EzioCristina

EzioCristina is the het ship between Ezio Auditore and Cristina Vespucci from the Assassin's Creed fandom.

Canon
Ezio Auditore and Cristina Vespucci were lovers during the Renaissance in Italy. Their love for each other persisted even after they were separated and met other people. The two first met when Ezio tried, awkwardly, to impress her at the behest of his older brother. Although he fumbled his attempt, he still caused her to smile. He thus decided to follow her to her home and saw her being accosted by Vieri de’ Pazzi. He comfortably defeated Vieri in a fight and won Cristina’s heart.

From then on the two would engage in a somewhat secret fling together, with Ezio making a habit of visiting her. Whilst Ezio’s brother, mother and father, were seemingly aware of his relationship with the Vespucci girl, her father was not. This resulted in Ezio being chased down by Vespucci guards after he found Ezio in bed with Cristina. Her love for Ezio was immense and when his brother and father were executed, and he was made an enemy of Florence, she chose to help him in recovering their bodies so he could give them a proper burial. She was upset at the situation he was in and even wanted to flee with him but could not do so because of her own family. Ezio accepted this and gifted her his pendant so she could remember him.

Despite her love for him, after two years, she was betrothed to Manfredo Soderini and was thus saddened when Ezio visited her on his return to Florence because of this. The decision to marry was not actually because of her own feelings but a result of her father’s insistence and her belief that she would never get to see Ezio again. It was evident she still loved Ezio as she was greatly upset and annoyed when he chose to leave her again, despite kissing her. When she reunited with him in Venice she angrily told him that she loved only him but he left her to be married to Manfredo. In anger at Ezio tricking her and leaving her to be married to someone she does not love, she told him never to contact her again. However, her cruel words did little to deter her love for Ezio, and when she was mortally wounded after being attacked by Girolamo Savonarola’s followers, she was happy to be in Ezio’s arms once more and showed him that she had kept hold of the pendant he gave her for 22 years. She wished that they could have had another chance to be together before perishing in his arms.

Ezio always remained fond of Cristina, despite the years apart, and immediately visited her on his return to Florence. He was saddened to hear she was betrothed to another person but, because of his love for her, saved her fiancé from debt collectors before he threatened him to be a good husband to Cristina. He then passionately kissed her before leaving her a second time. Despite trying to accept that she was no longer his, he still chose to trick her when Leonard da Vinci had informed him that she was in Venice. He lured her to a secluded spot, pretending to be her husband, and passionately kissed her again. This infuriated Cristina however and Ezio was left upset when she cursed him for his actions, his failure to take her to be his wife and told him not to contact her again. However, when he returned to Florence in 1498, he immediately came to her aid when he discovered she was being pursued by followers of Savonarola and managed to defeat all the pursuers. But discovering she was wounded, he desperately tried to find a doctor before the two shared a moment together and she dies in his arms. His finals words to her were “Rest in peace, my love.” The trauma of losing Cristina caused Ezio to repress his memories of her and in a letter to his sister, Claudia, he stated that after the death of Cristina “something withered in me”.

Fanon
The ship had very little attraction when it was introduced in Assassin's Creed II, as Cristina only appeared very briefly for one scene. The impression most people had was that Cristina existed simply to add flavor to Ezio's character, to make him a 'womanizer'.

However, both Cristina and Ezio's story was greatly expanded in the successor game, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Here it became apparent that the relationship between Ezio and Cristina was genuine and not a fling. From then on, the ship gained sizable popularity, especially due to Ezio's own popularity within the franchise, and the tragic outcome for them both endeared fans further.

There are at least two rival ships for EzioCristina, the ship between Ezio and Caterina Sforza, and the ship between Ezio and Sofia Sartor.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Ezio/Cristina on FanFiction.Net

Trivia

 * In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, in order to relive Ezio's repressed memories of Cristina you must interact with a woman who is nearly identical to Cristina herself. She can be found interacting with various items/buildings throughout Rome that reference the memory in question.
 * For the first memory, the woman stands next to a food market stall. The memory is then Ezio meeting Cristina for the first time in a market place.
 * The second memory you meet the woman outside a church. In this memory you recover the bodies of your father and brothers to give them their last rites.
 * The fourth memory has you interact with the woman browsing a mask shop, the subsequent memory shows Ezio tricking Cristina to join him in a secluded spot whilst they both wear masks for the carnival in Venice.
 * The woman you interact with will stand next to a doctor, holding her waist in pain. In the subsequent, and final, memory, you see Ezio wanting to save a wounded Cristina but cannot get her to a doctor.
 * On the map for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the icon for the Cristina memories is a broken heart.