title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Shapiro moved to rebuild by dealing aging veterans for younger talent. He traded Roberto Alomar to the New York Mets for a package that included outfielder Matt Lawton and prospects Alex Escobar and Billy Traber. When the team fell out of contention in mid-, Shapiro fired manager Charlie Manuel and traded pitching ace Bartolo Colón for prospects Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Grady Sizemore; acquired Travis Hafner from the Rangers for Ryan Drese and Einar Díaz; and picked up Coco Crisp from the St. Louis Cardinals for aging starter Chuck Finley. Jim Thome left after the season, going to the Phillies for a larger contract.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Young Indians teams finished far out of contention in 2002 and under new manager Eric Wedge. They posted strong offensive numbers in , but continued to struggle with a bullpen that blew more than 20 saves. A highlight of the season was a 22–0 victory over the New York Yankees on August 31, one of the worst defeats suffered by the Yankees in team history.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In early , the offense got off to a poor start. After a brief July slump, the Indians caught fire in August, and cut a 15.5 game deficit in the Central Division down to 1.5 games. However, the season came to an end as the Indians went on to lose six of their last seven games, five of them by one run, missing the playoffs by only two games. Shapiro was named Executive of the Year in 2005. The next season, the club made several roster changes, while retaining its nucleus of young players. The off-season was highlighted by the acquisition of top prospect Andy Marte from the Boston Red Sox. The Indians had a solid offensive season, led by career years from Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore. Hafner, despite missing the last month of the season, tied the single season grand slam record of six, which was set in by Don Mattingly. Despite the solid offensive performance, the bullpen struggled with 23 blown saves (a Major League worst), and the Indians finished a disappointing fourth.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In , Shapiro signed veteran help for the bullpen and outfield in the offseason. Veterans Aaron Fultz and Joe Borowski joined Rafael Betancourt in the Indians bullpen. The Indians improved significantly over the prior year and went into the All-Star break in second place. The team brought back Kenny Lofton for his third stint with the team in late July. The Indians finished with a 96–66 record tied with the Red Sox for best in baseball, their seventh Central Division title in 13 years and their first postseason trip since 2001.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Indians began their playoff run by defeating the Yankees in the ALDS three games to one. This series will be most remembered for the swarm of bugs that overtook the field in the later innings of Game Two. They also jumped out to a three-games-to-one lead over the Red Sox in the ALCS. The season ended in disappointment when Boston swept the final three games to advance to the 2007 World Series.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Despite the loss, Cleveland players took home a number of awards. Grady Sizemore, who had a .995 fielding percentage and only two errors in 405 chances, won the Gold Glove award, Cleveland's first since 2001. Indians Pitcher CC Sabathia won the second Cy Young Award in team history with a 19–7 record, a 3.21 ERA and an MLB-leading 241 innings pitched. Eric Wedge was awarded the first Manager of the Year Award in team history. Shapiro was named to his second Executive of the Year in 2007.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Indians struggled during the 2008 season. Injuries to sluggers Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez, as well as starting pitchers Jake Westbrook and Fausto Carmona led to a poor start. The Indians, falling to last place for a short time in June and July, traded CC Sabathia to the Milwaukee Brewers for prospects Matt LaPorta, Rob Bryson, and Michael Brantley. and traded starting third baseman Casey Blake for catching prospect Carlos Santana. Pitcher Cliff Lee went 22–3 with an ERA of 2.54 and earned the AL Cy Young Award. Grady Sizemore had a career year, winning a Gold Glove Award and a Silver Slugger Award, and the Indians finished with a record of 81–81.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Prospects for the 2009 season dimmed early when the Indians ended May with a record of 22–30. Shapiro made multiple trades: Cliff Lee and Ben Francisco to the Philadelphia Phillies for prospects Jason Knapp, Carlos Carrasco, Jason Donald and Lou Marson; Victor Martinez to the Boston Red Sox for prospects Bryan Price, Nick Hagadone and Justin Masterson; Ryan Garko to the Texas Rangers for Scott Barnes; and Kelly Shoppach to the Tampa Bay Rays for Mitch Talbot. The Indians finished the season tied for fourth in their division, with a record of 65–97. The team announced on September 30, 2009, that Eric Wedge and all of the team's coaching staff were released at the end of the 2009 season. Manny Acta was hired as the team's 40th manager on October 25, 2009.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: On February 18, 2010, it was announced that Shapiro (following the end of the 2010 season) would be promoted to team President, with current President Paul Dolan becoming the new Chairman/CEO, and longtime Shapiro assistant Chris Antonetti filling the GM role.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: On January 18, 2011, longtime popular former first baseman and manager Mike Hargrove was brought in as a special adviser. The Indians started the 2011 season strong – going 30–15 in their first 45 games and seven games ahead of the Detroit Tigers for first place. Injuries led to a slump where the Indians fell out of first place. Many minor leaguers such as Jason Kipnis and Lonnie Chisenhall got opportunities to fill in for the injuries. The biggest news of the season came on July 30 when the Indians traded four prospects for Colorado Rockies star pitcher, Ubaldo Jiménez. The Indians sent their top two pitchers in the minors, Alex White and Drew Pomeranz along with Joe Gardner and Matt McBride. On August 25, the Indians signed the team leader in home runs, Jim Thome off of waivers. He made his first appearance in an Indians uniform since he left Cleveland after the 2002 season. To honor Thome, the Indians placed him at his original position, third base, for one pitch against the Minnesota Twins on September 25. It was his first appearance at third base since 1996, and his last for Cleveland. The Indians finished the season in 2nd place, 15 games behind the division champion Tigers.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Indians broke Progressive Field's Opening Day attendance record with 43,190 against the Toronto Blue Jays on April 5, 2012. The game went 16 innings, setting the MLB Opening Day record, and lasted 5 hours and 14 minutes.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: On September 27, 2012, with six games left in the Indians' 2012 season, Manny Acta was fired; Sandy Alomar Jr. was named interim manager for the remainder of the season. On October 6, the Indians announced that Terry Francona, who managed the Boston Red Sox to five playoff appearances and two World Series between 2004 and 2011, would take over as manager for 2013.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Indians entered the 2013 season following an active offseason of dramatic roster turnover. Key acquisitions included free agent 1B/OF Nick Swisher and CF Michael Bourn. The team added prized right-handed pitching prospect Trevor Bauer, OF Drew Stubbs, and relief pitchers Bryan Shaw and Matt Albers in a three-way trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds that sent RF Shin-Soo Choo to the Reds, and Tony Sipp to the Arizona Diamondbacks Other notable additions included utility man Mike Avilés, catcher Yan Gomes, designated hitter Jason Giambi, and starting pitcher Scott Kazmir. The 2013 Indians increased their win total by 24 over 2012 (from 68 to 92), finishing in second place, one game behind Detroit in the Central division, but securing the number one seed in the American League Wild Card Standings. In their first postseason appearance since 2007, Cleveland lost the 2013 American League Wild Card Game 4–0 at home to Tampa Bay. Francona was recognized for the turnaround with the 2013 American League Manager of the Year Award.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: With an 85–77 record, the 2014 Indians had consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1999–2001, but they were eliminated from playoff contention during the last week of the season and finished third in the AL Central.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In 2015, after struggling through the first half of the season, the Indians finished 81–80 for their third consecutive winning season, which the team had not done since 1999–2001. For the second straight year, the Tribe finished third in the Central and was eliminated from the Wild Card race during the last week of the season. Following the departure of longtime team executive Mark Shapiro on October 6, the Indians promoted GM Chris Antonetti to President of Baseball Operations, assistant general manager Mike Chernoff to GM, and named Derek Falvey as assistant GM. Falvey was later hired by the Minnesota Twins in 2016, becoming their President of Baseball Operations.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Indians set what was then a franchise record for longest winning streak when they won their 14th consecutive game, a 2–1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays in 19 innings on July 1, 2016, at Rogers Centre. The team clinched the Central Division pennant on September 26, their eighth division title overall and first since 2007, as well as returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2013. They finished the regular season at 94–67, marking their fourth straight winning season, a feat not accomplished since the 1990s and early 2000s.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Indians began the 2016 postseason by sweeping the Boston Red Sox in the best-of-five American League Division Series, then defeated the Blue Jays in five games in the 2016 American League Championship Series to claim their sixth American League pennant and advance to the World Series against the Chicago Cubs. It marked the first appearance for the Indians in the World Series since 1997 and first for the Cubs since 1945. The Indians took a 3–1 series lead following a victory in Game 4 at Wrigley Field, but the Cubs rallied to take the final three games and won the series 4 games to 3. The Indians' 2016 success led to Francona winning his second AL Manager of the Year Award with the club.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: From August 24 through September 15 during the 2017 season, the Indians set a new American League record by winning 22 games in a row. On September 28, the Indians won their 100th game of the season, marking only the third time in history the team has reached that milestone. They finished the regular season with 102 wins, second-most in team history (behind 1954's 111 win team). The Indians earned the AL Central title for the second consecutive year, along with home-field advantage throughout the American League playoffs, but they lost the 2017 ALDS to the Yankees 3–2 after being up 2–0.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In 2018, the Indians won their third consecutive AL Central crown with a 91–71 record, but were swept in the 2018 American League Division Series by the Houston Astros, who outscored Cleveland 21–6. In 2019, despite a two-game improvement, the Indians missed the playoffs as they trailed three games behind the Tampa Bay Rays for the second AL Wild Card berth. During the 2020 season (shortened to 60 games because of the COVID-19 pandemic), the Indians were 35–25, finishing second behind the Minnesota Twins in the AL Central, but qualified for the expanded playoffs. In the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series, the Indians were swept by the New York Yankees, ending their season.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: On December 18, 2020, the team confirmed that the Indians name would be dropped after the 2021 season, and then announced on July 23, 2021, that their new name will be the Cleveland Guardians . They played their last game under the Indians name on October 3, 2021. They officially became the Guardians on November 19, 2021.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In their first season under the Guardians name, the team won the 2022 AL Central Division Championship, marking the 11th division title in franchise history.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The rivalry with fellow Ohio team the Cincinnati Reds is known as the Battle of Ohio or Buckeye Series and features the Ohio Cup trophy for the winner. Prior to 1997, the winner of the cup was determined by an annual pre-season baseball game, played each year at minor-league Cooper Stadium in the state capital of Columbus, and staged just days before the start of each new Major League Baseball season. A total of eight Ohio Cup games were played, with the Guardians winning six of them. It ended with the start of interleague play in 1997. The winner of the game each year was awarded the Ohio Cup in postgame ceremonies. The Ohio Cup was a favorite among baseball fans in Columbus, with attendances regularly topping 15,000.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Since 1997, the two teams have played each other as part of the regular season, with the exception of 2002. The Ohio Cup was reintroduced in 2008 and is presented to the team who wins the most games in the series that season. Initially, the teams played one three-game series per season, meeting in Cleveland in 1997 and Cincinnati the following year. The teams have played two series per season against each other since 1999, with the exception of 2002, one at each ballpark. A format change in 2013 made each series two games, except in years when the AL and NL Central divisions meet in interleague play, where it is usually extended to three games per series. Through the 2020 meetings, the Guardians lead the series 66–51.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: An on-and-off rivalry with the Pittsburgh Pirates stems from the close proximity of the two cities, and features some carryover elements from the longstanding rivalry in the National Football League between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers. Because the Guardians' designated interleague rival is the Reds and the Pirates' designated rival is the Tigers, the teams have played periodically. The teams played one three-game series each year from 1997–2001 and periodically between 2002 and 2022, generally only in years in which the AL Central played the NL Central in the former interleague play rotation. The teams played six games in 2020 as MLB instituted an abbreviated schedule focusing on regional match-ups. Beginning in 2023, the teams will play a three-game series each season as a result of the new "balanced" schedule. The Pirates lead the series 21–18.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: As the Guardians play 19 games every year with each of their AL Central competitors, several rivalries have developed.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Guardians have a geographic rivalry with the Detroit Tigers, highlighted in recent years by intense battles for the AL Central title. The matchup has some carryover elements from the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry, as well as the general historic rivalry between Michigan and Ohio dating back to the Toledo War.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The Chicago White Sox are another rival, dating back to the 1959 season, when the Sox slipped past the Guardians to win the AL pennant. The rivalry intensified when both clubs were moved to the new AL Central in 1994. During that season, the two teams challenged for the division title, with the Guardians one game back of Chicago when the strike began in August. During a game in Chicago, the White Sox confiscated Albert Belle's corked bat, followed by an attempt by Guardians pitcher Jason Grimsley to crawl through the Comiskey Park clubhouse ceiling to retrieve it. Belle later signed with the White Sox in 1997, adding additional intensity to the rivalry.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The primary home uniform is white with navy blue piping around each sleeve, and the "winged G" logo on the right sleeve. Across the front of the jersey in script font is the word "Guardians" in red with a navy blue outline, with navy blue undershirts, belts, and socks.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The alternate home jersey is red with a navy blue script "Guardians" trimmed in white on the front, and navy blue piping on both sleeves, the "winged G" logo on the right sleeve, with navy blue undershirts, belts, and socks.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The primary road uniform is gray, with "Cleveland" in navy blue "diamond C" letters, trimmed in red across the front of the jersey, the "winged G" logo on the right sleeve, navy blue piping around the sleeves, and navy blue undershirts, belts, and socks.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The alternate road jersey is navy blue with "Cleveland" in red "diamond C" letters trimmed in white on the front of the jersey, the "winged G" logo on the right sleeve, and navy blue undershirts, belts, and socks.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The club name and its cartoon logo have been criticized for perpetuating Native American stereotypes. In 1997 and 1998, protesters were arrested after effigies were burned. Charges were dismissed in the 1997 case, and were not filed in the 1998 case. Protesters arrested in the 1998 incident subsequently fought and lost a lawsuit alleging that their First Amendment rights had been violated.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Bud Selig (then-Commissioner of Baseball) said in 2014 that he had never received a complaint about the logo. He has heard that there are some protesting against the mascots, but individual teams such as the Indians and Atlanta Braves, whose name was also criticized for similar reasons, should make their own decisions. An organized group consisting of Native Americans, which had protested for many years, protested Chief Wahoo on Opening Day 2015, noting that this was the 100th anniversary since the team became the Indians. Owner Paul Dolan, while stating his respect for the critics, said he mainly heard from fans who wanted to keep Chief Wahoo, and had no plans to change.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: On January 29, 2018, Major League Baseball announced that Chief Wahoo would be removed from the Indians' uniforms as of the 2019 season, stating that the logo was no longer appropriate for on-field use. The block "C" was promoted to the primary logo; at the time, there were no plans to change the team's name.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In 2020, protests over the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a Minneapolis police officer, led Dolan to reconsider use of the Indians name. On July 3, 2020, on the heels of the Washington Redskins announcing that they would "undergo a thorough review" of that team's name, the Indians announced that they would "determine the best path forward" regarding the team's name and emphasized the need to "keep improving as an organization on issues of social justice".


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: On December 13, 2020, it was reported that the Indians name would be dropped after the 2021 season. Although it had been hinted by the team that they may move forward without a replacement name (in similar manner to the Washington Football Team), it was announced via Twitter on July 23, 2021, that the team will be named the Guardians, after the "Guardians of Traffic", eight large Art Deco statues on the Hope Memorial Bridge, located close to Progressive Field.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The club, however, found itself amid a trademark dispute with a men's roller derby team called the Cleveland Guardians. The Cleveland Guardians roller derby team has competed in the Men's Roller Derby Association since 2016. In addition, two other entities have attempted to preempt the team's use of the trademark by filing their own registrations with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The roller derby team filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on October 27, 2021, seeking to block the baseball team's name change. On November 16, 2021, the lawsuit was resolved, and both teams were allowed to continue using the Guardians name. The name change from Indians to Guardians became official on November 19, 2021.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Cleveland stations WTAM (1100 AM/106.9 FM) and WMMS (100.7 FM) serve as flagship stations for the Cleveland Guardians Radio Network, with lead announcer Tom Hamilton and Jim Rosenhaus calling the games.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: The television rights are held by Bally Sports Great Lakes. Lead announcer Matt Underwood, analyst and former Indians Gold Glove-winning centerfielder Rick Manning, and field reporter Andre Knott form the broadcast team. Al Pawlowski and former Indians pitcher Jensen Lewis serve as pregame/postgame hosts. Select games are simulcast over-the-air on WKYC channel 3.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Notable former broadcasters include Tom Manning, Jack Graney (the first ex-baseball player to become a play-by-play announcer), Ken Coleman, Joe Castiglione, Van Patrick, Nev Chandler, Bruce Drennan, Jim "Mudcat" Grant, Rocky Colavito, Dan Coughlin, and Jim Donovan.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: Previous broadcasters who have had lengthy tenures with the team include Joe Tait (15 seasons between TV and radio), Jack Corrigan (18 seasons on TV), Ford C. Frick Award winner Jimmy Dudley (19 seasons on radio), Mike Hegan (23 seasons between TV and radio), and Herb Score (34 seasons between TV and radio).


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: In July 2022 - in honor of the 75th anniversary of Larry Doby becoming the AL's first black player - a mural was added to the exterior of Progressive Field, honoring players who were viewed as barrier breakers that played for the Indians/Guardians. The mural features Doby, Frank Robinson, and Satchel Paige.


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: A number of parks and newly built and renovated youth baseball fields in Cleveland have been named after former and current Indians/Guardians players, including:


title: Cleveland Guardians

text: (**) - At the beginning of the season, there was a limit of 30% capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions implemented by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. On June 2, DeWine lifted the restrictions, and the team immediately allowed full capacity at Progressive Field.


title: Amy Lee

text: Amy Lynn Hartzler (; born December 13, 1981) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She is the co-founder, lead vocalist, and lead songwriter of the rock band Evanescence. Alongside her contributions with the band, Lee has also participated on other musical projects, including "Nightmare Revisited" and "", composed the soundtrack to the films "War Story" (2014) and "" (2015) with cellist Dave Eggar, and the song "Speak to Me" for the film "Voice from the Stone" (2017). She has also collaborated with other artists such as Korn, Seether, Bring Me the Horizon, and Lindsey Stirling. A classically trained pianist, Lee possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range.


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee received the Songwriter Icon Award from the National Music Publishers Association in 2008. In 2012, she won Best Vocalist at the "Revolver" Golden Gods Awards and was also named Rock Goddess of the Year at the "Loudwire" Music Awards. She was awarded Best Film Score by the Moondance International Film Festival for "Indigo Grey: The Passage" in 2015. In 2017, she received the Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Song in Independent Film for "Speak to Me". Lee is the American chairperson for the international epilepsy awareness foundation Out of the Shadows.


title: Amy Lee

text: Amy Lee was born on December 13, 1981 in Riverside, California, to parents John Lee, who worked as a disc jockey and voice-over artist, and Sara Cargill. The oldest of five siblings, she has two living sisters. Lee had a younger sister who died at age three from an unidentified illness when Lee was six years old, and a younger brother who died in 2018 at age 24 after struggling with severe epilepsy for most of his life. Lee said that when her little sister died, her "whole perception of life changed." She wrote the songs "Hello" from "Fallen" and "Like You" from "The Open Door" for her late sister.


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee discovered a passion for the piano in early childhood. Classical music was her first musical influence as a child, inspiring her to become a musician and composer. She was first inspired by Mozart when she watched the 1984 film "Amadeus" at nine years old. Beethoven was another early classical inspiration, as well as Danny Elfman's film scores. She wanted to take piano lessons, and studied classical piano for nine years. Lee considers the "Lacrimosa" movement of Mozart's Requiem her favorite piece of music, and wove it into "The Open Door" song "Lacrymosa".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee began writing poetry about eternity and loneliness at age 10. Her mother had expressed concern about her writing, suggesting she see a therapist. Lee thought about taking antidepressants at the time but chose not to as she felt it would take her "soul away" and she "wouldn't be able to feel anything." One of the first songs she remembered writing was an instrumental piece called "Eternity of the Remorse", writing the sheet music when she was 11. Her first song with lyrics was called "A Single Tear", which she wrote for an eighth-grade assignment, recording it on a cassette tape and playing guitar while her friend from choir did backup vocals.


title: Amy Lee

text: During her pre-teen years, Lee's family moved to many places, including West Palm Beach, Florida and Rockford, Illinois, eventually settling in Little Rock, Arkansas. When her family moved to Little Rock, Lee had a lot of pent-up "negativity". In Little Rock, she attended Pulaski Academy, a private college preparatory school, starting in junior high. She described the school as a "weird fit" for her, where she was a loner for a while, and experienced bullying for dressing differently, which she would later embrace in high school. Lee found solace in writing, and joining the school choir helped her slowly gain confidence in her voice. She was initially insecure as a singer, and only used singing as a vehicle for her writing. In high school, Lee became president of the choir, and wrote a choir piece called "Listen to the Rain", which the choir teacher liked and asked her to direct. The piece was performed by the choir in graduation.


title: Amy Lee

text: Originally wanting to focus on classical or film score composing, Lee's plan changed as her "tastes got darker". In late childhood and throughout her teens, she listened to a variety of musical styles, including alternative music, grunge, hard rock, industrial music, death metal, groove metal, and electronica artists like Bjork and Portishead. Lee's earliest memory of wanting to fuse various musical genres, especially contrasting styles, was when she was training in classical piano and noticed that a "real shreddy" section of a composition from Baroque composer Bach resembled heavy metal. She found "so many similarities to be drawn, almost more so the further out you go on both sides".


title: Amy Lee

text: In her early teens, Lee would jam with musicians from school at her house. In 1994, she met budding guitarist Ben Moody when she was 13 at a Christian youth camp; when others in the camp were playing sports, she played piano and he played acoustic guitar and she thought they could play music together. Lee thinks what drew them together at the time was that they "didn't fit in that well" and were "out of [their] element in this silly camp environment."


title: Amy Lee

text: Within a month of meeting in 1994, Lee showed Moody a cassette tape of her playing guitar and singing a song she wrote. They began playing and working on music at Lee's home, and were soon performing acoustic sets at bookstores and coffee houses in the Little Rock area.


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee and Moody co-founded Evanescence in 1995. After experimenting with band names, such as Childish Intentions and Stricken, they decided on Evanescence, which means "disappearance" or "fading away". What made Lee want to start a band was "the idea of combinations that were unlikely". With Evanescence, Lee aimed to combine her different musical tastes, "bringing something from the cinematic and classical symphonic world and marrying it to metal, hard rock and alternative music." "There was all this music that was inspiring me. And Evanescence was the product of these two extremes combining".


title: Amy Lee

text: They eventually recorded three EPs: "Evanescence EP" (1998), of which about 100 copies were made and distributed at their early live performances; "Sound Asleep EP" (1999), also known as the "Whisper" EP; and "Mystary" EP (2003). Lee and Moody would perform with guest musicians in live gigs, but Evanescence remained a duo. "It was more because that's what we did and how we worked rather than not wanting any other input", Lee recalled.


title: Amy Lee

text: In 2000, Evanescence recorded the demo CD "Origin", which they self-released and sold at local shows. After graduating high school, Lee attended Middle Tennessee State University to study music theory and composition, but dropped out after a semester to focus on Evanescence. Evanescence was signed by Wind Up Records in 2001. Lee and Moody moved to Los Angeles, where they worked on and completed their debut album.


title: Amy Lee

text: Their debut album "Fallen" was released in 2003. Most of Lee's writing on the album was inspired by an abusive relationship she was in. Lee later stated that the creation of "Fallen" largely consisted of her and Moody writing music separately and then adding to each other's work, due to tension and significant creative differences between them. Lee and Moody composed some of the songs on "Fallen" when they were 15 and 16. In 2003, Lee stated she had opposed the label's initial promotion of the band in the Christian market, which Moody had originally supported and misrepresented the band. She said that Evanescence was not a Christian band and lyrically never had a religious affiliation.


title: Amy Lee

text: On October 22, 2003, Moody left the band in the middle of the "Fallen" European tour, citing "creative differences". Moody had previously called the band's management and informed them he was quitting. Lee got a call from their manager asking her to "beg [Moody] to stay", to which she said "that's exactly what he wants me to do" and expressed that if Moody was going to leave, the band "would appreciate it if he'd wait until the end of the tour. But if he can't, then go ahead and go." In an interview several months later, Lee said: "we'd gotten to a point that if something didn't change, we wouldn't have been able to make a second record". She said it was a relief that he left because of tensions created within the band. "It was a really uncomfortable situation for everybody ... completely unstable and unhappy. It was a scary time before he left because I knew something was going to happen and I didn't know what and I was afraid everything we worked for had the potential of going down the toilet." In Lee's termination letter to their manager, she stated that Moody was physically and verbally abusive to her. With Moody gone, "we felt like a weight had been lifted", she said. Guitarist John LeCompt said in a 2006 interview that Lee "gained authority as soon as Ben Moody walked out the door. They had an equal partnership, but he was the man, he had to strangle the band, all the life out of it".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee's creative disagreements with Moody included his strict approach to songwriting and focus on commerciality; he would "always be corralling" her ideas, and wanting to push the band in a more commercial, pop direction and she did not. His range of influences were "a lot different" than hers. "It was always a push and pull between us, for me", she said. "Fallen" "really is a lot of compromise. It definitely leaned toward what he wanted a lot of the time." "A lot of the reason it's been so much fun writing [post-Moody] is that we're not thinking about that. It's like, 'What do we like? What's fun?'", and there is "no pressure of wanting to rule the world", Lee explained. In a 2005 interview, Moody conceded that they had different approaches for the music, stating, "[Amy] is much more creative than I am ... I am a bit more commercial minded ... I like structure in songs, and I like making songs people can adhere to. I still like to be creative, but she is more educated musically, and she wanted to explore that. ... I think in my immaturity at the time, I did that in just a way-too-controlling manner — it was like my way or the highway. We just couldn't meet in the middle, so I was like, "The hell with it." In August 2010, Moody released a statement on his history with Lee and Evanescence, noting that he was a different person at the time, his friendship with Lee had deteriorated and they had conflicting opinions, personalities, and desires with the band. Moody apologized to Lee for comments he made to her in anger. He said he realized the band would end if he stayed and believes he made the right choice. He added, "Evanescence has progressed a great distance from the original sound, and made it clear that they intended to expand much further. Amy is very artistic and never has had a problem thinking outside of the box and defying expectations."


title: Amy Lee

text: Ex-Cold guitarist Terry Balsamo replaced Moody on the "Fallen" tour, and later joined the band as the lead guitarist and Lee's co-writing partner. Lee said that after Balsamo joined, they were "finally a real band, not just Ben and I and a few others thrown together". After finishing another tour for Evanescence's 2004 live album and DVD "Anywhere but Home" and overwhelmed by label pressure, Lee retreated to her house, cut off contact with people, and spent the next 10 months writing music again, painting and going to therapy. She said of her first therapy sessions, "For the first, I don't know, lots of sessions, I'd just go in and cry. Every time. I guess I was letting out all the ghosts of my past." Lee found comfort in therapy, an environment where she wasn't being judged, she felt she could speak freely and "not feel that anything I said was wrong". During this time, Lee had invasive experiences with stalkers that forced her to leave her house a couple of nights. This experience led her to write the song "Snow White Queen" from her and a stalker's perspective. Other songs Lee wrote throughout these months included "Lacrymosa" and "Together Again". Lee later collaborated with Balsamo, co-writing music together for Evanescence's second album, "The Open Door" (2006). The writing experience for "The Open Door" was "the best process" Lee ever had because she had "free reign" and could "do whatever I wanted without being judged". In 2006, Lee said that when she listened back to "Fallen", she "hear[d] all the vulnerability and the fear and all the childish things in me that are just human." While Lee was drowning in the misery of her experiences in "Fallen", she said "The Open Door" is largely about her acknowledging her issues and deliberating "what do I have to do to work this out." In the record, she is "purging the trials", but overall it comes from a less hopeless place and with a more reflective outlook.


title: Amy Lee

text: After the end of "The Open Door"s tour, Lee took a break to recollect herself and live life away from the industry. After about 18 months, she began writing music again, and she took harp lessons out of a desire to learn the instrument. In 2009, Evanescence began playing live shows again, with Lee realizing that she missed this part of her life, stating: "I had to get back together with all the guys, and we practiced all the old stuff ... and I enjoyed it so much. I started falling back in love with that part of me, the Evanescence part. I'd kind of been doing everything else, writing-wise, by myself, and I was like, 'Oh yeah, I love this stuff too. Maybe we should all make a record!'" Evanescence released their third studio album, the self-titled "Evanescence" in 2011. Lee said that the decision for the album's title was her love towards Evanescence, as well as the record being composed more collaboratively than past albums, with all members contributing. The record is "about the band", Lee explained. Its lyrical themes include Lee "falling back in love" with Evanescence, her being inspired by nature and the ocean, brokenness, the quest for freedom, and falling in love. Different from "The Open Door", which was "all about me and my personal experiences", "Evanescence" also includes Lee's musings on events that occurred to others in her life. "But really, whatever makes me feel the most, that's what's on the record, because that's what I need to get off my chest."


title: Amy Lee

text: After the touring cycle for "Evanescence", Lee took an extended break. In October 2013, Wind-up Records sold part of their catalog of artists, including Evanescence and their master recordings, to Bicycle Music Company. In January 2014, it was reported that Lee had filed a lawsuit against Wind-up Records for $1.5 million in unpaid royalties owed to the band. In March 2014, via her Twitter account, Lee announced that she and Evanescence had been released from her Wind-up Records contract and she was now an independent artist; she stated: "Today, for the first time in 13 years, I am a free and independent artist. I have wanted this for so long and I am so happy", adding that this meant she was "free to do anything, Ev[anescence] included."


title: Amy Lee

text: Following several solo projects by Lee from 2014–2017, including film scoring, and Evanescence's resumed touring in 2015, the band reconvened to work on their fourth studio album, "Synthesis". Released in 2017, "Synthesis" is an album of orchestral and electronica–reworked arrangements of the band's previous material in addition to two new songs. The album's release was followed by the Synthesis Live concert tour in which the band performed with a live orchestra for the first time.


title: Amy Lee

text: In April 2020, Lee announced the release date of Evanescence's fifth album, "The Bitter Truth". Four songs from the album were released as singles throughout 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, while a virtual live-streamed show was performed by the band from their recording base at Rock Falcon Studio, Nashville, in December 2020. The album was released on March 26, 2021.


title: Amy Lee

text: In a Q&A with "Forbes" in May 2020, Lee mentioned that the "image and idea" of the band from the early days was "something that combined multiple dramas, from the dramatic to the rock to the classical to the score", and that although many things have changed since, the "idea that started this whole thing is still there".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee performed backup vocals for "Missing You", a song on Big Dismal's 2003 debut album "Believe", and sang backup vocals on two songs with supergroup The Damning Well, though her vocals were taken off the final release due to record label issues. Lee later performed a duet with her then-boyfriend Shaun Morgan on the track "Broken" for Seether's 2004 album "Disclaimer II". The song is in the soundtrack for the 2004 film "The Punisher".


title: Amy Lee

text: In 2004, Lee said she was working on music for "", but that the music was rejected by the studio for being "too dark". The producers of "Narnia" then stated that Evanescence music was never planned for the soundtrack. Lee said that she used part of the instrumental she wrote to segue into the last track of the album, "Good Enough".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee became the American chairperson for "Out of the Shadows" in 2006. This organization is an international foundation with the goal of providing education about epilepsy. Lee's younger brother, Robby, was previously diagnosed with this condition. The singer also made a brief guest appearance in the music video for Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" in late 2006. As each celebrity featured in the shoot was allowed to choose what they would be doing for the video, Lee chose to appear laying flowers on a grave. Her scene was recorded at Trinity Church in Manhattan, during which she wore a black velvet coat that previously belonged to Tim Burton.


title: Amy Lee

text: In February 2007, Lee performed with Korn on their song "Freak on a Leash" for "". The song was also released as the first single from the album. In November 2007, VH1 produced a mockumentary in the style of "Behind the Music", titled "Rock Band Cometh: The Rock Band Band Story", to promote the video game "Rock Band". She is one of the celebrity cameos featured on the show.


title: Amy Lee

text: In June 2008, the National Music Publishers Association presented Lee with their 2008 Songwriter Icon Award, which "recognizes outstanding songwriters for their personal achievement".


title: Amy Lee

text: For Walt Disney Records' September 2008 release of "Nightmare Revisited", Lee sang a remake of "Sally's Song". The album contains new material and covers of songs from the original "Nightmare Before Christmas" soundtrack. Lee performed live renditions of "Sally's Song" during the October 17 "Nightmare Before Christmas" re-release premiere in Hollywood, and for an October 13 appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno".


title: Amy Lee

text: During an October 2008 interview for Spin.com, Lee noted that she was writing new songs, possibly for a solo album project. Citing influences in folk and Celtic music, she says her current writings feel like she is going back to her "really old" roots. She gave no potential release date, but said of her reason for this new direction, "I need to show that I'm more than a one trick pony."


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee stated during an October 2008 interview with "The Gauntlet" that she did not know whether or not she would begin a solo career, saying that she was "at a point where I don't know what is next". She noted that Evanescence was still together as a band but that she found touring to be monotonous. She reiterated that she was continuing to write songs, although she did not yet know what purpose they would serve.


title: Amy Lee

text: In a "Spin" interview in March 2010, Lee stated that she was "in a very different creative space then" regarding her previous work on new material, and that while she wrote some good songs, nothing from those efforts would be included in the band's album "Evanescence", which was released on October 7, 2011.


title: Amy Lee

text: In 2011, Lee covered "Halfway Down the Stairs" for "" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" for the tribute album "" in 2012.


title: Amy Lee

text: On December 2, 2013, it was announced that Lee had teamed up with American composer Dave Eggar to create music for the American drama film "War Story". During an interview with MTV, Lee explained that it would be a "surprise" to her fans; the fact that the film was "dark" and lacking of conversations made it a "beautiful, sad platform for music". She added that for the music she blended various sounds and tones, mostly consisting of keyboard. Speaking about the song "Push the Button" which she originally penned for the movie, Lee explained that it marked a departure for her due to its electronic sound. She added, "I did it all myself, which was crazy, because I'm used to engineering and writing and mixing demos in my house, but being responsible for that being the end product was a new challenge for me." On August 6, Lee announced that the soundtrack album would be called "Aftermath" and that it would be released on August 25. Lee contributes to all ten tracks, which features Eggar on eight of them and American/Moroccan musician Malika Zarra on one. Lee revealed a 36-second teaser of the album on the same day. It is her first full-length solo album to not involve her band Evanescence.


title: Amy Lee

text: In March 2015, Lee and Eggar announced that they were recording music, along with Chuck Palmer, for Hammerstep's short film "", which was released on September 14, 2015. The film features the songs "Between Worlds" and "Resurrection". Lee composed and recorded "Speak to Me", the title song to Eric D. Howell's 2017 film "Voice from the Stone", during August 2015. The accompanying music video was also directed by Howell. It was filmed on October 22, 2015, on the Castle of Celsa estate near Siena, Italy. During a radio interview in July 2015, Lee said that she had been recording cover songs and expressed an interest in releasing them online. On October 27, 2015, she released the first song from the collection with Portishead's 1994 song "It's A Fire", followed by U2's 1987 song "With or Without You" on November 10, 2015, Led Zeppelin's 1971 song "Going to California" on December 1, 2015, and Chris Isaak's 1996 song "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing" on December 15, 2015. They are featured on Lee's debut extended play, "Recover, Vol. 1", which was released on February 19, 2016. The cover songs are accompanied by music videos directed by Eric Ryan Anderson.


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee confirmed in an interview with "Rolling Stone" that she is "definitely working and making music with every intention of people hearing it at this point," as of October 2015. She also stated that she does not have "any news or plans" for new Evanescence music, but assured fans on Twitter that the band has not broken up saying, "We don't follow the rules of a commerce-driven timeline. Inspiration drives us. We're wide open." She later stated during an interview with "Loudwire" that "there is Evanescence in the future". In December 2015, Lee confirmed that she plans to complete some songs from an Evanescence album (originally produced by Steve Lillywhite) that was rejected by Wind-up Records in 2010. She explained that she was "devastated" and "furious" over the rejection, but was determined to move forward and ended up being "angry enough to write Evanescence's heaviest album", titled "Evanescence". Although three songs from the Lillywhite sessions ended up on it, Lee admitted, "I was still left feeling unsatisfied about what I lovingly refer to as my 'broken record'."


title: Amy Lee

text: On June 17, 2016, Amazon.com announced that Lee was scheduled to release the "family" album "Dream Too Much" exclusively through Amazon Prime Music. It features "original music for kids and families" and was released on September 30, 2016. The album was a collaboration that involved her father, who is the lead vocalist on "Goodnight My Love", and her sisters.


title: Amy Lee

text: On September 14, 2016, MTV News reported that Lee had worked on music for the film "Blind", starring Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore. The film was premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival on October 13, 2016. On February 10, 2017, Lee released an English-language cover of Francesca Michielin's "L'amore esiste" ("Love Exists"), which she heard while working on a film project in Italy. With Guy Sigsworth as producer and Dave Eggar providing string arrangements, Lee recorded her translated and reinterpreted version of the song over the course of a week at Flux Studios in New York City. In March 2017, the song "Speak to Me" was made available on streaming platforms. It features as the end theme music for the film "Voice from the Stone". In 2018, Lee collaborated with Veridia on their single, "I'll Never Be Ready", where she played piano. She stated that collaborating on the song helped her cope with the passing of her brother, Robby.


title: Amy Lee

text: In 2019 Amy collaborated with Lindsey Stirling on Stirling's 2019 album Artemis on the track and in the music video for "Love goes on and on".


title: Amy Lee

text: Amy appeared on Body Count's song "When I'm Gone" off their seventh album "Carnivore", which was released on March 6, 2020.


title: Amy Lee

text: On July 31, 2020, American rock band Halestorm re-released their song "Break In", featuring Lee's vocals. The single was included on the "Halestorm: Reimagined" EP.


title: Amy Lee

text: On September 19, 2020, Japanese rock band Wagakki Band released a song "Sakura Rising" featuring Lee. The song was written and recorded the day before their orchestral show in Osaka on February 16, 2020, where Lee performed as a guest, but it was finished through file sharing due to the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Amy Lee

text: On October 30, 2020, Lee featured on the Bring Me the Horizon song "One Day The Only Butterflies Left Will Be In Your Chest As You March Towards Your Death" from their EP "".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee has cited influence from composers such as Mozart and Danny Elfman, and artists like Björk, Portishead, Massive Attack, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Plumb, Radiohead, Shirley Manson, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pantera, Depeche Mode, Rob Zombie, White Zombie, The Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Metallica, and Joan Jett.


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee was in a relationship with Seether's singer Shaun Morgan from 2003 to 2005. Following their separation due to his substance addiction, she wrote "Call Me When You're Sober" about her experience. In May 2007, Lee married Josh Hartzler, a therapist and long-time friend, whom the songs "Good Enough" and "Bring Me to Life" were inspired by. The couple's first child, a son, was born in July 2014.


title: Amy Lee

text: In the early 2000s, Lee said that she has never been formally religious and does not attend church, but considers herself a Christian. She stated that regardless of her or any band member's beliefs, Evanescence's music has never had a religious or spiritual affiliation.


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee has a recognizable fashion style, marked by her taste for Victorian-styled clothing and occasional use of gothic make-up. She has been labelled a "gothic rock superstar" and a "style icon". She had a piercing on her left eyebrow since she was teenager until 2006; it is visible on the cover of "Fallen". Her image was described as "independent and self-assured".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee designs many of her own clothes, including those worn in the music video for "Going Under", the dress worn for the cover of "The Open Door" and the dress she wore to the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2011. After she designed the dress she wore at the 2004 Grammy Awards, she chose Japanese designer H. Naoto to make it for her. In 2003, Lee said she wears "lots of funky stuff onstage", and likes to "mix it up" with "two basic elements ... rock, metal and chains and stuff, mixed with fairies and Victorian clothing, fantasy".


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee explained and showcased some of her wardrobe in 2011, commenting that she would rather make her own clothes because it is hard to find exactly what she wants elsewhere. She likes "asymmetrical things" and "a little bit of chaos" in her outfits, and "when it comes to the band, I want to dress to fit the music." Lee said she used to wear corsets more often in the early years when she wasn't as confident on stage, and it wasn't about "goth" but more about making her feel like "you're about to ride a rollercoaster and you're strapped in and not going to fall out."


title: Amy Lee

text: Lee has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. In a fan meet & greet, Lee stated she was in the alto section in her school choir and was later told by a vocal coach that her range was higher than an alto.


title: Amy Lee

text: In 2006, "Blender" listed Lee as one of the hottest women in rock alongside such singers as Joan Jett, Courtney Love and Liz Phair. In 2013, Lee ranked first in NME.com's "Hottest Women in Music" award.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Assassin's Creed is an action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the first installment in the "Assassin's Creed" series. The video game was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2007. A Microsoft Windows version titled Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition containing additional content was released in April 2008.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: The plot is set in a fictional history of real-world events, taking place primarily during the Third Crusade in the Holy Land in 1191. The player character is a modern-day man named Desmond Miles who, through a machine called the Animus, relives the genetic memories of his ancestor, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad. Through this plot device, details emerge about a millennia-old struggle between two factions: the Assassin Brotherhood (inspired by the real-life Order of Assassins), who fight to preserve peace and free will, and the Templar Order (inspired by the Knights Templar military order), who seek to establish peace through order and control. Both factions fight over powerful artifacts of mysterious origins known as Pieces of Eden to gain an advantage over each other. The 12th-century portion of the story follows Altaïr, an Assassin, who embarks on a quest to regain his honour after failing to recover one such artifact from the Templars; he does so by finding and assassinating nine targets across the Holy Land.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: The gameplay focuses on using Altaïr's combat, stealth, and parkour abilities to defeat enemies and explore the environment. The game features counter-based hack-and-slash combat, social stealth (the ability to use crowds of people and the environment to hide from enemies), and a large open world comprising various regions of the Holy Land, primarily the cities of Masyaf, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus, all of which have been accurately recreated to fit the game's period. While most of the game takes place within a simulation based on Altaïr's memories, the player will occasionally be forced out of the Animus to play as Desmond in the modern day. Here, they are restricted to exploring a small laboratory facility, as Desmond has been kidnapped by a shady corporation looking for specific information within Altaïr's memories that will further their enigmatic goals.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Upon release, "Assassin's Creed" received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its storytelling, visuals, art design, and originality, while criticism mostly focused on the repetitive nature of its gameplay. "Assassin's Creed" won several awards at the 2006 E3 and several end-year awards after its release. The game spawned two spin-offs: "" (2008) and "" (2009), which exclude the modern-day aspect and focus entirely on Altaïr. A direct sequel, "Assassin's Creed II", was released in November 2009. The sequel continues the modern-day narrative following Desmond but introduces a new storyline set during the Italian Renaissance in the late 15th century and a new protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Since the release and success of "Assassin's Creed II", subsequent games have been released with various other Assassins and periods.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: "Assassin's Creed" is an action-adventure game, set in an open-world environment, which is played from a third-person view in which the player primarily assumes the role of Altaïr, as experienced by protagonist Desmond Miles. The game's primary goal is to carry out a series of assassinations ordered by Al Mualim, the Assassins' leader. To achieve this goal, the player must travel from the Brotherhood's headquarters in Masyaf, across the terrain of the Holy Land known as the Kingdom, where the player can freely ride a horse, to one of three cities—Jerusalem, Acre, or Damascus—to find the Brotherhood agent in that city. There, the agent, in addition to providing a safe house, gives the player minimal knowledge about the target and requires them to perform additional reconnaissance missions before attempting the assassination. These missions include eavesdropping, interrogation, pickpocketing, and completing tasks for informers and fellow Assassins. The player may also take part in several side objectives, including climbing tall towers to map out the city and saving citizens being threatened or harassed by the city guards. There are also various additional memories that do not advance the plot, such as hunting down and killing Templar Knights and flag collecting. After completing each assassination, the player is returned to the Brotherhood and rewarded with a better weapon or upgrade before going after the next target or given another set of targets, with the player free to select the order of certain targets.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: The player is made aware of how noticeable Altaïr is to enemy guards and the state of alert in the local area via the Social Status Icon. To perform many assassinations and other tasks, the player must consider the use of actions distinguished by their type of profile. Low-profile actions allow Altaïr to blend into nearby crowds, pass by other citizens, or perform other non-threatening tasks that can be used to hide and reduce the alertness level; the player can also use Altaïr's retractable hidden blade to attempt low-profile assassinations. High-profile actions are more noticeable and include running, scaling the sides of buildings to climb to higher vantage points, and attacking foes; performing these actions at certain times may raise the local area's awareness level. Once the area is at high alert, crowds run and scatter while guards attempt to chase and bring down Altaïr; to reduce the alert level, the player must control Altaïr as to break the guards' line of sight and then find a hiding space, such as a haystack or rooftop garden, or blend in with the citizens sitting on benches or wandering scholars. Should the player be unable to escape the guards, they can fight back using swordplay maneuvers.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: The player's health is described as the level of synchronization between Desmond and Altaïr's memories; should Altaïr suffer injury, it is represented as a deviation from the actual events of the memory rather than physical damage. If all synchronization is lost, the current memory that Desmond is experiencing will be restarted at the last checkpoint. When the synchronization bar is full, the player has the additional option to use the Eagle Vision, which allows the computer-rendered memory to highlight all visible characters in colours corresponding to whether they are allies (blue), foes (red), neutral (white), or the target of their assassination (gold). Due to Altaïr's memories being rendered by the computer of the Animus project, the player may experience glitches in the rendering of the historical world, which may help the player to identify targets, or can be used to alter the viewpoint during in-game scripted scenes should the player react fast enough when they appear.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: In 2012, bartender Desmond Miles (Nolan North) is kidnapped by agents of Abstergo Industries, the world's largest pharmaceutical conglomerate, and is taken to their headquarters in Rome. Under the guidance of Dr. Warren Vidic (Philip Proctor) and his assistant Lucy Stillman (Kristen Bell), Desmond is forced to participate in a series of trials revolving around the Animus, a machine capable of translating the genetic memories of his ancestors into a simulated reality. Vidic instructs him to relive the early years of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad (Philip Shahbaz), a senior member of the Assassin Brotherhood during the Third Crusade. His investigation reveals that Altaïr, blinded by arrogance, botched an attempt by the Assassins to retrieve an artifact from their sworn enemies, the Knights Templar, leading to the death of one Assassin and severely wounding another in the process. Although Altaïr manages to partially redeem himself by fighting off a Templar attack on the Assassin home base of Masyaf, his mentor and superior, Al Mualim (Peter Renaday), demotes and orders him to assassinate nine individuals in order to regain his previous position and honour:


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: As Altaïr eliminates each target, he learns that all nine are secretly members of the Templar Order and were conspiring to locate the Apple of Eden, a relic of a long-forgotten civilization said to possess god-like powers. While attempting to assassinate Robert at a funeral in Jerusalem, Altaïr is tricked by a decoy, a young Templar agent named Maria Thorpe (Eleanor Noble), who reveals that Robert anticipated that the Assassins would come after him and went to negotiate an alliance between the Crusaders and Saracens against them. Sparing Maria's life, Altaïr confronts Robert in the camp of King Richard I (Marcel Jeannin) and exposes his crimes. Unsure of whom to believe, Richard suggests a one-on-one duel to decide the truth, remarking that God will decide the victor. After Altaïr mortally wounds him, Robert confesses that he did not act alone, revealing that Al Mualim betrayed the Assassins and eventually the Templars, seeking the Apple for himself. Returning to Masyaf, Altaïr finds Al Mualim using the Apple to control its residents, including most of the Assassins. With the help of several Assassins brought in for backup, Altaïr storms the citadel and confronts his mentor in the gardens. Using the Apple, Al Mualim battles his apprentice with illusions before resorting to single combat. Altaïr stabs him with his hidden blade and tries to destroy the Apple, but instead unlocks a map that reveals the locations of countless other Pieces of Eden around the world.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: In the present, the Assassins launch an unsuccessful attack on the Abstergo facility to rescue Desmond, resulting in most of them being killed. After completing Altaïr's memories, Vidic reveals to Desmond that Abstergo is the modern-day incarnation of the Templars, seeking to find the remaining Pieces of Eden. With Desmond having outlived his usefulness, Vidic's superiors prepare to kill him, but Lucy, who is implied to be an Assassin mole, convinces them to keep him alive for further testing. Desmond is left alone in his room, where he discovers strange drawings on the wall foretelling a catastrophic event, referencing the 2012 phenomenon, that will wipe out humanity.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: After completing "" near the end of 2003, Patrice Désilets was instructed to begin work on the next "Prince of Persia" game, with plans to release it on the seventh-generation consoles. As Microsoft and Sony had not yet revealed their next consoles, the game's initial development from January 2004 was aimed as a PlayStation 2 title, following the same linear approach that "The Sands of Time" had taken. As more information came in about the capabilities of the next-generation consoles by September 2004, Désilets' team considered expanding the "Prince of Persia" acrobatic gameplay into an open world that would be feasible on the newer systems.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Désilets wanted to move away from the lead character being a prince simply waiting for his reign to start, but a character that wanted to strive to be a king. He came upon one of his university books on secret societies and its first material related to the Order of Assassins and recognized that he could have the lead character in the game as the second-highest Assassin, seeking to be the leader of the group. The game began work under the title "Prince of Persia: Assassin", inspired by Hassan-i Sabbah's life and making heavy use of Vladimir Bartol's novel "Alamut". The assassin character was fleshed out throughout the game's three-year development in an iterative fashion. The team had some idea of how the character dressed from "Alamut" and other historical works in all-white robes and a red belt but had to envision how to detail this in the game. One of the first concept sketches, drawn by animator Khai Nguyen, suggested the concept of a bird of prey, which resonated with the team. The assassin was named Altaïr, meaning "bird of prey" in Arabic, and eagle imagery was used heavily in connection to the Assassins. The team took some creative routes to meet narrative goals and avoid the technical limitations of the consoles. Altaïr was to be a heroic character with a bit of a badass edge, and the artist borrowed elements of the "G.I. Joe" character Storm Shadow, a similarly skilled hero. Rendering long flowing robes was impossible on the newer hardware, so they shortened the robe and gave it a more feathered look, resonating the bird of prey imagery. Similar routes were taken with other parts of the gameplay to take liberties with accuracy to make the game fun to play. The team wanted Altaïr's parkour moves to look believable but sacrificed realism for gameplay value, allowing the player to make maneuvers otherwise seemingly impossible in real-life. Having leaps of faiths from high vantage points into hay piles and using hay piles to hide from guards was a similar concept borrowed from Hollywood films, but Désilets observed that "Alamut" described similar actions that the Assassins had undertaken.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: To drive the story, the team had to devise a some goal that both the Assassins and Templars were searching for. Philippe Morin suggested using the apple of Eden, which the team initially thought humorous for everyone to fight over an apple; however, as they researched, the team found that many medieval paintings of royalty and other leaders holding spherical objects similar to globus cruciger that represented power and control, and recognized that an artifact named the Apple of Eden would fit well into this concept.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Among this work was the idea of the Animus, which came about after the team decided to focus on the Assassins. The team considered that the player would travel through several cities and potentially recount numerous assassinations over the past thousand years, including notable ones such as John F. Kennedy's, which would require some time travelling. Désilets had seen a program on DNA and human history and was inspired by the idea that DNA could store human memories, then they could have an in-game machine that could be used for time and location jumps and explain other aspects of the game's user interface to the player. Désilets considered this similar to what they had established in "The Sands of Time". There, the game effectively is a story told by the Prince, and while in the game, should the player-character die, this is treated as a mistelling of the Prince's story, allowing the player to back up and retry a segment of the game. Ubisoft's marketing was not keen on the Animus idea, believing players would be confused and disappointed that the game was not a truly medieval experience. Due to this, the game's first trailer shown at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) focused heavily on medieval elements. Later marketing materials closer to the game's release hinted more directly at the science fiction elements of the game.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Initial work on the game was to expand out various systems from "Prince of Persia" to the open world concept with a team of 20 at Ubisoft Montreal. A new next-generation game engine, the Scimitar engine, was created to support the open world, though this would take about two years to complete, during which the team used the "Sands of Time" engine for development; Scimitar eventually was renamed to AnvilNext and been used for most of the following "Assassin's Creed" games and other titles at Ubisoft. Elements like wall-climbing were made more fluid, and the team worked to smooth other animation sequences; much of the improvements here came from programmer Richard Dumas and animator Alex Drouin, both of whom had worked together on the same elements in "Sands of Time". Level designers and artists recreating historical structures had to work together to ensure nearly every building could be climbable while still holding the game's historical appearances. This also helped them to give the feeling to the player that they had as much freedom as possible within the game, a concept that had originated from the success of the "Grand Theft Auto" series.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: In contrast to "Prince of Persia", where the general path that the player takes through a level is predefined, the open-world approach of this game required them to create cities that felt realistic and accurate to historical information but which the player had full freedom to climb and explore. Outside of special buildings, they crafted their cities like Lego bricks, with a second pass to smooth out the shapes of the cities to help with pathfinding and other facets of the enemy artificial intelligence. To encourage the player to explore, they included the various towers that help to reveal parts of the map. Historically, these cities had such landmark towers, and inspired by those, the developers incorporated them into the map, making these points of interest and challenges for players to drive them to climb them. Another factor was guiding the player and devising missions for the player that still gave the player freedom for how to approach it but still created specific moments they wanted the player to experience. For these cases, they used simple animations developed in Adobe Flash to lay out the fundamentals of what actions they wanted and then crafted levels and missions around those.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: As they started to recognize the need for cities in this open-world game, Désilets wanted to make sure they were also able to simulate large crowds, as this had been a limiting factor due to hardware limitations during the development of "The Sands of Time"; with the PlayStation 2 hardware, they could only support having up to eight characters on screen for "The Sands of Time", but the next-generation hardware was able to support up to 120 people. Having crowds in the game also led to the concept of social stealth, where the main character could mask themselves in the open, in addition to staying out of sight on rooftops. Désilets had come from an acting background, and one element he had incorporated into the game was to make the player-character feel more like they were controlling parts of a puppet so that the character would appear more human. This led to the use of high- and low-profile action in gameplay, which partially expressed the character's emotions and allowed the player to continue to control the character during the game's cutscenes.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: The fundamentals of gameplay were completed within nine to twelve months, and another year was spent improving it before they presented the game to Ubisoft's executives in Paris. Jade Raymond was brought in in late 2004 to serve as the game's producer, helping with the team's growth and the game's direction. From late 2005 to early 2006, following nearly two years of development, the concept for "Prince of Persia: Assassin" had the game's titular prince AI-controlled, watched over by the player-controlled Assassin that served as the Prince's bodyguard and rescued the Prince from various situations. Ubisoft's management and the development had debates on this direction; Ubisoft's management wanted another game in the "Prince of Persia" franchise and was not keen on releasing a game with that name where the Prince was not the lead character. The development team counters that with a new generation of consoles, they could potentially make it a new intellectual property. Near the 2006 Game Developers Conference, Ubisoft's marketing team came up with the idea of naming the game "Assassin's Creed", which Désilets recognized fit in perfectly with the themes they had been working on, including tying into the creed of the Assassins that "nothing is true; everything is permitted". The prince character was dropped, and the game focused solely on the assassin as the playable character.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Following the 2006 E3 presentation and the name change to "Assassin's Creed", the Ubisoft Montreal team grew to support the last year of the game's development, with up to 150 persons by the end of the process. Added team members included those that had just finished up production on "", as well as former staff that had recently been let go from Gameloft, another publisher owned by Ubisoft's co-founder Michel Guillemot. The Scimitar engine was completed, allowing the team to transfer their work and improve detail and art assets.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: According to Charles Randall, the lead AI developer for the game's combat systems, the game was initially only based on the main missions of assassinating the main targets and had no side quests. About five days before they were to have sent the final software version for mass production, they were contacted by their CEO, who said his son had played the game and found it boring and gave them a missive to add side quests. The team spent the next five days hastily rushing to add the collecting side quests to give it more depth and ensure these were bug-free to make their mass production deadline. While a few noted bugs fell through, they had otherwise met this target.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: On September 28, 2006, in an interview with "IGN", producer Jade Raymond confirmed that Altaïr is "a medieval hitman with a mysterious past" and that he is not a time traveller. In a later interview on December 13, 2006, with "IGN", Kristen Bell, who lent her voice and likeness to the game, talked about the plot. According to the interview, the plot centers on genetic memory and a corporation looking for descendants of an assassin.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: On October 22, 2007, an "IGN Australia" interview with Patrice Desilets mentioned that the lead character's climbing and running were done by "Alex and Richard – the same guys from "Prince of Persia"".


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Actor Philip Shahbaz voices Altaïr, whose face is modelled on Francisco Randez, a model from Montréal. Al Mualim's character is roughly based on Rashid ad-Din Sinan, who in 1191 was the leader of the Syrian branch of the Hashshashin in the Nizari Ismaili state and was nicknamed "The Old Man of the Mountain". Al Mualim was referred to as Sinan in "".


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: The game was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 13, 2007, in North America, November 16 in Europe, and November 21 in Australia and New Zealand.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: It was made public in April 2008 that "Assassin's Creed" would be sold digitally and available for pre-order through Valve's software distribution, Steam. The PC version of "Assassin's Creed" was released in North America on April 8, 2008. Four bonus mission types, not seen in the console versions, are included. These four missions are archer assassination, rooftop race challenge, merchant stand destruction challenge, and escort challenge. Because of these four exclusive missions that are only available on the PC, it was released and is sold under the name of "Director's Cut Edition".


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: A pirated version of the game has been in existence since late February 2008. Ubisoft purposely inserted a computer bug was purposely inserted into the pre-release version to unpredictably crash the game and prevent completion as a security measure; however, players were able to use extra content available on the Internet to bypass it. The pirated version of "Assassin's Creed" was one of the most popular titles for piracy during the first week of March 2008. The presence of the bug and performance of the pirated version of the game was believed by Ubisoft to lead to "irreparable harm" for the game and resulted in low retail sales; NPD Group reports that 40,000 copies of the PC title were sold in the United States in July, while more than 700,000 copies were illegally downloaded according to Ubisoft. In July 2008, Ubisoft sued disc manufacturer Optical Experts Manufacturing, believing the company to be the source of the leak, citing poor security procedures that allowed an employee to leave with a copy of the game.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: A digital rights management-free game version was later made by GOG.com, a digital distribution store and a subsidiary of CD Projekt and CD Projekt Red. It is available on the GOG Store and GOG Galaxy. On July 10, 2007, during Microsoft's E3 press conference, a demo was shown taking place in Jerusalem. Features that were demonstrated included improved crowd mechanics, the chase system (chasing after a target trying to flee), as well as deeper aspects of parkour. This was the first time when Altaïr could be heard speaking. It was again showcased for 20 minutes on July 11, 2007. A video showed an extended version of the E3 demo and included Altaïr trying to escape after assassinating of Talal, the slave trader.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Jade Raymond, the producer of "Assassin's Creed", said: "For "Assassin's Creed" we wanted the score to capture the gruesome atmosphere of medieval warfare but also be edgy and contemporary." The musical score was composed by Jesper Kyd in 2007. Six tracks were made available online to those who have purchased the game; a password was given to people to insert at the soundtrack section of the Ubisoft website. The soundtrack is available from various online music stores. Several tracks are also available on Kyd's MySpace and his official website. The released tracks have the archaic Latin chorus and dark orchestral music, while "Meditation Begins" features a kind of Saltarello with a very ominous, dark, ambient overtone with men whispering in Latin. The atmosphere in these tracks is what Jesper Kyd is known for and is effective "in situ".


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: "Assassin's Creed" received "generally favorable" reviews from critics according to Metacritic, a review aggregator. "Famitsu" awarded the Xbox 360 version of "Assassin's Creed" a 36 (9, 9, 9, 9) and the PlayStation 3 version a 37 (10, 8, 9, 10) out of 40, positively citing the story, presentation, and acrobatics, while criticizing the one-button combat, map layout, and camera problems. "Game Informer" awarded "Assassin's Creed" a 9.5 out of 10, praising the control scheme, replay value, and intriguing story, and expressing frustration over the repetitive information gathering missions. On "The Hotlist on ESPNews", ESPN's Aaron Boulding called the game's concept of social stealth "fairly original" and added: "Visually, the developers nailed it." "GameTrailers" praised the story (giving a 9.7 score to its story), and also cited repetitive gameplay and bad AI as somewhat stifling its potential. It wrote that ""Assassins Creed" is one of those games that breaks new ground yet fails in nailing some fundamentals." The game also received a 10 out of 10 from "GamesRadar". In Andrew P.'s review for "Electronic Gaming Monthly", he wrote that the game features "a challenging parkour path of escape".


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: While still awarding the game decent scores, several publications cited a number of significant shortcomings. "Eurogamer" stated that the gameplay "never evolves and ultimately becomes a bit boring, and quite amazingly repetitive." According to "GamePro", "Assassin's Creed" is one of the "finest gaming experiences ever created" if one is willing to be patient due to the lack of fast-paced action. "Hyper"s Darren Wells commended the game for its "great story, great graphics and intuitive controls". At the same time, he criticised it for "some missions that don't feel right on the PC and its loopy menu system." Hilary Goldstein of "IGN" gave the game a 7/10, stating that "a bad story, repetitive gameplay elements, and poor AI lead to the downfall of one of the more promising games in recent memory." Conversely, he complimented the combat animations and the climbing mechanic, and admired how accurately Ubisoft depicted the major cities of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus to their real-life counterparts. Michael Donahoe of "1Up.com" gave the game a B- for the story concept but felt the game could have done more, writing: "But it's apparent that these grandiose ideas may have been a little too much to master the first go-round. But hey, at least the groundwork is laid for a killer sequel."


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: "Assassin's Creed" won several awards at the 2006 E3. "Game Critics" awarded it "Best Action/Adventure Game"; "Best Action Game", "PS3 Game of the Show", "Best PS3 Action Game", and "Best PS3 Graphics" from "IGN"; "Best PS3 Game of the Show" from "GameSpot" and "GameSpy"; "Best of Show" from "GameTrailers"; and "Best PS3 Game" from "1UP.com". "Assassin's Creed" was nominated for several other awards by "Xplay", as well as Spike TV. It was listed by "Game Informer" at 143 in their list of the top 200 games of all time. It also received the editor's choice award from "GameSpot". In December 2015, "Game Informer" ranked it as the third-best game in the "Assassin's Creed" series to date.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: Sales for "Assassin's Creed" were said by the publisher to have "greatly outstripped" their expectations. In the United Kingdom, "Assassin's Creed" debuted at number one, knocking Infinity Ward's "" from the top; the majority of the debut sales were on the Xbox 360, which claimed 67% of the game's total sales. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases of "Assassin's Creed" each received a platinum sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies per version in the United Kingdom. On April 16, 2009, Ubisoft revealed that the game had sold 8 million copies.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: A prequel for the game, titled "", developed by Gameloft, was released on February 5, 2008, for the Nintendo DS. A port of "Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles" has also been released for the iPhone and the iPod Touch and Java ME on April 23, 2009, as well as for the Palm Pre.


title: Assassin's Creed (video game)

text: "Assassin's Creed II" was released in the United States and Canada on November 17, 2009, and in Europe on November 20, 2009.


title: Departments of France

text: In the administrative divisions of France, the department (, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level ("territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, and five are overseas departments, which are also classified as overseas regions. Departments are further subdivided into 332 arrondissements, and these are divided into cantons. The last two levels of government have no autonomy; they are the basis of local organisation of police, fire departments and, sometimes, administration of elections.


title: Departments of France

text: Each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council ( [sing.], [plur.]). From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils ( [sing.] [plur.]). Each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school () buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses, and a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; however, regions have gained importance since the 2000s, with some department-level services merged into region-level services.


title: Departments of France

text: The departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity; the title "department" is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after physical geographical features (rivers, mountains, or coasts), rather than after historical or cultural territories, which could have their own loyalties, or after their own administrative seats. The division of France into departments was a project particularly identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès, although it had already been frequently discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1665 in the writings of d'Argenson. They have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. The 1822 territorial division of Spain (reverted due to the 1823 French intervention ending the trienio liberal) and the 1833 territorial division of Spain, which forms the basis of the present day Provinces of Spain with minor modifications is also based on the French model of departments of roughly equal size.


title: Departments of France

text: Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the "Official Geographical Code", allocated by the (). Overseas departments have a three-digit number. The number is used, for example, in the postal code, and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates. Residents commonly use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, for example, inhabitants of Loiret may refer to their department as "the 45". More distant departments are generally referred to by their names, as few people know the numbers of all the departments.


title: Departments of France

text: In 2014, President François Hollande proposed to abolish departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, and to transfer their powers to other levels of governance. This reform project has since been scrapped.


title: Departments of France

text: The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the "Ponts et Chaussées" (Bridges and Highways) infrastructure administration.


title: Departments of France

text: Before the French Revolution, France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. The National Constituent Assembly decided to create a more uniform division into departments ("département") and districts in late 1789. The process began on 4 August 1789 with the elimination of provincial privileges, and a 22 December 1789 decree (with letters patent in January 1790) provided for the termination of the provincial governments.


title: Departments of France

text: The modern department system, as all-purpose units of the government, was decreed on 26 February 1790 (with letters patent on 4 March 1790) by the National Constituent Assembly. Their boundaries served two purposes:


title: Departments of France

text: The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after an area's principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine. Savoy, during its temporary occupation, became the department of Mont-Blanc. The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791.


title: Departments of France

text: The number of departments, initially 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86 (three of the original departments having been split). In 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department. The 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names.


title: Departments of France

text: The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle, Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin however remained French and became known as the Territoire de Belfort; the remaining parts of Meurthe and Moselle were merged into a new Meurthe-et-Moselle department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department. Likewise, the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new Moselle department was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name.


title: Departments of France

text: The re-organisation of Île-de-France in 1968 and the division of Corsica in 1975 added six more departments, raising the total in Metropolitan France to 96. By 2011, when the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became a department, joining the earlier overseas departments of the Republic (all created in 1946) – French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion – the total number of departments in the French Republic had become 101. In 2015, the Urban Community of Lyon was split from Rhône to form the Métropole de Lyon, a "sui generis" entity, with the powers of both an intercommunality and those of a department on its territory, formally classified as a "territorial collectivity with particular status" () and as such not belonging to any department. As of 2019, Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse are still administrative departments, although they no longer have the status of departmental "territorial collectivities": region and department functions have been managed by a "single territorial collectivity" since 2018.


title: Departments of France

text: Despite the intention to avoid the old nomenclature, often the names of pre-1790 provinces remained in use. For example, the name of Berry, though no longer having an official status, remains up to the present in widespread use in daily life.


title: Departments of France

text: The departmental seat of government is known as the prefecture () or and is generally a town of some importance roughly at the geographical centre of the department. This was determined according to the time taken to travel on horseback from the periphery of the department. The goal was for the prefecture to be accessible on horseback from any town in the department within 24 hours. The prefecture is not necessarily the largest city in the department: for instance, in Saône-et-Loire department the capital is Mâcon, but the largest city is Chalon-sur-Saône. Departments may be divided into . The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture () or .


title: Departments of France

text: Each department is administered by a departmental council (), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage, with the President of the Departmental Council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the chief executive of the department was the prefect (), who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of the French Republic. The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects () based in the subprefectures of the department. Since 1982, the prefect retains only the powers that are not delegated to the department councils. In practice, their role has been largely limited to preventing local policy from conflicting with national policy.


title: Departments of France

text: The departments are further divided into communes, governed by municipal councils. As of 2013, there were 36,681 communes in France. In the overseas territories, some communes play a role at departmental level. Paris, the country's capital city, is a commune as well as a department.


title: Departments of France

text: In continental France (metropolitan France, excluding Corsica), the median land area of a department is , which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of the ceremonial counties of England and the preserved counties of Wales and slightly more than three-and-half times the median land area of a county of the United States. At the 2001 census, the median population of a department in continental France was 511,000 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a United States county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England and Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km (1500 to 3000 sq. mi.), and a population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (10,000 km; 4000 sq. mi.), while the smallest is the city of Paris (105 km; 40 sq. mi.). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000).


title: Departments of France

text: The departments are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes, in INSEE codes (including "social security numbers") and on vehicle number plates. Initially, the numbers corresponded to the alphabetical order of the names of the departments, but several changed their names, so the correspondence became less exact. Alphanumeric codes 2A and 2B were used for Corsica while it was split but it has since reverted to 20. The two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco. Together with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code FR, the numbers form the ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments get three digits.


title: Departments of France

text: Originally, the relationship between the departments and the central government was left somewhat ambiguous. While citizens in each department elected their own officials, the local governments were subordinated to the central government, becoming instruments of national integration. By 1793, however, the revolutionary government had turned the departments into transmission belts for policies enacted in Paris. With few exceptions, the departments had this role until the early 1960s.


title: Departments of France

text: These maps cannot be used as a useful resource of voter preferences, because Departmental Councils are elected on a two-round system, which drastically limits the chances of fringe parties, if they are not supported on one of the two rounds by a moderate party. After the 1992 election, the left had a majority in only 21 of the 100 departments; after the 2011 election, the left dominated 61 of the 100 departments. (Mayotte only became a department after the election.)


title: Departments of France

text: The removal of one or more levels of local government has been discussed for some years; in particular, the option of removing the departmental level. Frédéric Lefebvre, spokesman for the UMP, said in December 2008 that the fusion of the departments with the regions was a matter to be dealt with soon. This was soon refuted by Édouard Balladur and Gérard Longuet, members of the committee for the reform of local authorities, known as the Balladur Committee.


title: Departments of France

text: In January 2008, the Attali Commission recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years.


title: Departments of France

text: Nevertheless, the Balladur Committee has not retained this proposition and does not advocate the disappearance of the departments, but simply "favors the voluntary grouping of departments", which it suggests also for the regions, with the aim of reducing the number of regions to 15. This committee advocates, on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons.


title: Departments of France

text: Each department has a coat of arms and a flag with which it is commonly associated, though not all are officially recognised or used.


title: Departments of France

text: Unlike the rest of the French possessions in Africa, Algeria was divided into overseas departments from 1848 until its independence in 1962. These departments were supposed to be "assimilated" or "integrated" to France sometime in the future.


title: Departments of France

text: There are a number of former departments in territories conquered by France during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire that are now not part of France:


title: Greater London

text: Greater London is an administrative area in England governed by the Greater London Authority. It is organised into 33 local government districts: the 32 London boroughs and the City of London. Greater London is one of the regions of England, also known as the London Region. The Greater London Authority, based in Newham as of the start of 2022, is responsible for strategic local government across the area and consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.


title: Greater London

text: Greater London can also refer to a ceremonial county formed by the 32 London boroughs. It excludes the City of London (the original walled "square mile"), which forms a separate ceremonial county.


title: Greater London

text: Greater London was first established in 1965 as a "sui generis" council area and ceremonial county under the Greater London Council on 1 April 1965 through the London Government Act 1963. The GLC was abolished in 1986. In 1994, the area was established as a government office region called "London". The Greater London Authority was formed in 2000.


title: Greater London

text: The region covers and had a population of just over 9 million. In 2018 the estimated population surpassed 9 million. Other areas, such as the London metropolitan area and Greater London Urban Area, are used in some national statistics for London, including areas outside this administrative region.


title: Greater London

text: Greater London lacks any formal recognised city status in the UK, though the local authorities of the City of Westminster and the City of London have official city status.


title: Greater London

text: As a ceremonial county, Greater London has a Lord-Lieutenant and a High Sheriff, both appointed by the British monarch, but Greater London is not one of England's historic counties. Greater London is split between parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire.


title: Greater London

text: Before the UK seceded from the European Union in 2020 after Brexit, Greater London had also been a regional constituency of the European Parliament, known generally as "London."


title: Greater London

text: The term "Greater London" has been and still is used to describe different areas in governance, statistics, history and common parlance.