7th Sea was already a pretty progressive setting when it released, but John seemed like he knew which way the wind was blowing, went in and cranked up the progressivism to 11. Gender swapping a lot of the previously beloved signature NPCs.
That's not surprising. Way back in the day, when asked why he created a fantasy version of history instead of creating a historical RPG, he said that it was because he wanted female PCs to not have historic restrictions.
Well, 7th Sea first edition already had plenty of Heroic (And Villanious) female characters who were everything from Swashbucklers, Pirates, Thieves, Clergy and everything else. It was just in 2nd edition, it was clear he was pandering to the new trend on the Horizon. The 7ft tall Infamous Pirate who was the scourage of the Seas and like a nightmare version of Captain Hook Reus inexplicably became a woman.
Allande, the former first born son of Castille who had thrown away his crown in secret and founded the free nation of the Brotherhood of the Coast inexplicably became a woman as well, with zero connection to the previous set up except for helping found the Brotherhood of the Coast.
There's a whole lot of things like that. Meanwhile, interesting as hell female NPC Villains like Fauner Posen one of the Leaders of Eisen just ended up ceasing to exist. Fauner Posen was interesting because she was Lawful Evil in that sense of, a Villain because she honestly believed the ends justified the means, and had a chance at redemption... But poof, no longer exists! Instead replaced by... a Vampire. Just a Woman whose clearly a Vampire.
There was a lot more overt homosexuality introduced too, which I mostly don't have an issue with, as 1st edition was lacking that, and I am for Gay representation in media. But the way Wick handled it in 2nd edition bordered on the realm of straight up exploitive. Like I mentioned the opening fiction is a straight up homoerotic sex scene... For a Swashbuckling game.
Rather than take the already exisiting awesome material that was already progressive and add a few more gay/lesbian characters, he went the route of pandering to the SJW crowd, and it comes across as that... Pandering, and it seems a little soulless because of it.
That combined with lots of other inexplicable changes and the removal of lots of conflict from the setting, and the storey game rules really made it a heart breaker for myself and lots of other backers and not in a good way. To this day I have a ton of the produced 2nd edition supplements I haven't bothered to read because the setting just lost me. Unlike 1st edition where I devoured everything that came out for it.