inclusion of the Templars as a story tool. In Chapter 1, the case studies to examine the villainous Templar archetype are Ridley Scott’s 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven and Richard Thorpe’s critically acclaimed 1952 film adaptation of Ivanhoe. Kingdom of Heaven was the last major Hollywood Crusades film and featured the Templars prominently as an antagonist, depicting the Templars as a violent extremist order. Thorpe’s adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s ­19th-century novel was the last major production of Ivanhoe and featured the bad Templar aspect, albeit removing the Templar iconography, playing down the Order’s role within Scott’s original novel. To address the aspect of the good Templar this book examines the Swedish film series Arn: The Knight Templar and the British film Ironclad. Arn: The Knight Templar is an adaptation of Jan Guillou’s novel series The Crusades Trilogy (1998–2000), as well as being the most expensive Scandinavian film production at release, and features a Templar knight as the protagonist, who is a multicultural national hero. The significance in using the Arn series as a case study is that the high profile of this Scandinavian production demonstrates how widely the thematic Templar narrative has spread through popular culture. It also demonstrates that the Templar narrative is not only confined to majority ­English-speaking countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom. The final film case study for the narrative of the Templar knight is the relatively ­low-budget British film Ironclad. Although the film failed financially at the box office, it has an inclusive national Templar hero, a character that is perceived as unofficially referenced with other later Templar texts.

To critically engage with these case studies, the chapter uses the methods outlined from medievalist works such as Haydock’s Movie Medievalism (2008) and Aberth’s Knight at the Movies (2003) that examine the medieval film concerning the political climate during production. The methodology of these works incorporates a textual analysis examined against the historical context depicted in the film case studies, which is then supported by primary sources such as interviews and reviews and provides an ideal approach to emulate in this book. This study will draw upon these additional sources to support the textual analysis as the book endeavors to examine the cultural context alongside the textual analysis in the form of interviews, reviews, and social media posts.

To examine the role of the Templar knight as both hero and villain, this study draws from the knight archetypes defined in Elliott’s Remaking the Middle Ages (2011) and the use of violence as a story tool in Coote’s chapter, “Remembering Dismembering: Reading the Violated Body Medievally” (2008). Examining the critical distinctions of the knight archetypes that are distinguished by the use of violence will enable the chapter to define the two polar aspects of the Templar narrative of the knight. This study will draw from interviews with the directors and writers, production sources and critical reviews to provide academic clarity to these close readings and ascertain the artistic intentions behind the inclusion of the thematic narrative of the Templar knight.

To map out the Templar narrative from its point of origin in popular culture, Chapter 3 addresses the Templar urtext grail guardian archetype and examines medieval Arthurian grail literature and the prevalence of the Templar narrative of the quest in the 20th century using two iconic grail films as case studies. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s ­13th-century Arthurian poem Parzival will provide an ideal source to define and analyze the thematic narrative’s evolution within popular culture by comparing the origin to the case studies Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam & Jones, 1975) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Spielberg, 1989). The choice for these case studies is not down to only their popularity and grail associations in popular culture but because these films are examples of how the Templar quest narrative incorporates within popular culture through these unorthodox grail adaptations. To address the further evolution of the narrative of the quest into the 21st century, the case studies analyzed are the hugely popular The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2003) and the film National Treasure (Turteltaub, 2004), which both feature the Templars as part of a conspiracy the protagonist must solve.

Given the interactive nature of media and the prominence of ­user-generated content, to fully evaluate the prevalence and evolution of the Templar narrative within popular culture this study examines in Chapters 2 and 4 case studies that enable participation with the Templar urtext through an immersive experience. This study addresses two types of immersive experiences looking at digital immersion such as computer games and ­fan-generated videos to physical immersion sought by fan tourists. This study uses this approach to ascertain how individual immersive participations further embed aspects of the Templar myth within popular culture. The case studies for digital immersion and physical immersion are analyzed to confirm how the Templar narratives of the knight and the quest have been incorporated to market and provide a ­Templar-themed experience.

Chapter 2 further examines the warrior monk archetype through digital participation with computer games and fan films to define how the narrative of the Templar knight influences the participatory experience for players and fan filmmakers. This analysis is carried out by examining the immersive experience and narratives of the computer games Assassin’s Creed, The First Templar (Kalypso Media, 2011) and The Secret World (Funcom, 2012) and the fan film Predator: Dark Ages (Bushe, 2015). The game Assassin’s Creed was the first title in what would be a globally recognized franchise and took the Templar narrative to the medium of gaming by making the Templars the franchise’s villains. Although not commercially successful, the game The First Templar was released years after Assassin’s Creed and included a Templar knight as the hero playable protagonist but also sets the game within the Crusades. The massively multiplayer online game (MMO) The Secret World is themed around infamous global and secret conspiracies, which, due to the Templars’ notoriety with shadowy conspiracies, places them as a crucial part of this game as players can join a modern Knights Templar guild. The significance of this case study is that it enables a higher level of character customization, which through textual analysis of the gaming experience demonstrates how the Templar iconography as a type of digital cosplay depicts the role of the Templar in the thematic narrative. The final case study Predator: Dark Ages was chosen due to the project’s popularity on social media with Templar enthusiasts. The film was a unique case study in that it was crowdfunded using Kickstarter to make a ­low-budget short that pitches the alien from the Predator franchise against a group of Templar knights. To ascertain the filmmaker’s creative intentions, I will analyze the film’s Kickstarter campaign and interviews with the director/writer James Bushe. The fan film was well received online with well over 1,000,000 views on YouTube and is an interesting example for how the Templar phenomenon is expanded by ­user-generated content focusing on the recycled, established Templar traits to produce a new Templar text, which further evolves the narrative.

To examine the player experience from these games, I played these games in 2017 and took notes of my play experience as well as carried out a textual analysis of the case studies. I also drew upon interviews with producers and game reviewers to support my analysis and articulate the producer’s influences and intentions. To support my analysis of the play experience, I used a web ethnography study of YouTube message boards to provide primary evidence of how Assassin’s Creed players’ experience has further expanded the Templar urtext. As this book is in many ways a transmedia Templar study, it incorporates methods used by other transmedia studies on paratexts such as Henry Jenkins’s study of The Matrix franchise in Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006). The chapter also draws from Jonathan Gray’s book Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010) to support the analysis of the computer game as a paratext. To understand how significant the concept of play is for analysis of the case studies the chapter uses Paul Booth’s book Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games (2015) as a conceptional method to help analyze how the Templar narrative is adapted for a playable experience. Booth examines the concept of play alongside the adaptation of franchises to a board games format, explaining that for play to be possible, the player must conform to the rules of the franchise and the board game. This approach provides a vehicle to address how the Templar narrative influences the play experience of the computer game’s users and how the adaptation expands the perception of the Templars in a virtual environment.

Chapter 4 further examines the grail guardian archetype through case studies which depict the ­Templar-themed narrative of the quest as related to geographical locations associated with the Templar history via fan tourism. This chapter will examine the fans’ immersive personal experience by citing uploaded reviews and examining photos posted on social media to determine how fan tourism continues the Templar narrative in contemporary popular culture. This analysis is carried out by utilizing the immersive experience of visiting heritage sites associated with Templars and Templar media texts like National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code. The sites visited were Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland and the Independence landmarks in Philadelphia, the United States, as these heritage sites prominently feature in the films mentioned. As it is about the visiting of the sites themselves and the immersive experience offered at them, the chapter will not focus on quantifying tourist numbers. However, the chapter will be based on my own examination of the physical sites themselves, mirroring an approach taken by Rebecca Williams in her chapter, “Replacing Maelstrom: Theme Park Fandom, Place, and the Disney Brand.” Her focus was to analyze “the places of the Disney theme parks themselves that are of particular interest and, in some cases, particular theme park attractions” as case studies (2018, p. 170), physically experiencing them herself and drawing conclusions from those experiences.

I traveled to both sites in 2018 and collected data on my own experiences. I traveled to Philadelphia in January of that year, staying several days to visit the Independence landmarks featured in National Treasure. While there I spent several hours at the city’s Independence landmarks including Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and the Old Pine Street churchyard. While at the sites, I used ­data-gathering techniques such as taking photographs, taking notes and speaking to officials such as park rangers and tour guides. I took photos of the film’s filming locations and attended a ­four-hour walking tour of the city’s historical and cultural landmarks. In April, I traveled to Scotland to visit the Rosslyn Chapel for the day and collect data of the tourist experience. To collect data, I attended the visitor talk provided by the Chapel trust and took photographs of items for sale in the gift shop and outside the chapel, as photography is not allowed inside the chapel. I also took notes to record the information signs provided for the most significant parts of the chapel’s architecture and the sign that indicates where The Da Vinci Code was filmed. These are data collection methods used by Hills (2002), Brooker (2005) and Geraghty (2011) in their fan tourism studies and therefore are an ideal approach to uncover how these sites create an immersive experience for fans seeking a greater understanding of the media text. This chapter also uses autoethnographic methods by drawing upon tourist reviews, social media posts and photos to analyze how participation strengthens the Templar urtext through the thematic narrative of the quest. I am using this approach to examine the immersive experience and how fans recreate the quest carried out by the films’ protagonists to gain a greater understanding of the urtext and the Templar story that the films promote. Incorporating fan theory and autographic methods will help me unpack the Templar urtext as shown in different media that have their own distinct fan communities.

In using this thematic structure, the book can examine not only fundamental case studies such as major motion pictures and early influential literature but also interactive and ­user-generated media. In dedicating two chapters to the engagement with the narrative digitally or physically, the study can determine how a religious order of knights abolished in the 14th century became widespread in popular culture. The scope of the Templar narrative has grown through the centuries, expanding the Templar urtext as the thematic narrative ventures into different mediums such as literature, film and digital games. This expansion has created a multifaceted theme that has several contradicting aspects which originate from the archetypes of the warrior monk and the grail guardian that have stood the test of time and will undoubtedly influence stories to come.