Duct-Tape The Theism, Mend the Schism. Vassalise 3 Popes, 7 Patriarchs & 2 Caliphs

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
you forgot to get your own anti-pope while you were catholic in addition to vassalising the pope
for 4 popes
and id count the varangian guard as a 7th holy order (dont sell yourself short)

I love the way you think!
In fact, I had done this and at one stage did have an extra anti-pope... but totally forgot about it when I had to go back and re-do the Schism to try and work out why all of a sudden all the vassals started warring each other (but not me) over too many duchy claims. It was at that point where I realised that turning heretic dropped your CA to low (And you dont have the option to immediately raise it to medium because you need the crown law choice to turn your newly catholic realm into free investiture so you can appoint an anti-pope in the first place)

I cant believe I missed re-doing it because I had actually spent alot of time trying to work out if it was possible to come away from the Schism with 3 anti-popes.
I found that if you own a county with a catholic bishop (barony level) and as you are his de-jure liege you can appoint him as an anti-pope. Then grant the county to a random catholic count and then grant the count independence. You can then appoint a new catholic bishop (barony level) in a different county you own as the new anti-pope for your empire, with the other guy now representing his new independent county. Grant a new catholic count liege over that bishop and grant him independence as well. Finally I could then create my own anti-pope... with 3 anti-popes now in game.

Unfortunately I just couldnt get them all back into the empire after turning back to Orthodox, as it would appear that the rule of 1 anti-pope per realm still applies even if you're not Catholic. Their title would just disappear when a new one came into the realm.

Also keeping the anti-pope Catholic is an issue, because unlike all the other religious heads who are forced to remain with their current religion, you can actually still demand (and therefore it can also happen randomly) that the anti-pope changes religion to Orthodox, or that his successor is Orthodox. If either of these things happen he loses the title of (Anti)Pope, but retains the strong claim on the Catholic Papacy.

So... thankyou thankyou thankyou for mentioning it. Im definitely going to go back and fix the missing guy!
 
Wow, that is a gg i guess.
 
I'm 90% sure it would work to
(1) Make yourself an anti-pope (vassalize Pope, get him to join Independence faction and surrender when they try to break away; you get weak inheritable claim on the Papacy, which makes the game think you and your subsequent heirs are anti-Popes).
(2) Re-vassalize the Pope
(3) Create an anti-pope.
So you'd have three Catholic head-of-religion characters in your empire.
 
Very impressive, I cannot say I would have the patience or ability to legit do this myself. But I must point out a few missed opportunities. If you instead landed any holy order/mercenary leader as a KING, then killed them, YOU would get the title. I screwed around using only basic console cheats to swap around and change religions to give as many merc/religion titles I could to the Pope, for fun. I was able to make the Pope the Hochmeister/Grandmaster of all 4 Holy Orders, and Captain of the Varangian Guard(I would have done the Mamluks too, but the Fatimids were already in decline and since I was just screwing around and then watching in observer I didn't want to put the time in to get them an Empire title so I could give the Mamluks a king title, kill them, switch to catholic, give the title to the pope, then switch to observer and remove the now-catholic fatimid emperor. And as for the Ghilman Company, I didn't even realize they existed, don't play Muslims much. Are they Seljuk vassals?
Oh yeah, I also gave the Byzzies all of the other religious heads like you did, but I could only get them to be his vassals.
This reminds me, I need to play that save and see what the hell happens.(Unfortunately probably not much, as funny as the Papacy holding all those powerful titles sounds, I wouldn't see much of a difference in the game unless I gave them to Rus or something.)
 
Alexander would be proud!
 
I hope paradox never fixes this.
 
I wonder though, OP, what went through your head before you did this? Did it come gradually to do such lunacy, or as a flash of madness?

Of all things, I find vassalizing Mamluks the most astonishing. Not because it's the most difficult, but because it's the most gamey - it's so gamey it's beyond gamey :D