In reality, Pope Gregory was a 15th-century leader famous for commissioning a standardized calendar (hence the name Gregorian calendar). In the novel, he appears as a computer-generated character in the medieval Europe version of the Three-Body game, where he serves a similar function—in this game, too, he is trying to predict the sun’s motion and create a reliable calendar. However, the Pope Gregory of the game is also (like Zhou and Mozi before him) a brutal, almost maniacal leader, with a penchant for killing those who displease him.
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Pope Gregory Character Timeline in The Three-Body Problem
The timeline below shows where the character Pope Gregory appears in The Three-Body Problem. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 15. Three Body: Copernicus, Universal Football, and Tri-Solar Day
...of the palace to find several men sitting around a table. They introduce themselves as Pope Gregory , Aristotle, and Galileo.
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The scholars burst out laughing, and Pope Gregory orders his servants to burn Wang. Galileo questions why nobody has ever seen three suns;...
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...are the most terrifying catastrophes for our world.” Still, the scholars are not convinced, and Pope Gregory calls for Wang to be burned, with the same strange glee that King Zhou once...
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Chapter 17. Three Body: Newton, Von Neumann, the First Emperor, and Tri-Solar Syzygy
...are greeted by Qin Shi Huang, who has the “same eyes” as King Zhou and Pope Gregory . Qin tells the men to ask for help from Europe, as Europe and China...
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