#like yeah. those are my blorbos. from my religious studies

[butchdykekondraki]

kind of hilarious that like 99% of the writing i post on here uses religious themes and characters because like . im. not religious. at all. im agnostic i just think the stories are Neat

[lowqualityjonathanposts]

Jonathan is a bastard

Not in the funny haha my blorbo is so silly way, this is genuinely a theory that I have.

When looking at the time period that SMT IV was attempting to emulate, the family structure is slightly uncommon. Families would have tended to have way more children, even aristocratic ones, because nobody knew whether those children would survive to adulthood. More children (in a noble family) also means more positions in the military or clergy to be filled, or more advantageous marriages to be made. Only children were pretty uncommon. They either had wildly unlikely siblings (doubtful due to how privileged Jonathan is) or were a bastard.

In SMT IV, the structure of the monastic system is meant to call to mind Catholicism. However, if we’re looking at it from an over-analytic historical lens, it’s pretty odd that Jonathan exists. Why? The Catholic clergy was meant to be celibate. They couldn’t marry and weren’t supposed to have sex, but lots of them did anyways through mistresses, prostitutes, etc.

“Oh but Tumblr user lowqualityjonathanposts if Jonathan was a bastard then wouldn’t he not have half the status/privilege that he has in game?” Good question! There’s actually historical precedent for a bastard still being treated like a noble and being adopted into their family. There’s a very famous example of this, Alessandro de Medici. He was the illegitimate son of Cardinal de Medici and was mixed race, but still adopted into the de Medici family and eventually became the Duke of Florence (very cool guy).

Obviously, Atlus probably didn’t put *that* much thought into absolute historical accuracy and this is just a product of my awful brain rot combined with studying the protestant reformation for too long, but yeah. It’s just a really cool theory that I think should be more widespread. Hell, you could even make it play into his character! That would be cool!

tldr: Jonathan is a bastard based on the historical context, religious structures, and periodization of SMT IV