mostly because he's an idiot > louis xii was dumb for working with the pope he should have tried to solo spain, austria, and all of italy > yeah italians may be bad at war but french are bad at diplomacy unlike italians who are such brilliant diplomats that half of italy was annexed by spain because they kept siding with spain ensuring their control over milan and southern italy > pikemen fear the swordsman > when he actually got to lead a country created an expensive and incompetent army and was almost instantly ousted cardinal richelieu actually had a good understanding of realpolitik. he knew when to let others die for you "just give sweden money to kill austrian soldiers while we deal with internal problems" he heavily centralized the authority of the monarch, and he set the stage for france becoming the greatest power in europe. for other pragmatic leaders some of whom did and some of whom didn't write stuff down > louis xi > axel oxenstierna > joseph stalin > talleyrand > philip the good of burgundy > bismarck in reality realpolitik can can come across as cowardice or weakness in many ways, it isn't being an edgelord, sometimes like philip the good it's a matter of just buying land to consolidate territory, sometimes like stalin it's not annexing finland because it's too vast and opposed to the soviet government collectively to not act like a tumor, sometimes like bismarck it's refusing to let austria into the empire so it will be purely german and have a clear leader in prussia. if i had to suggest the best geopolitical leader in history i would probably say oxenstierna who helped lead sweden out of poland, into germany, kept it together when the king died in battle, and helped ensure sweden (which had in reality little ground for negotiating) came out as the biggest winner of th 3p years war. fuck did he simp hard for queen christina though.
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