my POD is this: Knights Templar kicked out of Outremer, go to Italy and base them selves in an Italian city state, Pope gets ambitous, uses them to conquer Italian City-states and basically form the Italy of Today plus Nice, Pope becomes ruler of Italy, with Knights Templar his personal elite military force, and a larger theme based army as support, when the French King asks for the loan, the Knights refuse, and the pope indeed turns on him, giving the pope the territory of France, except for that taken England, next the Pope forms an alliance with the Scots, training their army against the english, the current Pope then plans a crusade to take palestine, and egypt (by this time, the knights templar number 40,000 in troops, not counting the support base, with them supplanting the noblity of Italy and France slowly,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Light#Doctrine sort of how these guys took over their fictional country)
so tell me possible or not?