My French accent is lousy. Beside this, my heritage is Polish, Scottish, Irish and German (in descending order of percetages) to make Somebody's point.
I also think that there is that lack of the exotic in the idea of taking the French part. They are a large part of our understanding of western culture in our studies and hold little in the way of mystery (and if the troops are vanilla too, the nice blue color isn't going to do it for anyone either... ). Still, with M2, there is a good chance I might get around to them at some point.

I prefer the Islamic factions, and Poland, Byzantium and the Iberians after that, and then the HRE. [shrugs]

Al Jabberwock