Empire Rise: Spain-Chapter 5: Persona Is Most Important

Since he had a newspaper as a public opinion weapon in hand, the most important next step was to create a likable persona for himself.
If a persona was crafted well, the public would default to seeing him as standing with the majority even without any actions from Carlo.
And as a royal member, a friendly and people-loving character was bound to be welcomed.
The public certainly did not want the royal family above them to act high and mighty, which was also why monarchs led by the King of the United Kingdom in posterity always appeared friendly and benevolent.
Whether shown to Italian public or European public, rigid conservative thinking was destined to be unpopular.
Although there were many conservatives in monarchy countries, for Italy and the Spain that Carlo wanted to go to, reformists were what the public truly wanted to see.
However, although Carlo wanted to establish an image as a reformist, he would absolutely not offer any opinions on Italy’s reforms.
Reform was reform; who led this reform was the truly important question. Supporting and favoring reform was a weapon in Carlo’s hands, but actually meddling in reform would be more loss than gain.
No government would like a king who meddled in every aspect of the country; if Carlo wanted to become the King of Spain, he must first understand how to be a mascot and not meddle everywhere.
On February 21, 1866, the Italian 24 Hours Sun Newspaper published an article penned by Carlo himself《We Want Bread, Macaroni, and Milk》, successfully firing the first shot in establishing an image of caring for the public.
In this completely chicken-soup article, Carlo repeatedly mentioned the importance of Italy’s grassroots people, especially the farmers in Southern Italy.
And concluded in the article: Whether in Italy or Europe, the public’s demands were actually not complex, nothing more than enough to eat and wear.
If the government could focus more attention on the grassroots people, perhaps the public’s lives would be happier.
The entire article had no grand principles, even shaping Carlo into an idle prince with overflowing compassion.
Although many grassroots people developed a favorable impression of Carlo because of this , government officials dismissed it.
Taking care of grassroots people’s lives? Sounded nice, but wasn’t it still funded by the government?
Not to mention how much fiscal budget it would take to improve all Italian grassroots people’s lives, wouldn’t it be better to invest that money in places Italy needed more, like military construction and industrial development?
As for those commoners at the bottom of society, guaranteeing they didn’t starve to death was already pretty good; who among the noble lords had the mind to care whether commoners had enough to eat or wear?
Because Carlo had no one usable under him, this only had some influence near Milan, not even spreading to Florence.
But for Carlo’s plan, it had already successfully taken the first step. Regardless of the government and nobles’ thoughts, the first thing now was to make the public believe Carlo was a prince who cared about grassroots people, even with overflowing compassion.
Such a role would absolutely not be disliked by the public, after all, the vast majority of any country’s population were grassroots people, something no political system or ideology could change.
Unfortunately, Carlo was too young now, many layouts could not proceed smoothly, and he still needed to spend a lot of time and energy completing Italy’s traditional noble elite education.
Although only a prince, his place in the throne succession was third, basically impossible.
But Vittorio Emanuele II was very attentive to Carlo’s education and cultivation. As Vittorio Emanuele II’s currently youngest son, Carlo undoubtedly received the most favor and attention from his father.
This year, Carlo was approaching 15 years old, having basically completed the early elite noble education.
According to Vittorio Emanuele II’s plan for Carlo’s cultivation, Carlo had two choices. One was to major in management and economy for in-depth study, to properly handle his own land and property in the future.
The other choice was to attend military academy, become an honorable Italian officer, and dedicate to the royal family and country.
For Carlo, who already had plans in mind, the most suitable choice was of course to attend military academy, to cultivate his own military ability.
More importantly, he might meet some officers with good military ability but not prominent reputation at the military academy, to build his own connections.
Unfortunately, Carlo was not the first in line to the throne, the crown prince. Otherwise, he could completely rely on the crown prince identity to form a court guard and cultivate his own armed forces from scratch.
Although unified Italy already had the qualifications to compete with great powers, Italy’s foundation was still too thin at this time, even in terms of military academies.
The world’s top ten famous military academies in posterity had no presence of Italy, and even now, there were actually not many military academies in Italy worth choosing.
The most reliable military academy choice currently was the Turin Military Academy located in the capital of the original Kingdom of Sardinia.
This military academy was located in Turin, the Savoy family’s base camp, and was an important institution for the Kingdom of Sardinia to train military backbone.
Vittorio Emanuele II maintained a supportive attitude toward Carlo’s idea of attending military academy.
This was very common for Western monarchy countries. For the kings of these monarchy countries, the ones they trusted most were royal family members and nobles.
The Turin Royal Military Academy was mainly responsible for training infantry and artilleryman officers, while the Milan Royal Military Academy was responsible for training cavalry officers.
This was also why Carlo directly chose the Turin Royal Military Academy; after all, Carlo didn’t need to charge into battle personally first, and secondly, cavalry would be eliminated in the next few decades, as the terrain of Spain and Italy was not suitable for large-scale cavalry charges.
In fact, compared to the instructors at the Turin Royal Military Academy, Carlo admired an Italian legendary name more, one of the three meritorious officials of Italian unification, the hero of two worlds—Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Purely discussing military ability, Garibaldi was absolutely the most excellent military commander in modern Italy.
Even posterity historians, when describing the entire Italian unification event, only mentioned three meritorious officials with outstanding merits, the so-called three heroes of Italian nation-building.
“Italy’s unification is credited to Mazzini’s thought, Garibaldi’s sword, and Cavour’s diplomacy.”
From this description, it was clear how excellent Garibaldi’s military talent was.
But unfortunately, among the three heroes of Italian nation-building, only Prime Minister Cavour belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia faction; Mazzini, who created the ideology of unification Italy, was thoroughly a republican faction, the enemy of monarchy.
And although the Garibaldi whom Carlo extremely admired did not explicitly oppose monarchy, he had also multiple times sided with republicanism and was not trusted by monarchy.
Although Garibaldi was extremely selfless in the process of Italian unification, even after obtaining the entire territory of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, he resolutely handed it over to the Kingdom of Sardinia to rule.
But Garibaldi’s high prestige in the army and his history of serving republicanism still prevented him from entering the upper echelons of the new Italy.
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