Religion and Superstition in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1
I may have mentioned I could get a whole extra post just on how much I love the way KCD handles religion? Well, this is that post.
Cards on the table: I'm coming at this as both an atheist and a history nerd (Jesus-fandom history included), so this is a post from someone who thinks gnostisism is fucking fascinating and enthuses about how KCD lets you help Waldensian heretics escape persecution, omg! ♥♥♥
Love it or hate it, religion was central to medieval European life in a way even modern religious nuts may not relate to (the Rules For Being A Good Christian differ so much with place and time), and risks coming across as profoundly unsexy to the rest of us. The usual solution is to either downplay religious elements, or treat the church as an unmitigated evil (not necessarily invalid, but pretty limiting to the historic perspectives you can represent). How much historically-authentic-god-bothering can modern audiences be expected to put up with?
KCD threads that needle with aplomb. As a game sold on realism, it's refreshingly and consistently skeptical about magic and miracles (Christian or otherwise), but has no interest in re-litigating whether there's a god, or belittling people for believing in one. If this game believes anything, it's that Christian institutions could stand to take a lot more interest in all that stuff about healing the sick and feeding the poor, and a lot less in lining their own pockets and making people feel guilty for having sex.
So, yeah - hardly the wildest of hot takes on Jesus-fandom, but still uncomfortably relevant, historical setting or no.
That commitment to realism also means KCD is not here to downplay the role of religion in medieval life. People will greet you on the street with 'god save you' or 'god be with you!' (the origin of the modern 'goodbye'), and cross themselves mid-conversation. Lords like Hanush or Divish will often be found praying in private chapels. The burial of Henry's parents in unconsecrated ground is raised on multiple occasions. Major main-story questlines involve asking Father Godwin of Uzhitz to break confessional privilege, and infiltrating Sasau monastery as a novice monk (complete with a rigorously structured routine). Locals from land ravaged by Sigismund will ask you to find a priest willing to minister to them, and help them feel safe to return. An actual mechanic to improve your reputation is to pay indulgence at your nearest church (which I often do, because I find it hilarious). Religion is everywhere, and it matters to people.
The game still only goes expects the player to go so far: Henry is notably not expected to cease work on the sabbath, or even attend church (except for that one time when he delivers the sermon). Presumably this was felt to be one chore too many for the average gamer. If you want to feel the rigidity of religious schedules, the monastery questline has you covered.
But whatever the populace believes about god, believing in the institution of the church is more complicated ‒ and not least because this is that era with multiple competing popes claiming to be the real deal. It's only 1402 ‒ we've still got more than a hundred years to go before Martin Luther is going to nail his dissertation to a church door in Germany and kick off the protestant reformation ‒ but the same critiques of institutional excess already exist, and KCD is eager to show us receipts. The highest levels of the church are a hotbed of greed and corruption, and people aren't blind to it.
Sit down to drink with Godwin, and you'll find yourself hearing all about the real Czech proto-protestant Jan Hus, and all his opinions on the sale of indulgences (something I like to explain as an expensive church-issued voucher that reads "This certificate entitles the bearer to commit [price value] equivalent worth of sins!") You can also pick up a book on Hus' sermons, and will be expected to express them to the people of Uzhitz at mass in the morning. You can tweak some specifics ‒ Godwin himself differs with Hus on the subject of sex and booze ‒ and even fail the objective if your stats aren't high enough, but it's plain the game as a whole agrees.
Nor is Hus the only source of these sentiments: a street preacher you can meet has much the same feelings on the church. I started a conversation with him fully expecting to hear a lot of nonsense about repenting my sins, and instead wound up agreeing with his pitch. You'll encounter similar explorations of institutional greed and corruption during the monastery quest later; it's a major running theme throughout the game.
Local clergy are not so uniformly corrupt, but they are consistently portrayed as human and fallible ‒ for both better and worse. The monastery is a mess of politics and hypocrisy, the novices mostly boys sent there as punishment for sexual immorality. The Rattay priest is thoroughly unlikable, the Skalitz priest a coward who refuses to go back, and Father Simon, the man you can talk into returning in his place, has been living in shame for years after breaking his vows of chastity. Even Father Godwin, our most prominent clergy member and a fierce advocate for church reform, is a hypocrite who drinks to excess, lives in sin with a woman, and finally agrees to break sacred confessional confidentiality if Henry will cover for him during mass, while Godwin himself is too hungover to deal with it.
The overall message about the church's twisted priorities also benefits from being more than mere set dressing. In the wake of the attack on Skalitz, most of Henry's former neighbours are reduced to begging on the streets of Rattay (where the local people complain about them, and the local priest cares nothing for their lot), or lie wounded in Sasau monastery (the infirmary staffed by only two monks, while the remainder proclaim it's up to god whether these people live or die). Henry can pick up a number of tasks to help both groups, but neither problem is really solvable: there will be no grand speeches to show the people of Rattay the error of their ways and the true value of Christian charity. But in a time of war and strife, it's notable how little the church seems to care for the lot of the common man. It's up to the people to help each other.
It's clear nonetheless that the writers don't want all this moralising to get in the way of players having an escapist good time, and the epic, drunken bender you can go on with Godwin is only the most obviously example. KCD is very casual about the subject of extra-marital sex ‒ perhaps most striking in how little anyone cares that Radzig has a bastard son (by the epilogue, he'll be casually introducing his son Henry to visiting nobles). And to its credit, the rest of the game sticks to those guns, bending over backwards to paint Lady Stephanie as sympathetic despite her willingness to seduce boys like Henry, while Hans' famous boozing-and-whoring is of concern primarily because it's an excuse to neglect his real duties, not because he's sinning by having fun.
Henry does get a few dialogue options where he can moralise about the sin of casual sex if the player really wants to, but you're likely to come across a bit hypocritical, given most will have already stumbled into a sex scene with a barmaid thanks to that epic Godwin sequence. Even the revelation that Istvan and Erik are (male/male) lovers gets no reaction from anyone who learns about it. The only explicit homophobes you'll meet are some of the least pleasant and most hypocritical of the Sasau monks (to these fuckers, violent rape is a much lesser crime, as long as it's a man doing it to a woman).
If anything, the lack of even a single real authority figure to judge Henry or Radzig for all this extra-marital sex is probably a little anachronistic. But then, KCD's writing isn't really up to the challenge of dealing with the complex topic of sexual morality and religious guilt, and I'm sure there's no time in history where people weren't having at least this much sex, so I'm happy to give it a pass.
(There is admittedly one major exception to this rule, added to the game in That One DLC, where Henry will be sent on a non-negotiable pilgrimage to atone for the horrendous sins of [checks notes] some petty theft, accidentally killing one (1) guy instead of bringing him home alive for the executioner to torture and hang "properly", plus one count of being seduced by an older noblewoman. Henry's shameful pilgrimage of repentance ends in Uzhitz with a significant meeting with Father Godwin ‒ the guy who's been merrily living in sin with a woman for YEARS. But honestly, that whole DLC is a disaster on so many fronts that I don't remotely have time to cover here.)
The world of KCD also features plenty of more mundane superstition. There's a woman in Ledetchko who's being haunted by a ghost, a soothsayer on the streets of Rattay who'll offer to tell Henry's fortune, and (most memorably of all) the charlatan from Sasau who sells snake-oil and claims to have seen Henry in a dream ‒ and who returns in Hans' DLC (the best DLC) to send Henry on a mission to convince the locals they're being haunted by a revenant.
What stands out is how consistent KCD is in assuring you that it's all nonsense. To deal with the ghost, you'll start by trying a folk exorcism, then one from a forbidden text, before being finally seeking a priest (good ol' father Godwin!) who will bluntly tell you he thinks it much more likely that this 'ghost' is a symptom of a troubled conscience (and he's right). The soothsayer's 'fortunes', meanwhile, may be relevant to what Henry's been up to, but she seems to dole out fortunes at random, and you can still laugh at her and suggest she try reading her own palm for a change.
And that sets the pattern for most everything else you'll encounter. The woman who gave birth to four dead babies and one cruelly deformed son hadn't made a deal with the devil, she's from a family with a history of multiple births, and the victim of malicious rumours from relatives fighting over the inheritance. Hannekin Hare did not escape from his cell by wizardry, he just had friends in the right places. The ointment witches use to fly or contact the devil is explicitly just hallucinogens. The blacksmith who chants spells while smithing is really just using a familiar rhyme to time his work. Folk superstition really is everywhere in KCD, but never lacking a rational explanation. You are going to learn about the reality of the past, not its own internal mythology.
And though Henry may be young and naive, he may also be the game's most dogged skeptic. Do not expect diplomacy out of Henry if you're trying to sell him magic and mysticism. You can agree to do three tasks for the charlatan who 'saw him in a dream', but you will hear the sarcasm in his voice as he does so. Sometimes this comes from personal experience with the subject, such as when that bloke from the tavern tries to spin a story about Cuman sacrificial rituals ‒ but more often, it's just Henry bluntly refusing to believe in nonsense. He's even pretty skeptical about some legitimate scriptural points, such as that misfortune is necessarily punishment for sin.
Where Henry's skepticism comes from is less clear. Maybe his parents instilled it in him, though we never do hear them express any opinion on superstition. Possibly the writers wanted their PC to push back against the notion that everyone in the past was a superstitious moron, despite Henry's obvious naivety in other matters. But it's a well-established part of his character, and I love it.
So that's your overview of how KCD handles religion and superstition. But as a giant nerd about this stuff, I've got to gush a little about some of the specific side-quests that delve into the subject that I loved the most.
Let's start with that little quest where you can help a group of Waldensian heretics escape persecution (an episode that's already made the official list of "ways in which KCD feels like a game made just for me"). Your mission as stated is to 'assist' (read: get rid of) a Vicar who has been sent to root out heretics in the town of Uzhitz. To everyone's surprise, it turns out there really are 'heretics' living at a farm near Uzhitz.
Now, I am no expert on the Waldensians, but I can tell you that they're one of those medieval Christian splinter groups who were accused of conducting lurid satanic rituals, even though their actual 'heresy' was mostly not recognising the medieval Catholic church as the supreme authority on how good Christians ought to behave. They did not deserve to be persecuted, and by any reasonable metric were probably much better Christians than the people persecuting them.
What fascinates me about this quest is how little information the game gives you about 'the Waldensian heresy' ‒ never mind that KCD is usually chomping at the bit to tell you all about the medieval world. The average player will never have heard the term 'Waldensian', and the Vicar flatly refuses to answer any questions on the subject. This is one fucking ballsy place for the game to commit to showing over telling, but what little you do learn instead comes direct from these 'heretics' own actions.
Godwin mentions in passing that they donate more to the poor than most of their neighbours. When Henry sneaks into their house, he hears a woman lead the evening prayer, and learns that she is ready to die rather than to deny her faith (which is, let's face it, as literally Christian as it fucking gets). The prayer itself, however, seems completely normal to Henry's ears. These people aren't worshiping the devil, they're just going about their lives in a manner they believe Christ would have approved of. Wild, I know!
Godwin himself is much less bothered by the Waldensians' heresy than he is by what could happen if heretics get found in his parish. No good can come of the witch hunts that will likely follow (and I LOVE how practical this is ‒ she may be ready to die for her faith, but the consequences will not end with her). You don't have to help the Waldensians escape, but it's obviously the right choice.
Do I need to point out how well this all dovetails with the rest of KCD's critique of church institutions, as more interested in maintaining their own power and wealth than the actual teachings of that ol' Christ guy? It goes without saying, right?
I've already said a bunch in passing about the quest to find Father Simon, but he's worth covering properly. Follow his trail, and you'll learn he fell in love, got the girl pregnant, and then interpreted her death in childbirth as god's punishment for his sins. Distraught, he fled civilisation to live as a hermit. The girl's family make clear they don't blame him ‒ these things happen, and they're sure he would have provided for their daughter, had she lived. Henry's job is to find Simon and convince him to go back to his ministry. Religion may have left Father Simon tortured with misplaced guilt, but it's also inspired him to serve his community in a manner that could be essential to their recovery after times of adversity ‒ and his learnings in medicine will help you save a life in another sidequest too. Here, the letter is not nearly as important as the spirit of the law.
Lemme also just briefly fangirl over that sidequest where you convince a bunch of villagers they're being haunted by a revenant. As someone who owns multiple books on vampire folklore, I adore this shit. I love the laundry list of different ways to dispatch a revenant Henry can choose from. I love that they explicitly touch on folklore that revenants are often people who died by violence or who were buried in unconsecrated ground. I love how clear KCD is that it's ultimately all paranoid bullshit.
But what I love most is that they resisted the impulse to use the much sexier term 'vampire', or any reference to the sucking of blood. Folklore about the undead rising from their graves to torment the living was once widespread from Russia to Greece to Scandinavia, but you'd be surprised just how optional the blood-drinking part was. Non-bloodsucking revenants deserve representation too, okay?
And then there's that one sidequest with the witches.
So, okay. Okay, look.
What you need to know about me is that one of my WORST Get Me Started At Your Own Risk-topics is that 99.99% of ALL accounts of Satanism are nothing more than Christian persecution fantasies invented by nutjobs who desperately needed to feel important. That was true during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, and it was true during the Diabolic Witch Hunting Craze of the 14-1700s, because Nothing Ever Fucking Changes. Stories about witches doing the nasty with the devil were overwhelmingly invented by medieval inquisitors with lurid imaginations and the power to torture innocent people until they confessed to exactly what those sick fucks wanted to hear. Come at me, I have fucking citations.
Do you know how fucking HARD it is for me to enjoy fiction involving witchcraft or Satanism without my eyes rolling right out of their sockets? Even the people who know they're writing fiction are basically parroting the twisted fantasies of some over-privileged medieval bigot who decided to reinforce his faith by burning innocent women (and sometimes men too) at the stake. That's actually how I first heard about the Waldensians ‒ they got accused of this shit too.
So how does KCD tackle the subject? Well, it starts by spelling out that witch 'ointment' is just a mix of hallucinogens powerful enough to make people think they've gone flying off to attend some big pagan party in the woods, possibly attended by pagan gods (ie. the devil, according to Heinrich Kramer and his mates). The herbalist who actually mixed this ointment is very clear on this fact. But she did recently sell some of it to three local women, who want to use it to contact the spirits of dead relatives, or something? She's not completely sure, but she's Concerned, and wants Henry to look into it.
Track those women down, however, and you'll learn they're not witches in the sense they're following any authentic pagan tradition, just three grieving survivors who've lost family in the Cuman raids. But it appears they've heard some of that anti-witchcraft-propaganda about how witches cover themselves in strange unguents and offer their bodies to the devil in exchange for power. They've decided that a bit of weird demon sex sounds like a pretty fair trade if Satan can be convinced to smite Sigismund's invading army. They're basically just the sort of people who turn to religion in a time of strife, only instead of turning to god (who even the devout must admit distributes miracles pretty fucking sparingly) they've opted to throw in with the guy they hear is giving women the power to fly and hex their enemies and all that other cool shit.
Let me state for the record that, as fucking magical as Henry's own bad trip truly is, this is one of those side-quests that ends up feeling sadly undercooked. There's no 'good' outcome: if Henry defends the women from judgmental townsfolk after being non-consensually drugged into thinking he's fighting real demons, he'll get victim-blamed by both Godwin and the herb-woman who sent him on the quest. Nor can you talk to the women afterwards, commiserate about having lost family to Sigismund's invasion, or ask them where the fuck they got the idea for all this. It ends as a bit of a downer without much resolution. And it fails to draw a clear distinction between 'what "real" pagan practitioners believed about themselves' and 'what their persecutors made up about them', which loses it a lot of points.
But on a basic level of "have we managed to tackle this subject without just reinforcing the lies of the same sick fucks who did all the murder?" Well fuck me, but I think this one just about gets a pass!
KCD's stance on religion and superstition should not feel so fucking refreshing, but their commitment to realism in a medieval setting is a damn rare thing. Even in nominally magic-free settings, writers will so often throw in an episode where someone seems to encounter a real ghost, or a fortune-teller tells a fortune that actually comes true. And I get it: superstition is almost by definition the result of the human tendency to imagine narrative significance in meaningless coincidence, and that can be so useful in telling an engaging story. Besides, watching believers be wrong often feels kind of mean-spirited, while watching skeptics be wrong is funny. I don't judge writers for using these tropes.
Even KCD ends with a dream sequence in which Henry may be speaking to the ghost of his dead father. But it's just as easy to read this sequence as no more than Henry talking to his own subconscious, and I appreciate the line the game walks here a great deal. To run into even one canon which is as respectful to the place of religion in medieval life as this while also sticking doggedly to 'snake oil is all bullshit actually' brings me so much joy.
To reiterate where I'm coming from myself, I'm an atheist and a skeptic: I think all religion is objectively pretty irrational. But at the same time, I think it's only healthy to recognise that humans are just not built to be perfectly rational creatures, and anyone putting themselves forward as the single objective arbiter of what's rational and what's not should be laughed out of the room. If believing that there is some great divine plan is The One Weird Trick that helps other people cope with the madness of the world they live in, or lets them feel connected to their own cultural heritage, I'm not here to judge. You don't make yourself look better by sneering at these 'irrational' fools. My problems with organised religion are all the ways it's misused to justify ignoring good science or treating people badly, not that anyone should have the gall to take inspiration and comfort from their own spirituality. Heck, I'm sure I've got beliefs that are objectively as irrational as any of it: I'm only human too.
If KCD's portrayal of religion has any major flaw, for me, it's that the game never does end with Henry going back to Skalitz with Godwin or Simon to finally consecrate the ground of his parents' graves, as he'd intended way back at the start. Henry's first great failure is losing his father's sword while trying to give his parents the burial they deserve, and we've ended the game without him retrieving that sword or defeating any of the big bads. But his efforts have still returned enough stability to the region to make such a return to Skalitz possible, and a scene like this would have done so much to bring the narrative full circle.
I am, as stated, a godless atheist myself, and to me the consecration would be a fundamentally meaningless gesture. But 'meaningless' rituals can be such a vital part of how people process and deal with grief ‒ and if Henry's own faith has helped him get through the worst event of his life to date, it's done its job in spades.
