negative wanderers

[APeacefulWarrior]

On the subject of Machiavelli, there's an important detail about his writings that a lot of people don't know: Many critics/historians think that The Prince may have been, more or less, trolling the Medicis. Because The Prince is unlike his earlier and more-humanist works in a lot of ways, and has some rather specious logic, there's a strong argument that he was basically trying to lead the Medicis into ruining themselves. Bad suggestions dressed up as good suggestions, basically.

He wasn't necessarily the archvillain some people think of when they hear "Machiavellian." OTOH, the idea of him deliberately feeding the Medicis bad intel is rather Machiavellian, come to think of it.