A long time ago (I won't say how long because it disturbs me), when I first started writing about Templars, no one in the mainstream was interested in them. There were a few books out there about them, mostly non-fiction, historical accounts, very little historical fiction about them and there was very little to no speculative fiction about the subject. I started out writing just one, stand-alone novel about an errant Knight Templar who was semi-immortal and ridden with personal problems as an exercise in purgative writing. In other words, I wanted to write out some serious personal problems I had in story form, fictionalizing and dramatizing and romanticizing my own troubles in a larger than life plot.
I succeeded in doing this and felt much better when I wrote the final word: Finished at the end of the Knight of Death.
After much re-writing, editing, cutting, grumbling and rumbling, I final settled on a final edition of the thing and then decided that it was not finished after all. Since then, I have written 26 more novels for the Knight of Death to star in and have another four to go before I can even hope to say Fine. Fine. Fine.
Since those days after I first wrote the Knight of Death, a great deal of interest has been generated in the Templars and what happened to them, what happened to their vast treasure trove, their fleet of ships and their ranks. There are many, many speculations now about what happened to them. Fortunately, I have my own ideas about what happened to them. I say fortunately because it is fortunate that I have my own ideas or else the readers of the Assassin Chronicles might become very bored in short order.