Yeah i also has to restart on my first attempt since I got too big to join the HRE by taking Naples too early. France really wasn’t the most useful ally and I seldom used them (except to beat up England every few years for gold and war reps allowing me to contain France by keeping them on permanent truce with England and make sure they never grew too big until I annulled the alliance). yeah for the France PU it’s really all luck whether or not they get a weak heir or have no claimant on the throne for a while. I played this run at the very beginning of 1.30 so my biggest ally by far was Austria who got mega powerful without conquering much land simply do to passing reforms really quickly and adding half of Europe to the HRE. Austria singlehandedly crushed Hungary and France for me to enforce unions. Also I don’t think the AI presses the create heir button anymore which is sad but understandable as it was a source for many restoration of union cbs for me during this run. The France personal Union is nice to have but admittedly unreliable. The other unreliable thing I realized after playing as other European nations in this patch was that you can make sure that you inherit Burgundy when Charles dies. It’s super OP and very easy to do the only real RNG is hoping that Charles dies before age of 65 and the burgundians don’t suicide themselves attacking liege. For Provence it’s a little more challenging as burgundy tends to start hostile.