I brought Assasin's Creed 2 and Assasin's Creed Brotherhood off some friends, so far into AC 2 I don't really get the story. I've always wanted to get into the AC series so I thought I might as well start now.

I chose to skip AC 1 because many reviews say its pretty average, so I thought I'd start with the with better one, at the expense of the story.

If some one could give a a brief insight into the story line of AC 1 and the events leading into AC 2, that would be great!