Pyara Kaur

"What a wonderful dream for a girl, hm? Playing at love. This was my time. My heart. Stolen by a thief."

―Pyara to Raza, 1839.^[src]

Pyara Kaur was the daughter of Maharaja Kharak Singh of the Sikh Empire, the granddaughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. She was married to the Assassin Arbaaz Mir, with whom she had a son, Jayadeep Mir. She is an ancestor of the Indian actress Monima Das.

Biography

Meeting Arbaaz

Living a life of luxury in the imperial palace of Amritsar since childhood, Pyara was renowned for her beauty and charm. She frequently took part in official ceremonies, right behind her grandfather, Ranjit Singh; during one of these ceremonies in June 1839, she encountered Arbaaz Mir, who introduced himself as an emissary from Kashmir.^[1]

Despite her reluctance, she allowed herself to be seduced by him, enticed by the forbidden nature of the situation. After their moment of intimacy in the gardens, Arbaaz left, as he was actually an Assassin that had come to steal the Koh-i-Noor. When her lover was later apprehended with a replica of the diamond in his possession, Pyara was deeply affected by his betrayal.^[1]

ACBM-Raza and Pyara — Pyara lamenting her naïvety to Raza

Feeling both great sadness and anger, Pyara was consoled by the young Raza Soora, who had happened upon her while fleeing the palace. Despite his loyalty to Arbaaz, Raza gave the princess the Koh-i-Noor to cheer her up. Pleased to have recuperated the precious jewel, Pyara decided to confront the Assassin and went to the dungeon where he was being held.^[1]

The Koh-i-Noor

In his cell, Arbaaz told Pyara that the British planned to poison her grandfather and take advantage of the absence of her uncles to seize power. Shocked, Pyara acquiesced to the Assassin's demands that she free him, though she made him promise to prevent her grandfather's assassination. Arbaaz agreed, but actually had no intention of aiding her, until the princess revealed she held the Koh-i-Noor in her possession, thus forcing the Assassin to keep his promise.^[1]

However, Arbaaz arrived too late to save the Maharaja, who had been poisoned by Francis Cotton, a Templar. Having heard the commotion that had erupted between the Assassin and the palace guards, who had been led to believe he was behind Ranjit Singh's murder, Pyara found her grandfather and tried to console him. When she revealed that she was in possession of the Koh-i-Noor, Ranjit Singh ordered her to flee India and hide the artifact somewhere far away, safe from the Templars.^[1]

Obeying her grandfather's dying wish, Pyara grabbed a robe to hide her appearance and attempted to flee the palace, but ran into Cotton, who mistook her for an Assassin and prepared to stab her. She was saved by Raza, who leapt upon the Templar and wounded him by scratching his face with his fingernails. However, the young boy was soon overpowered, leading Pyara to rescue him in turn by activating the Koh-i-Noor.^[1]

ACBH Pyara with Koh-i-Noor — Pyara activating the Koh-i-Noor

Pyara was soon overcome with the Piece of Eden's power, with an unknown member of the First Civilization manifesting itself and using the princess to convey a message for humanity. Horrified at the appearance of this mysterious being, Cotton fired multiple shots at the Precursor, though upon striking the Koh-i-Noor with a bullet, the diamond shattered and severed Pyara's connection to the First Civilization woman. This released an energy wave of tremendous power, vaporizing everyone in the room save for Arbaaz, Raza and the princess herself.^[1]

Two years later, Pyara told Arbaaz keeping the Koh-i-Noor was unwise, so he gave it to Hamid, but the Templars later kidnapped him and stole the Koh-i-Noor and the Precursor Box. Arbaaz retrieved the artifacts in Katasraj. When he gave Hamid the news, the latter told him the Templars had seized Amritsar Palace and had kidnapped Pyara. He went to save her, and William Sleeman proposed a trade: The artifacts for Pyara's life. Pyara stabbed him with her concealed blade and Arbaaz managed to grab the Koh-i-Noor, but Sleeman fled with the Box.^[2]

A banished son

By 1843, Pyara and Arbaaz were married and she gave birth to Arbaaz's child, naming him Jayadeep Mir. After Arbaaz began to train their son in 1847, Jayadeep displayed a tremendous potential as a future Assassin and the British Assassin Ethan Frye came to India to push further the training of the boy. However, after years of training and as he was about to leave for Britain in 1853, Ethan declared to his parents that despite Jayadeep's potential he would never be a true warrior because he lacked a killer instinct. In 1860, Frye's judgement was confirmed, when Pyara's son failed to kill his first target, unable to take a human life in cold blood. As a result, he was to be executed for incompetence, but thanks to Ethan he was instead secretly banished to England, to aid the Assassins there.^[3]

There, Jayadeep worked as a spy, posing as an Indian immigrant called Bharat Singh who worked on the construction dig of the world's first underground railway, in order to stop the Templars from acquiring an Apple of Eden buried there. Unfortunately, Mir failed again and in 1862, the Templars obtained the Apple while one of Jayadeep's closest friends, Maggie, was killed. Sinking into depression, Jayadeep refused to ever again take part in the affairs of the Assassins and withdrew from the world, living in seclusion in his alcove of the Thames Tunnel for a couple of years.^[3]

In 1865, warned by Frye and George Westhouse of their son's whereabouts, Pyara and Arbaaz traveled to London and convinced Jayadeep to follow them to the Mirs' temporary apartments in Bekerley Square. As there was still anger between the two Assassins, Pyara acted as a conduit between them, informing her son that they were not in England to bring him back home but to help him recover. After some days with his family, Pyara invited her son on a walk during which she tried to push him to help Ethan. Bringing him to a curiosity-shop that the Mirs had bought for Jayadeep, she convinced him to build and oversee a network of informants for the British Brotherhood. She then gave him an Assassin outfit and his old confiscated Hidden Blade, also giving him a new alias, Henry Green, after an English name he liked and the color of the hat he was wearing at the time.^[3]

Legacy

Through Jayadeep, Pyara Kaur eventually became the ancestor of a popular actress active at the beginning of the 21st century, Monima Das. The fiancé of Das, Jot Soora, became a target of the Templars and the Assassins when they mistakenly believed that the man's DNA was the key to the lost knowledge of the Koh-i-Noor, when he unknowingly used an Abstergo prototype to visualize the ancestral memories of Arbaaz and Pyara's descendant.^[1]

Trivia

Pyara, प्यारा, is a Hindi word meaning "sweet, lovely, dear, pretty". Kaur, ਕੌਰ, is a Punjabi word actually meaning "prince", but it has come to possess the colloquial meaning "princess".
Pyara often practised magic tricks, as she said to Arbaaz right before Hamid's kidnap.
Pyara has a concealed blade all the time, it was used when she stabbed Sleeman.