My very soul has been cleft into pieces on this day. January 3rd, 902 AD. First, my Christian faith fractured in twain. I stand in Rome, head of the Roman Rite and now the leader of the Catholic world. My neighbours to the east have chosen to walk a different path, transforming their Greek Rite into a new Orthodoxy followed by the Byzantine Empire.
It’s a brave new world in Crusader Kings 3’s By God Alone expansion, made even tougher to face by the three additional wounds I gained right at the moment of the split. All three of my wives have divorced me, serving their papers within seconds of each other. Taken alongside the betrothal that my fourth wife-to-be broke not too long before the schism, it really stings. Sure, I’m the Pope and thus should be celibately devoting myself to God, but a breakup’s a breakup. It’s not all consecrated bread and wine when you’ve managed to end up on Wikipedia’s list of sexually active popes thanks to an utterly hilarious bug.
To be clear, when I took over the 60-something year old body of Pope Nicolaus back in 867 AD, my immediate goal wasn’t to become one of the foremost shaggers in all of Christendom. I was open to being whatever my faith demanded of me as the great schism that in the real world came to a head in 1054 loomed. I came in as one of the foremost figures in one of said schism’s two factions, the Roman Rite of Chalcedonian Christianity. I spoke Latin and shared the exact same beliefs as my fellow Italians, the English, and a fair few other Kingdoms throughout Europe.
In the east, they spoke Greek and had their own trio of main tenets. To the North, a vast swath of Europe followed a third path, the Carolinginian Rite, and had their own slightly divergent creed. Dotted across the map were other, smaller strains of Christianity, all with their own takes on the same religious framework. We’re all alike, but very much not alike, and we’re competing for the souls of the masses. As a succession of Popes, I campaigned to try and prevent Chalcedonianism from splitting in two. Others worked to drive it apart. The build to the possible schism saw the religious climate go through different stages, with different religious actions and events during each one contributing to what the next will be. Sometimes things are in a state of fragile unity, allowing you to breathe a sigh of relief. Sometimes, it’s time to do some crusading, and so religious military actions become more rewarding. Sometimes it’s time for everyone to get their mass conversion pants on, or reformers are given more favourable terms in which to reject or rearrange bits of the clergy’s established order.
I spent most of my efforts on relentlessly appointing new cardinals and building grand Romanesque cathedrals, as well as going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. It’s not easy to be an outdoorsy Pope, though. Three of the five I played as came to me as wizened old geezers pushing 70, with health starting to fail and mainly book-learning in the skills department. Each Pope, you see, is elected from a trio of top cardinals. So, unlike with typical feudal rulers, the next person up isn’t usually a relatively youthful son or daughter in the same bloodline. It’s one of your weird neighbours with their own take on which religious tenets are best. Thankfully, the third Pope I landed - Caelestinus - came to power as a spry 49-year-old.
It was under his guidance that things began to get weird. My efforts to push Christianity in the direction I desired, a permanent prevention of the schism, didn’t seem to be making too much of an impact. I’d convinced plenty of European rulers who already followed my rite to adopt my schism stance, but despite having a fair swath of Italy submit to papal vassilisation, I lacked the skill in guile or surplus of troops to feel too comfortable trying to manipulate or muscle around my religious opponents. The typical means of acquiring more might that I use when playing feudal rulers, marrying off my family to folks from more powerful nations in return for alliances, wasn’t on offer here. Rulers sharing my rite might opt to join in any wars I started for holy reasons, but their participation in that case isn’t as reliable or locked in.
So, I decided to get radical. I made a bunch of changes to the Roman Rite, spending just enough piety points to make substantial tweaks without going over 100 divergence score and stepping into ‘This is just a whole new religion now’ territory. In came polyamory as a core tenet. Out went the rules about women not being able to become high-ranking clergy. Out went the rules against both men and women committing adultery. Finally, in came a rule that in this rite, we’re all for polygamous marriages rather than monogamous ones. Equality and modern sensibilities were here, even if I stopped short of trying to make witchcraft something celebrated rather than shunned, or working in the human sacrifice tenet I’d learned of from the Scandinavian pagans’ Asatru beliefs. These changes were abrupt, but I had done some prior work to facilitate the smooth adoption of polyamory, hosting an ecumenical council at which I managed to convince my fellow church bigwigs that the polyamory tenet should be taken off the list of ones we actively shunned.
As I set the changes in motion, I feared I was about to be branded a heretic and have my spiritual fulfilment meter dip from all good to serious work needed. Instead, pretty much every other religious rite within Chalcedonianism immediately declared themselves no longer part of it. I wasn’t the lone heretic for straying from the norms so suddenly, they were all heretics for not following my lead. Hey, that works for me, I thought. Though on second thought I wasn’t sure it’d necessarily help in preventing the schism. If anything, I’d likely just sped the split up.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/crusader-kings-3s-by-god-alone-expansion-offers-plenty-of-holy-hijinks-even-if-your-polyamorous-pope-doesnt-get-divorced-three-times-in-one-day
