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Tinto Flavour #14 - 17th of April 2025 - The Papal States

Hello, and welcome to another session of our Tinto Flavour. This week we are continuing with the Christian Easter feel by taking a look at the Papal States.

Since its creation by the hand of Saint Peter himself, the Catholic Church has been guiding all of humanity to salvation through the ages, thanks to the leadership of the bishop of Rome, the Pope.

Starting with the Donation of Pepin, the blessed Papal States were created to both govern and help the faithful. However, the last decades have been a constant struggle as the death of Pope Bonifatius VIII Gaetani Aquila forced the relocation of the court to the exclave of Avignon, as the Papacy fell under the influence of King Philippe IV the Fair Capet, and its holdings in Italy were dominated by quarreling noble families.

What will the vicar of Christ do? Will he fully become a puppet of the Kingdom of France and allow the temporal rule over the spiritual? Or will he break free and rise to the position at the top of Creation that God himself intended for its Church?
Click to expand...

Let’s look at the country directly:
Pope.png

As usual, consider all art as WIP.​

And here are the lands they have, taking into account that their capital is in Avignon, not in Rome.
Country Map.png


They start with a special government reform, unique to the Papacy:
Holy See.png


And they also have some special privileges, representing their division between their French and Italian holdings:
French Cardinals.png

Powerful Italian Families.png


And also a unique policy:
Papacy Policy.png


They also have a work of art:
Palais des Papes.png


And here are some of their unique advances:
Word of the Lord.png

Glory to Rome.png

Donation of Constantine.png

Holy Father.png


One particular characteristic of the Papacy is that their succession is not like the rest of the countries. As such, they have a special succession law:
Papal Conclave.png


That makes it so that when a Pope dies, the country enters into a Papal Conclave Regency, and eventually it will be resolved with an event firing, where the player will be able to choose between some of the cardinals available.
Conclave Regency.png

Conclave Election.png


Here are some more events available to the Papacy:
Castello Event.png


Giving access to this special building:
Castello.png


And events for some special individuals:
Raffael.png

Galileo.png

Borgia.png

I’m sure this last one will have no repercussions whatsoever…​

There’s also some events about some famous "refurbishings":
Sistine Chapel.png

Sistine Chapel Artists.png

Saint Peter.png

Saint Peter Monument.png


… and much more, but that is all we will show for today. Next week we will go to the military branch of Christianity by taking a look at the Military Orders of the Teutonic & Livonian Orders and Knights Hospitallers. See you there.
 
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Roger Corominas said:
Saint Peter is considered the first Pope, that's what is referring to. Changed the pronoun in the last sentence, thank you.
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There's not a good way to rephrase this sentence to be correct and maintain a similar meaning to the original.

What the other commenter was getting at is that Catholics don't consider Peter to be the founder of the Catholic Church, they consider Jesus to be the founder, who then delegated authority (Keys of Heaven) to Peter.
 
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DominusNovus said:
Sadly, the whole affair is just so convoluted to model with any fidelity to the history of it. I just don’t want the Church to be presented as the cartoonish villain in this case.

Though it would be fun if one of the possibilities were to be Galileo suggesting “maybe we don’t see stellar parallax because other stars are just so much further away than we ever dreamed.”
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I mean it would probably have much less of an effect on the flow of learning than people make it out to be, the whole sense Galileo was a great mind, mainly due to the ability to study the huge libraries on ballistics laid out by people from northern italy and southern germany especially, while working with the best ground lenses in the world at the time may have sped things up a decade or two but it would just be another name we would be another name we would be celebrating if he became a theologian instead. Galileo could have just as easily discovered brothels and gambling as much as the huge access books while he was avoiding the inquisition, now there's an event chain to get the game banned in Australia!!
 
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Paulatim said:
I propose using they/them and referring to them as hermaphrodite, as they are intended to be a sort of unified triad of son, father and spooky ghost.
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I can't tell if this was a failed attempt at humor, or a very unnecessary insult at people of faith. Perhaps both.
 
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I feel like Saint Peter's Basilica should be a building rather than a monument, same goes for the Palais the Papes as they were used for inhabitation and chruch cerimonies
 
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In the last sentence of the intro flavour, "himself" and
Roger Corominas said:
Saint Peter is considered the first Pope, that's what is referring to. Changed the pronoun in the last sentence, thank you.
Click to expand...
"himself" and "his" in the last sentence, as well as in the Word of the Lord advance, should also be capitalised, since they're written from the Papal States' perspective and they would use reverential capitalisation when referring to God.
 
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looks fantastic
great and detailed representation of history
will they be able to adopt an advanced government system alike to constituional monarchy with the Pope still head of the church but ceremonial over the papal states?
and please don't have the lame meme kingdom of heaven name switch if it gets big or unites italy that PDX keeps doing
 
Idea for if the Papal State loses all territory, they reappear as a Building Based Country to simulate the Pope giving up temporal power to focus on the spiritual. A Catholic nation that takes the last territory of the Papal States can allow the Pope to remain at its last capital (with decreasing relationship penalties over time) or kick out the Papacy. Heretic and heathens would more likely kick out the Papacy, but could let it stay and make it a subject (with heavy relationship penalties to Catholic nations), similar to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
 
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matfer13 said:
I feel like Saint Peter's Basilica should be a building rather than a monument, same goes for the Palais the Papes as they were used for inhabitation and chruch cerimonies
Click to expand...
Pope got kicked out from Rome and reestablished in some random bishopric in EU4 games from time to time. A harsh requirement to build the Pope's building again should be reasonable. Like if Rome under some Islamic or sunset invasion nation rule for centuries or something, Pope still gonna build something in papal state.
 
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