
To start with, the Templars' obsessions were the identity of Christ and the keeping of the treasure supposedly found under Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. Hence their amazing wealth and the mystery surrounding their Pope-protected order. It was founded in order to protect the Holy City : their status was intriguing as they were both monks and soldiers. Even after the dissolution of their order, a secret society emerged, with Grand Masters, with rites of passage and traditions that paved the way for the Free-Masons.
Now, the fascination for the Knights Templar is reaching new heights : a long declension of films, documentaries, books (essays and novels) and television dramas can be set up. National Treasure, the inevitable Da Vinci Code and the current French series The Cursed Kings are the most obvious. This superproduction is drawn from the seven-volume novel written in the 1950's by the traditionalist French Academicien Maurice Druon about the history of the Capetian Kings as from Philip IV the Fair in the fourteenth century. Modern warfare pushed him to require more money : he asked the Knights Templar, who refused ; they were subsequently arrested, charged with heresy and a decade later their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, burning at the stake, uttered the eponymous omen : "Cursed, you are all cursed, for thirteen generations!" ("Maudits, vous etes tous maudits, jusqu'a la treizieme generation!"). A prophecy which, when looking at the genealogy and the fates of the Capetians, rings true.

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