I'm not sure I blame them. Look what happened to French when the
Normans dragged it over to England in 1066. Once the French-speaking
GIs started chatting up the Saxon barmaids, the language went to Hell
in a handbasket.

The Noirmans were not french, they were francified vikings who adopted
catholiscism and spoke what linguists refer to as Anglo-Norman. Old
French didn't even exist then, what was spoken is now fefered as
Romance, old French did not occur till the first crusaders returned
and introduced some arabic and persian words.
One of the reasons why the Norman nobles abandoned Anglo-Norman by
the 15th century (and yes like the Quebecois, introduced laws to try
and preserve the language). Is that the parisian nobles mocked their
speech, that is, they were regarded as yokels by the parisians and
they hated it (thereby accelerating the demise of Anglo-Norman in
England-Edward I was the first to use English as the official
language).