I don't know who's idea it was to make Catherine de Medici the leader of the French, but after giving it some thought, I have some issues with it. She wasn't even French, she was Italian and she married into the French monarchy. She also didn't have much authority as queen and only ruled a Regent through her sons. If we are to believe that we're building the French empire anew in an alternate history, my train of thought gets derailed at Catherine de Medici. There are plenty of other options the developers could have chosen from. Like Vercingetorix, Charlemagne King of the Franks, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, maybe even Voltaire just to name a few. Don't get me wrong, the addition of Gilgamesh of the Sumerians gets high praises from me, and switching from Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt is a nice touch, though I still think it should be George Washington for the Americans. But Catherine de Medici? She simply wasn't even half as influential as the individuals listed above. How do you put a mythical God King like Gilgamesh next to Catherine de Medici? It just seems like a brutal oversight to me. If anyone else has criticism of the current leader choices, I'd be interested to hear them. If we complain enough, the developers might just update them assuming there's an expansion in the works.
Why Catherine de Medici?
I don't think that this is actually the board game developers fault. This game is made as a representation of the Civilization VI computer game. In the computer game Catherine is the leader of the French so maybe they didn't have a choice in the matter...