During the Congress of Vienna, there seems to have been talk of creating an independent state as compensation for the dispossessed Eugene de Beauharnais, former Viceroy of Italy. AFAIK, it was the Russian emperor (a prominent supporter of the Beauharnais family) who suggested this form of recompensation – namely in the form of the duchy of Genoa. However, for some unknown reason, the rest of the Allies wouldn’t take the bait and instead handed the former territories of the Genoese Republic to the house of Savoy. The Allies (probably as the result of Eugene’s wife’s family) seem to have had less of a problem with the de Beauharnais family as opposed to the Bonapartes.
So what might the future hold if the Beauharnais were to get a hold of the duchy of Genoa? How might the rest of Europe feel about this? After all, it’s not as though Eugene would be an unknown quantity to the Italians – after all, he had served as Napoleon’s viceroy for nearly a decade at that point. Or is this so far in ASB territory as to be implausible?