Aveline de Grandpré
| Character | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Aveline de Grandpré |
| Occupation: | Assassin |
| Relationships: | |
| Fandom: | Assassin's Creed |
| Other: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Aveline de Grandpré is an Assassin's Creed character introduced in Assassin's Creed: Liberation, released on the Playstation Vita in 2012 at the same time as Assassin's Creed III. Aveline reached a wider audience when the remastered version, Assassin's Creed Liberation HD, was released for Steam, Xbox 360, and PS3 in January of 2014. In late 2013, Aveline also was the protagonist of the Aveline DLC for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (this DLC exclusive to PC and PlayStation only).
Aveline was the first female protagonist of an Assassin's Creed game, and additionally is biracial, being the daughter of a white father and a black mother. She is seen by many fans as a huge step forward in diversity for the AC series. Evan, a blogger for the site "Culture War Reporters", said:
Aveline de Grandpré is an African/French assassin, the only black female video game character I can think of besides Rochelle of Left 4 Dead 2, and from what I can tell a complete and total badass. This is a huge step on Ubisoft’s part, and I’m both impressed and proud that they’ve made this choice.[1]
However, Ubisoft received criticism for casting a white woman as Aveline's voice actor. Marissa, moderator of Racebending.tumblr.com, wrote:
Today Kotaku reported that Aveline will be voiced by voice actress Sarah Natochenny. While it isn’t unprecedented for white women to voice characters of color in voice work (eg. Janet Varney as Korra) this is a departure from the Assassin’s Creed franchise’s usual casting practice. For example, actors Philip Shahbaz and Cas Anvar both voiced Altaïr ibn La'Ahad in earlier Assassin’s Creed games. These games are some of the only games to have an actor of Middle Eastern descent in the lead role. As noted in a previous post, the production of Assassin’s Creed III also made an effort to seek out an actor of Native American descent to depict Conor Kenway/Ratohnhaké:ton.[2]
Kotaku later published a correction; Amber Goldfarb was hired as Aveline's VA, not Sarah Natochenny. However Amber is also a white woman. Kotaku's writer stated:
It's not about the quality of Goldfarb's work. Her narration sounds great in the clip above, affecting a French lilt well and coming across with genuine passion and drama. But it probably wouldn't have cost Ubisoft anything extra to find an African-American woman or a black actress from a Francophonic background to perform Aveline's dialogue either.[3]
Sexuality
Multiple fans interpret Aveline as a lesbian.[4][5] This view is bolstered by her interactions with Patience Gibbs in the Aveline DLC, including Patience saying "Is it a game of flats you fancy then?" and "you can take me as your game pullet". A Forbes journalist pointed out that "a game of flats" is 18th-century slang for sex between two women, and "game pullet" is slang for a young prostitute.[6]
Shipping
The most prominent ship involving Aveline is Connorline. In pre-production on The Tyranny of King Washington, Ubisoft considered making this ship canon, but developer Hugo Giard said that "ultimately, when we really starting exploring both characters' motivations and personalities, we realized it was something that couldn't work out and we dropped the idea."[7]
References
- ^ People Are Upset About Aveline de Grandpré (What Else Is New?), Evan, September 1 2012
- ^ http://racebending.tumblr.com/post/30500467525/the-other-side-of-the-assassins-creed-casting, August 29 2012
- ^ White Actress Will Voice Assassin's Creed's Black Heroine, Evan Narcisse, Kotaku, August 29 2012
- ^ "Aveline de Grandpré (Assassin's Creed) is a lesbian". Archived from the original on 2016-08-12.
- ^ "Aveline: A guy just asked me out". Archived from the original on 2018-12-04.
- ^ How Video Games Are Slowly, Quietly Introducing LGBT Heroes, Jagger Gravning, The Atlantic, February 25 2014
- ^ Comment by Hugo Giard (AC_Dev_HugoG), Feb 22 2013 at 7:51pm, on "Raptr Q&A: Assassin's Creed III and The Tyranny of King Washington"