guide me into the grey

An Eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) on Cradle Mountain, Tasmania, Australia

Rayhan clearly trusted Hytham's abilities in spying but not enough to tell him what to look out for. And with having him spy on Basim he sacrificed his own student, in a way. Like he couldn't know what Basim might have done to him if or when he found out what Hytham's true motives were. It also means Rayhan a bit like an absent father missed most if not all of Hytham's training. I'm sure in the beginning Hytham feels more loyalty and duty to Rayhan, as his mentor, and one of, if not the leader of the Abbasid branch of the Hidden Ones, but clearly Hytham starts feeling loyalty to Basim too. If it would have come down to it, it's not as clear on which side Hytham would have stood on. He betrayed Basim's supposed trust from the get go by agreeing to spy on him but he betrayed Rayhan's trust in having Basim know that he was spying on him but not telling Rayhan, and instead staying by Basim's side. Isn't that just wack? And when Basim is supposedly dead and Hytham is made to return to Alamut briefly, what would that reunion be like? Hytham filled with grief over a man he knew he shouldn't trust fully, and Rayhan who perhaps wouldn't consider Hytham to have done his job, but who certainly didn't fail it, because in the end, Basim's demise posed no threat to the Hidden Ones, and with him out of the way, they won't have to worry any longer.

ALSO. When I've played Mirage, the only interactions with Rayhan have just been like. Strict. Formal. Perhaps because Basim then only interacted with him in Strict Formal Settings but I also have to wonder if Rayhan was the same with Hytham? Was he one of the Hidden Ones who made Hytham feel like a son, or was he as cold and distant in general as he was in Mirage? Perhaps if Rayhan was cold then it could explain why Hytham attached so easily to Basim, who was distant but showed warmth, but if Rayhan was kinder, more fatherly, perhaps that would add to the guilt Hytham could feel about the double roles he plays between Basim and the Hidden Ones. So many possibilities....

lets be real - the fact that Hytham was stuck in his silly scroll-reading animation while Eivor was telling him his mentor and long-time companion betrayed them all and died at the end of AC Valhalla kinda showed that the game devs/story writers didn't give much thought to the pair.

Even in the final DLC cutscene (Fare thee Well Young Eagle) when Eivor said goodbye to Hytham, he never brought Basim up. we get that one shot of Basim nodding when Hytham says the Assassins treated him as a son, but nothing from Hytham.

why, why, is the only moment where we are given some insight into how Hytham felt about Basim's betrayal and death only found in a random spin-off book about the art/creation of AC Valhalla ( Logs and Files of a Hidden One ) ?? and only in the conclusion to that book as an aside? there is SO MUCH potential, so much complexity to that, but ubislop cannot get there gear together and risk a whole game on the now very expansive story of Hytham, including all these bits they failed to actually give us and we have to dig for..

AC: Young Eagle !! imagine!! from the timeline of Mirage and his orphan story, to getting to Alamut and joining the Brotherhood, to his adventure with Basim in The Golden City, to meeting Sigurd in Constantinople and travelling to the events of AC Valhalla (and we can get side stories unseen from that time as to not repeat Valhalla's story, including his grief losing Basim), to Post-Valhalla (like the DLC Mission, training new recruits, being the leader of the assassin's in England, so much potential there!!) to even when Edward Kenway names his kid H(a)ytham because he finds all the old manuscripts by Hytham in the England branch and probably retains them -- Evie and Jacob Frye could find them in his mansion during the events of AC Syndicate and make a silly joke like 'wow this guy added 'a' to this geezer's name for his own son, what an eejat' ... to modern day Basim reflecting on it all (and FINALLY continuing that modern day plot of Basim!!!! which we are WAITING FOR UBISOFT!!!!!)