Walpole, Conway, Kenway and Black Sam Bellamy

During the eventful beginning of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the pirate of our hearts Edward Kenway, ex-privateer and currently a sailor on a pirate brig called The Jacobite, survives a nasty naval battle and the even nastier sinking of his ship and finds himself on an idyllic tropical beach with white sand, palm trees and the crystal waters of the sea full of the remains of his fellow sailors and well as of those that were on the HMS Intrigue, the hostile frigate that attacked his brig. Very soon he realizes that he is not alone on that beautiful beach, as there is one more survivor, who not only was sailing on the HMS Intrigue, but he was the one who assassinated the captain of Edward's ship and would surely have killed more sailors had the Jacobite's magazine not detonated, which caused the sudden explosion and subsequent sinking of the brig. 

Edward and Duncan on the idyllic Caribbean beach

Heavily hurt but still resilient, the stranger, knowing that Edward is a pirate, asks him - well, more like, he demands - to help him get to Havana, which was his original destination, by offering a considerable amount of money. Sensing that he does not have any gold on him, however, Edward approaches the man to discuss the offer further. Although Edward's attitude is not really hostile, the man gets defensive and threatens to shoot him, only to find out that his pistol is temporarily jammed due to its exposure in the water. 

Duncan threatens to shoot Edward

He throws away the gun in a fury and runs away, and a long and rather exciting chase ensues, through a flourishing forest with vibrant tropical flowers, rainbow-bathed waterfalls, lovely lagoons and harmless fauna, while Edward makes failed attempts to convince the stranger that they could work together and get to Havana by helping each other out. The other guy becomes more hostile and even shoots Edward (thankfully our hero is only grazed by the bullet), obviously by using another pistol; the chase then becomes even more stressing until they reach a clearing where they have a face-off during which Edward is forced to kill the man on the spot, in clear self-defense.

Edward searches the dead body of his mysterious assailant

By searching the items that he was carrying, Edward finds a letter addressed to the now dead assailant. His name was Duncan Walpole and he was on route to meet the Governor of Havana in order to give him a couple of maps and a glass cube of major importance, in exchange for gold. As it is revealed from the letter, the Governor had never seen Mr Walpole, so he did now know how he looked like, an information that instantly gave the ingenious Edward the idea to assume the man's identity and present himself to the Governor as Duncan Walpole so as to claim the dead man's promised reward. Stranded and without any resources as he was at the coast of Cape Bonavista, this looked like the only possible way out for him. So he puts on Duncan's outfit, takes the cube, the letter and the maps, and sets for Havana.

Edward with Duncan Walpole's Assassin uniform

What Edward did not know was that Duncan Walpole was an Assassin, just about to betray his Brotherhood and join the Templar Order, in which the Governor of Cuba belonged as well, being also the Grand Master of the West Indies Rite. Unaware of this crucial detail and completely ignorant about the existence of Assassins and Templars (they are secret societies, after all), Edward eventually reaches Havana and makes his acquaintance with the Governor, introducing himself as Duncan Walpole. During the meeting, he learns about the existence of the Observatory, a sacred place that carries a rare and special treasure but the location of which is unknown, and only one man, called the Sage, knows where it is. 

Edward in lively Havana

The sham works perfectly, and Edward gets his reward; however later, due to a series of miscalculated and hasty moves, his deceit is exposed and the Governor, furious not only because of having been deceived but also because Edward had killed a very promising and skilled future Templar, who also knew secrets of the Assassin Brotherhood, therefore would have been additionally valuable for the Order, has him captured and sends him off on a prisoner ship. From that point and on, our hero takes his fate in his own hands, manages to free himself with the help of Adewale, an escapee slave from Trinidad, steals a brigantine which he calls The Jackdaw, becomes a pirate captain and sets sail for Nassau, where a group of pirates who were his comrades during his privateering days had established an independent Republic state. A succession of adventures follows, during which Edward gets to know about the Assassin Brotherhood, realizes that he has all the gifts and skills that could make him an Assassin too, meets the Mayan Master Assassin Ah Tabai, who used to be Duncan's mentor and now feels betrayed and is skeptical about accepting Edward in the Brotherhood; he painfully parts with some of his friends one way or the other, and he eventually manages to locate the Sage, who turns out to be fellow pirate Bartholomew Roberts. Edward subsequently reaches the Observatory with him, only to fall in a nearly lethal trap that results in a bounty being put on his head and him ending up imprisoned in a Jamaican jail. 

Laureano Torres threatens Edward in the prison grounds

Because he is a pirate, because of the bounty but mainly because he refused to cooperate with Laureano Torres and his associates by not revealing the location of the Observatory, as part of his punishment he is locked in a cage for several hours each day, both as a deterrent for the other imprisoned pirates, but mainly in order to have him weakened and hopefully make him talk. This routine is repeated for several months until one day Ah Tabai sneaks in the prison grounds, still unsure about accepting Edward in the Brotherhood, but nonetheless willing to help him escape. Just before this happens, the guards who are responsible for keeping an eye on the prisoners in the cages take their positions and they start gossiping and mocking Edward for the unlucky state in which he found himself. As part of their cruel teasing, they call him Walpole, bringing back memories of how it all began; and they deliberately misspell his own name by calling him Conway.

Edward in captivity

There is a very interesting connection between these two names, Walpole and Conway, especially since they are heard the one after the other in the same context, with Edward's real surname being the link between them. Duncan Walpole, the "devilishly handsome" traitor of the Assassin Brotherhood, shares the same surname with Horace Walpole (1717-1797), politician and writer who authored the "Castle of Otranto" (1964), which is considered the first Gothic novel. Long before Gothic literature became popular through the writings of the Victorian era writers, Horace Walpole wrote his eery, chilling novel narrating the story of a family haunted by an accursed prophecy. Walpole himself was a restless spirit, and took on several professions throughout his life, but he was rather solitary, he never married and his closest friend to whom he was also strongly (and probably suspiciously) attached was a cousin of his, named Henry Seymour Conway (1721-1795).

Horace Walpole (by Rosalba Carriera, left) and his cousin Henry Conway (right)

So see how Walpole and Conway, the names with which the guards call Edward, are already connected to each other. But there is one more connection, which again ties them with Edward Kenway. Henry Conway, an army general who had taken on several military operations and was also involved in politics, did marry unlike his cousin and although he too was attached to Horace since they came together for the first time at Eaton College. His wife, the young widow of an Earl, was called Caroline, sharing the name of Edward's wife in Black Flag.

Edward and Caroline in one of the story's flashbacks

Just like her real-life namesake, Black Flag's Caroline was also born in a wealthy family, and her romance with and subsequent marriage to Edward was frowned upon by her parents. For its own part, this fact connects Edward to the real-life pirate captain Samuel Bellamy, also known as Black Sam Bellamy, a London-born buccaneer, who operated in the West Indies during the Golden Age of Piracy and whose personality and life story seem to have been a major inspiration behind Edward's character. 

 

Captain Samuel Bellamy, by Gregory Manchess

 

Before becoming a pirate and while serving the Royal Navy as a privateer, Samuel Bellamy was engaged to a girl named Mary Hallet, whose family disapproved of their romance. In order to prove himself worthy and become wealthy enough, Samuel turned to piracy, after connecting with Benjamin Hornigold and Edward Teatch (or Thatch, the famous Blackbeard, to whom Hornigold was a mentor). Mary was pregnant when he left, something that Samuel ignored, exactly how things turned out for Edward; but unlike Caroline, who gave birth to Jennifer, Mary suffered a miscarriage. All these facts share many similarities with Edward's life adventures, as does the sinking of the real Spanish Treasure Fleet in 1715 during a disastrous storm, a historical event and the incident that in Black Flag gave Edward the chance to become a pirate captain: while sailing in the waters of the Treasure Fleet's wreckage looking for gold, just like lots of others buccaneers and pirates who had rushed to the site for the same purpose, Bellamy and his friend Henry Jennings eventually joined Hornigold and Blackbeard's pirate crew, similarly how Edward, after surviving the hurricane, in which the Treasure Fleet sunk, sailed to Nassau to reconnect with his old comrades, the very same Benjamin Hornigold and Ed Thatch, with Adewale and his newly acquired crew on his Jackdaw.

 

The Jackdaw sailing away from the sunken Treasure Fleet

 

Although he soon became legendary, Samuel Bellamy rarely resorted to violence, which is why he was fondly nicknamed Prince of Pirates and Robin Hood of the Sea. He was a strikingly beautiful young man, just like Edward; only he had black hair - pretty much like Duncan Walpole; and he used to have his hair tied back in a queue, ditching the wig that was a trend until then - a stylistic modernity that post-posthumously earned him the nickname Black Sam Bellamy (because he would show off his black hair). As we see in the game, both Edward and Duncan have their hair tied back; and they are both very handsome and attractive, like the real-life captain. It looks like several characteristics of Samuel Bellamy were split between the two characters, which makes their fatal meeting in the Caribbean Sea and the fact that they essentially became one person for the brief time during which Edward impersonated Duncan, even more interesting and intriguing. 

 

Samuel Bellamy (by Don Maitz), Duncan Walpole and Edward Kenway

Furthermore, when during the dialogue with Stede Bonnet on the latter's ship after their meeting, Edward comments that most pirates prefer to sail in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola, he is making a tribute to Samuel Bellamy in fact, as it was in that exact refererred location where the real-life pirate captain spotted the Whydah Gally, a grand slave ship which was carrying big amounts of gold, valuable materials and a large number of slaves. Bellamy went on to capture the ship and eventually claimed its ownership, becoming its captain. Incidentally, the name of Edward's ship, The Jackdaw, alludes to Samuel Bellamy's ship, as the Whydah is also a bird species. The original captain of the Whydah was the real-life Dutch buccaneer Laurens Prins who, in Black Flag, appears as the slave trader who had employed Bartholomew Roberts before attempting to sell him to the Templars. Captain Bellamy became the richest pirate in history, but this came with the biggest cost: he lost his life during a storm in which his ship was caught, after having plundered several other vessels and collected a big amount of gold from them. The Whydah went down and he was drowned with most of his men just off Cape Cod, when he was only 28 years old. Duncan Walpole was killed by Edward at the age of 36, and Edward was murdered when he was 42. They all died young, sharing the tragic fate that so often accompanies both heroes and villains, real and fictional alike.