Crusader Kings 3 will finally let us play as the pope in the By God Alone expansion, launching on September 30. The power! The pageantry! The blood boys! Wait, what?
OK, so history has given us a lot of weird pope stories. One of them relates to the declining health of Pope Innocent VIII. As the story goes, in 1492 three boys were hired to bring the pope back to health with their blood. All of their blood. It went badly. All three boys died, of course, and so did the pope.
This was long before physicians understood the circulatory system, or even knew it existed, and some versions of the tale have Innocent VIII literally drinking from the lads. It's apocryphal. Obvious nonsense, and likely propaganda. But the story has gone from a tall tale full of inconsistencies to the first example of blood transfusion. It's not true, but it is compelling.
One of the reasons for that is the modern trend of wealthy psychopaths hiring blood boys to claw back their youth. The idea that the rich and powerful, the Silicon Valley execs, are lit...
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