Despite his nominal authority, Emperor Giorgio was not even willing to make use of that. Whenever the Emperor wasn’t busy with state functions or doing the formal appointment of those the Council desired in government positions, Giorgio was generally holed up in the mansions of various Brazilian elites (an Imperial Palace having yet to be built), generally being fed exotic meals as considerable amounts of people risked starvation and indulging in various illicit activities and substances hardly befitting of a ruler. The Council kept up his good reputation however, and certainly didn’t mind keeping him away from Rio, as it ensured that he did not become a check on their power.
The Council may have been corrupt and held little regard for democracy, but one cannot deny that it was effective. With its clout in the market, it was able to bring inflation under control and able to stem the tide of immigrants to manageable levels. It sponsored public entertainment to help increase the public’s morale, while it made sure that the police forces it led were not as corrupt as the legislature whose laws they supposedly enforced. Despite their aristocratic stature the Councilors recognized the need for an educated middle class to keep the factories operating optimally, and they funded universities and public schools to help with this task. They ultimately recognized the futility of trying to keep the Riccese Empire, and before long they had signed treaties with the Congolese and Romans to pull out of their territory within ten years. In North Africa, the Morrocans were showing themselves to be incredibly vicious and determined for independence; to their surprise, the new government granted them independence in 1851. In exchange for maintaining some commercial privileges, Riccio withdrew from North Africa and even left its former client of Spain to the Morrocan hordes; similar agreements would follow with New Venice, which found itself increasingly more of a partner and less of a subject state of Rio.
The Riccese ability to cut their losses can be attributed primarily to the commercial and diplomatic power Riccio had wielded prior to The Fall. As all other great powers waged war with themselves and planted the seeds of their own destruction, Riccio was unknowingly laying the foundations for its survival.
One of the most potent sources of Riccese success came from its greatest resource: money. As law broke down, lands were burnt, and entire communities were deserted in the war zones, the Riccese were collecting increasingly-larger tax revenues and using them to stimulate their economy. Factories were being built not just in Europe but all over the wider world; many projects were constructed in Brazil in particular, as the colony’s vast resources were seen as lucrative for tapping. With Brazil having been steadily Italianized and becoming as much an Italian country as a Portuguese one, the region was less like a colony and more a “home away from home” to the government. The pragmatic Riccese had viewed the Brazilians as the least likely to rebel given their strong cultural ties to Italy, and Florence’s political and financial generosity helped secure this. The flood of cheap goods from Eastern Europe enormously improved the lot of the average Riccese lifestyle as well, fostering diversification into other industries as time went on. While most of the belligerents in the Great War had laid waste to much of their territory, Riccio had maintained a secure economic powerhouse that proved to be the perfect site of a new capital.
Labor availability was another quality the Riccese had unknowingly used to guarantee their own salvation from the fires of The Fall. Early in its history, Riccio had developed a policy of establishing refugee camps close to neighboring war zones; while Riccio preserved its neutrality in affairs, it was more than willing to profit at the expense of other countries’ conflicts by other means. Thousands (and during the peak of the War, hundreds of thousands) of people would be ferried into these camps, from Romans to Egyptians to even Chinese and Russians. While many of these people were poor, many others had skills; few educated workers sought to die on the battlefield or in harness. Riccio bombarded the most skilled refugees with offers of relocation to the cities so they could enjoy the best parts of Riccese life; many of these cities were far away from where the refugee had come from, making it incredibly difficult to ever return home. This dish was served with the spice of family reunification programs, and it is no surprise that many skilled workers took the deal. Many were often relocated to Brazil, a melting pot with Italian overtones, so as to help with the exploitation of the country’s vast land and resources; just as planned, few of the refugees (as low as 10%) ever returned home. By the time of The Fall, Brazil had developed an extremely large middle class from all the foreigners relocated to it, and they laid the foundations of a stable, prosperous society along the South Atlantic coast.
Riccio’s next advantage proved to be land. The colonization of Eastern Europe had opened up huge tracts of land for the harvesting of organics, driving prices down and forcing specialization in other fields of work. The Riccese government had taken advantage of these cheap prices to begin planting of crops throughout Brazil, hoping to have a strong agricultural background in the region to decrease the costs of the government’s food program, as well as to offset costs that would naturally come when Russia re-acquired parts of Eastern Europe. The result of the planting program was a cheap, abundant source of food; as the Empire crumbled in later years, the many fields that had been cultivated proved to be more than capable of feeding the Empire’s population, especially after the many evacuees from Europe arrived to take advantage of the large amounts of land opened up by jungle clearance.
The most prudent change the Council of Seven enacted, however, was rooted in Riccio’s final advantage: culture. The Council’s willingness to jettison Africa and Asia was motivated by something besides a feeling war would be futile; the Council had begun opening dialogues with the remnants of the Catholic Church. The shedding of extra-Brazilian territories had left Riccio a nation that was homogenous in language, religion, government, geography and economics. The Catholic Church, having endured the falls of empires for over one and a half millennia, was seen as a perfect mechanism with which to stabilize Riccese society. The Pope had debated many Catholic countries to relocate to, but the humility, flattery, and traditional location (and money) of Riccio were all very persuasive; it was no surprise the Holy See had soon relocated to Brazil in 1852, a move that was reciprocated with over a billion ducatos being donated to the Church by the Council families to aid in the construction of a grand cathedral to make up for the loss of the Vatican.
While the partnership was mostly a pleasant alliance (the Council declared Roman Catholicism the state religion in 1853, though it did not forbid free practice) and cooperative at first, in later years, the ties between the Church and the government would strengthen. While a policy of formal religious toleration would be maintained, the Roman Catholic Church and the Riccese government were to become closely interwoven, though at times it would be hard to tell who dominated who in the partnership.
After a reign of self-indulgence and many great events (the stabilization of Brazil, the end of foreign commitments, the solidarity of the Catholic Church with the government), Giorgio I abdicated in 1859. Riccio had become a stable, nominally prosperous country, if not the hegemonic beast it was. Giorgio I, meanwhile, would later be lovingly referred to as “The Fat.”
