In the pre-release version of the By God Alone expansion for Crusader Kings 3, the Pope could have several wives and sire bastards due to a bug

On January 3, 902, the Christian church split in Crusader Kings 3. The Roman Rite became Catholicism, while the Greek Rite turned into Orthodoxy, followed by the Byzantine Empire. The player, as Pope, took charge of the Catholic world and lost all of his wives in the same moment.

This is all happening in the By God Alone expansion. When the schism hit, three wives left the pontiff at once, filing for divorce within seconds of each other. Shortly before that, his betrothal to a fourth bride-to-be had fallen through as well.

A bug was to blame. Thanks to it, the virtual Pope could have made a serious claim to a spot on the list of the most sexually active pontiffs.

The game began in 867, when the player took over Pope Nicolaus, who was already past 60. Turning him into Christendom's biggest womanizer wasn't the plan. The great schism, which happened in 1054 in real history, loomed ahead, and Nicolaus was one of the key figures of the Roman Rite of Chalcedonian Christianity. His followers spoke Latin and shared their faith with the Italians, the English, and the people of several other European kingdoms.

In the east, people spoke Greek and held to their own three main tenets. To the north, much of Europe followed the Carolingian Rite, with a slightly different creed. Smaller branches of Christianity dotted the map too, each with its own take on the same religious foundation.

The buildup to a possible schism unfolds in several stages, and each one depends on what players did during the previous one. Periods of fragile unity let everyone catch their breath. Then comes a time when crusades pay off better, followed by mass conversions, while reformers get friendlier terms for rejecting the church's established order.

The player focused mainly on appointing new cardinals, building Romanesque cathedrals, and making a pilgrimage to Canterbury. An active lifestyle is hard for a Pope. Popes are elected from the three top cardinals, so the successor is never a young heir from the same dynasty but a figure from a neighboring faction with a different view of religious tenets.

Of the five Popes the player controlled, three took power as frail elders close to 70. Their health was failing, and learning was their strongest skill. The third pontiff, Caelestinus, ascended to the papal throne at 49.

Things got weird under Caelestinus. Attempts to prevent the schism for good barely made a dent. The player convinced many European rulers of his rite to adopt his stance, and part of Italy accepted papal vassalization. But there was neither enough cunning nor enough spare troops to pressure religious opponents.

The usual feudal way to gain strength, marrying off relatives to powerful nations in exchange for alliances, isn't available here. Rulers of the same rite can join holy wars, but their participation isn't guaranteed.

So the player went radical. Piety points went into changes to the Roman Rite, though not enough to push divergence past 100 and turn the rite into a whole new religion. Here is what changed in the tenets:

• polyamory became a core tenet;

• the ban on women holding high church positions was lifted;

• the rules against adultery for both men and women were scrapped;

• the rite began to favor polygamous marriages over monogamous ones.

Witchcraft stayed condemned, and the human sacrifice tenet borrowed from the Scandinavian pagans stayed out. The player had prepared for the reform in advance. At an ecumenical council, he convinced the church leadership to take polyamory off the list of actively shunned tenets.

The expectation was to be branded a heretic and watch the spiritual fulfillment meter plunge. Instead, almost every other rite within Chalcedonianism immediately declared itself no longer part of it. The heretics turned out to be the ones who didn't follow the reform. Still, the schism could only get worse from this, since the process might simply speed up.

The game immediately started scolding the Pope for not having enough spouses. He soon married three women, including the daughter of the Doge of Venice. To be safe, he also launched seduction schemes against the married queens of England and Bavaria.

The personal polyamory tenet gave an extra flirtation scheme on top of the usual limit. That made it possible to study scripture and raise learning at the same time.

Despite modest intrigue skills compared to rulers who picked that lifestyle, the player quickly picked up three illegitimate children. Since adultery had become acceptable in the Roman Rite, to which both realms belonged, the queens' husbands barely objected. That worked out for King Alfred of England. He had earned the nickname "The Hammer" for his victories over his neighbors, and his lands stretched all the way to Tuscany, next door to the papal domain.

Same-sex relationships were among the rite's new allowances too. Alfred, however, showed no interest in getting closer.

Queen Cecile of Bavaria, on the other hand, agreed to betroth the player to her daughter. That brought the desired military alliance with a strong army. The offspring kept piling up, both legitimate and illegitimate.

The first sign that something was off came when the betrothal to Cecile daughter was suddenly broken. A pop-up explained that the player had devoted his life to God and could no longer marry. The three current wives didn't mind at first.

Then a Tuscan duke and Byzantium, probably tired of the religious experiments, attacked the Pope. Before the war began, the player managed to get betrothed again, and Bavaria came to the rescue. The betrothal kept breaking off shortly after each conflict started, though.

After roughly nine stages of the religious situation, the schism happened anyway. The Roman Rite became Catholicism, and the player remained head of the faith. All the wives left, and no new marriages could be arranged.

The reforms had a lasting effect, though. After the pontiff died and one short-lived male successor followed, the world got its first female Pope. She also turned out to be rich, since her predecessors had annexed vassals and set up holy orders.

To check whether it was truly a bug or a clever use of the new religious mechanics, the author reached out to Paradox. The studio confirmed that the game shouldn't work this way but couldn't reproduce the situation. The issue has likely been fixed already, so getting an equally romance-hungry pontiff in the release version probably won't be possible.