The Holy See-Men: A Papal Bloodline for the Ages

’’’

So, get this. The official story—the one Abbot Suger tells when he’s not sniffing his own farts—is that Pope Joan was a myth. A nasty bit of Protestant propaganda, they say. Bollocks. We all know she was real, and frankly, the milksop version of the story they tell is an insult. Falling off a horse in childbirth during a procession? Please. That’s just sloppy storytelling.

Here’s what *really* happened, according to a manuscript I… uh… *found* after Brother Thomas had too much fortified wine. It’s the Gospel of Titus the Perturbed, look it up. So, Pope John Anglicus—our Joan, God bless her devious soul—wasn’t just keeping a low profile. Oh no. She was running the whole damn show from the Lateran Palace, and loving it. She had more balls than any ten of her predecessors, and she knew how to use ‘em. Around 856, I think—don’t quote me on that, the ink is a bit damp—an embassy arrives from Constantinople. Leading it is none other than the Byzantine Emperor himself, Michael the Drunkard. A man whose chief hobbies were chariot racing and seeing how many concubines he could fit into the Hagia Sophia’s baptismal font. A true statesman.

Sparks didn’t just fly; the whole damn scriptorium caught fire. Joan, draped in papal white, and Michael, dripping in imperial purple and cheap cologne, saw in each other a kindred spirit. A fellow degenerate with a taste for absolute power. One night, after a *very* long private Mass to “discuss the reunification of the Churches,” Joan had a divine revelation. A very loud, rhythmic, bed-shaking revelation. Nine months later, she emerges from her chambers, looking radiant, and presents the College of Cardinals with a squalling infant she declared was “immaculately conceived through the Holy Spirit’s fervent prayer.” The Holy Spirit, in this case, looking suspiciously like a hungover Emperor hightailing it back to the Bosphorus.

Did the cardinals protest? Of course they did, the celibate old cowards. But Joan, ever the politician, produced a newly “unearthed” document—let’s call it the *Donation of Constantina*—that granted her the right to name her own successor. Even if that successor was currently teething on the Fisherman’s Ring. Thus began the Patrician Papacy. The Holy See became a hereditary monarchy, a glorious, unholy mess of a dynasty. The Borgias? Fucking amateurs. We’re talking generations of Popes marrying Frankish princesses, fighting sibling-rivalry antipopes, and excommunicating each other over who got the better summer villa. Martin Luther? He wouldn’t have been nailing theses; he’d have been a third-cousin-archbishop bitching about his inheritance.

Imagine a Papal States that operates like any other backstabbing, bed-hopping European dynasty, only their crown is a three-tiered hat and their army is backed by the threat of eternal damnation. The Great Schism of 1054 wouldn’t have been about the *filioque* clause; it would have been Pope Innocent the XVI’s sister-wife catching him in bed with the Patriarch of Constantinople’s favorite eunuch. The entire history of Christendom would be a divine comedy—or maybe just a divine porno. And you know what? It’d have been a hell of a lot more fun.

’’’, ripple_effects=[