Celtic pagan rebels?

[MagisterMundi]

With Charlemagne pushing the date back to an appropriate time period, I think there's lots of opportunity for Celtic pagans to make an appearance. Although Celtic lands were all at least nominally Christian at this point, the folk religion was still so strong that clergy often had to remind people that going to Church on Sunday morning and worshiping the old gods at night was not, in fact, Christian. See also the large number of saints added to Catholicism during this time. It would be an easy thing to implement, too - if someone managed to get a player character to be a Celtic pagan, I imagine the Germanic system could be made to work quite well with only a few minor modifications. Same goes for events.

I could see it being part of peasant revolts, or some sort of unrest event.

Anyone else think this is a workable/desirable idea, or is it just me? It just seems strange to me that such a major branch of paganism at the time isn't represented at all in game.

 

[Dirt McStain]

In Russia they called in dvoyeveriye - dual faith. While peasants would claim Orthodox Christianity, they would still practice pagan beliefs privately or at the very least hold a lot of superstitions tied to paganism.

I'm not sure how the game could model this properly. I suppose the early starts could give a lot of Celtic courtiers the Sympathy for Pagans trait and maybe even have that become inheritable via education. Not sure what that would accomplish when the game treats a Catholic majority as a 100% converted land. You can't really have any Celtic religious lands undergoing conversion since that would imply that land is less than 50% Catholic. I suppose that you could also treat it as a heresy.

 

[keynes2.0]

The game doesn't model syncretic practices well. Everything is modeled around Christians and Muslims holy warring each other or Catholics persecuting Carthars in Aquitaine. As such modeling celtic practices as a different religion would just result in all sorts of silly things. Syncretic celtic practices kept around for a long time but nobody was going to start holy wars over them. If you put it in that would happen 100% of the time.

 

[MagisterMundi]

Hm. I almost feel like this could be worth a DLC, then - one that specifically introduces a syncretic faith system. After all, it was a major thing in multiple cultures, not just Celtic cultures. It's a major, major part of the Crusader Kings timeline, and something I've wanted since the first game, personally.