Bull!@#$. King Alfred the Great, much? The nobility and the peasantry were similarly pious. Saying that the vast majority of European nobility were even in the slightest bit intellectual is a bit of a longshot, much less a bunch of cynics and free-thinkers. Especially when you consider the fact that "scholarly" men were most often those the most involved with the church.
Edit: since we're modelling all of EU nobility here, not just royalty, how about the knights hospitaller or other such holy order that was largely composed of the highborn?
Fair enough, I made my statement too sweeping. The point is, religion and politics were never that far apart. Cynical manipulation of religion for political purposes is not a modern phenomenon, and is historically quite common. Look at the history of another knightly order: The Knights Templar. Or the Fourth Crusade that destroyed Constantinople. I'm not saying that true faith didn't exist, but to say that BM players treat religion too cynically? Well, I'm not sure I agree.
