I have heard a lot of people online claim that the Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli is Satire, this couldn't be further from the truth. There are very few serious historians that make this claim. There are a few reasons that people arrive at this conclusion, the most serious of which is that the philosophy of the Prince clashes with his other writing like the Discourses. In the Prince Machiavelli writes a handbook for authoritarian nobles to gain and maintain power, while all his other writings indicate that he's a staunch republican. However, Machiavelli is a realist, democracy was a far-fetched dream in renaissance Italy, He prioritized stability and reunification above all else.
“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall.”
I can't help but feel that a lot of these claim arise from an inner desire to deny the realities outlined for the book or from discomfort with the amoral view it represents "it must be satire". Machiavelli backs all his claims with good reasoning, and the book was never meant to be published for a public audience, if it wasn't for his premature death we might've never read it.
Another claim that frustrates me is that the Prince is only relevant within its context, Machiavelli makes a lot of broad philosophical claims about the nature of Power that apply in different context, it's more than just a manual for Princes.
by NeoMachiavell