((Private))
Dr. Gregorio Vicente Osorio de Moscoso woke up in a hospital bed, an unusual thing seeing as he was usually the one attending the person in it rather than lying on it himself. His eyes opened wide as memories flooded back to him, and he pulled the covers aside to get up from the bed. A sudden ache in his side had him lying back down. He groaned in pain, remembering the gunshot that had wounded him. A closer inspection of the wound revealed that it had been stitched up quite nicely.
At the sound of his stirring, Dr. Moscoso's assistant entered the room, a smile on his face. "I see you have finally awaken. How are you?"
"I've been better," Gregorio said, his voice barely audible his throat was so parched. His assistant fetched him a glass of water and let him take a sip. He nearly spilled it when a twinge in his side sent another wave of pain through him. "Did you stitch me up yourself?"
"Indeed I did," the assistant said, confident in his work.
Gregorio examined the stitching on his side and could only feel satisfaction at his underlings works. The boy was showing promise. Perhaps he could take over as royal physician when he retired.
When Gregorio went to rise from the bed again, his assistant gently held him down. "Not so fast. You require bed-rest. You shouldn't exert yourself for another few weeks."
Gregorio held back a smirk. "Exactly who is the doctor here?"
"Until you have fully recovered, I am," his assistant said. "I've taken up your duties while you are indisposed. And don't worry. When you're back on your feet again, you'll have your old job back."
Gregorio let out a sigh. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself in his work. For the first time in years, he felt a lifting of his burdens. His blackmailer was gone, meaning he no longer was forced to dabble in politics or risk his life for someone else's cause. With that worry gone, even his desire to partake in some liberal use of medicinal drugs had started to go away. Of course he was taking morphine regularly for his pain, but he wasn't consuming it in vast quantities anymore. Maybe one day he'd be drug-free. Now that'd be something. It was about time he started taking life seriously again, and that made the future seem that much more promising.
* * * * *
Name: Fernando Armando Hernando Rolando Fernández
Date of Birth: 27 April 1835
Background: Fernando was born into a perfectly average middle class family, his father (also named Fernando) a baker, whose father before him (all named Fernando) and so on all serving as bakers. It seemed a certainty that Fernando would follow in his father’s footsteps, that is until the tragic events of 1841.
His family’s bakery in Madrid was raided by the government, with the state believing that they were hiding a printing press for the illegal liberal paper Voz Libre. Restoring the bakery after the police practically wrecked it searching for non-existent printing presses took a few months, but the damage had mostly been done to the business’s reputation. From then on, everyone associated it with liberalism and republicanism, a taint most foul in early Carlist Spain. Soon the bakery went bankrupt and Fernando and his family were forced out on the street. Fernando learned two truths that day: radicals such as liberals and socialists were a plague upon society and the state should not interfere in business. Some would argue neither of these were related to the bakery’s bankruptcy, but they were lessons Fernando had learned regardless.
Fernando spent the rest of his childhood struggling to survive, feeding on scraps dug out of the garbage and resorting to petty theft when necessary. However, Fernando wasn’t content to wallow in filth the rest of his life. Starting with nothing but the shirt on his back and enough charisma to convince a few investors to support his ideas, he managed to open his own factory. It took awhile for it to get off the ground, but being the determined individual that he is, Fernando pulled through, mostly thanks to his frugal nature, willingness to swindle buyers with inferior products, and miraculous ability to convince workers it was in their best interest to work more hours for less pay. With his first successful venture, it was only a matter of time before Fernando branched out in the start of what would become a massive industrial empire.
By the time he was 40, Fernando owned several factories, a railway company, a newspaper (one that operates fully within the law), and a highly successful bakery in Madrid (completely separate from the newspaper to avoid police raids). He has become well-known for his anti-liberal sentiments, and he despises socialists and the working class with a passion, working his employees to the bone whenever he can get away with it. Despite this, he has an eye for talent and is not above promoting even the lowliest of workers to the upper echelon of his company solely based on merit. In recent years, he has pushed for capitalist interests, mostly any effort to prevent the working class from being granted any rights that would hurt business, as well as for less state interference in the economy. With more money than he can count but always wanting more, Fernando looks to expand his business empire, and perhaps aims to dabble in politics to push his agenda to see the working class kept down and the state out of the economy.
((I'm semi-retiring Dr. Gregorio Moscoso. He'll still be around if I feel like roleplaying something for him, but Fernando is my new character now. To make things easier for naxhi, any vote I make up until the next election will be done as Gregorio and his MpL representaives, while Fernando will remain distant from the Assembly until the election, upon which point I'll be voting in the election as Fernando. Hopefully that is okay, since I didn't want to just leave those MpL representatives unaccounted for between elections but still wanted to change characters. If it's easier instead for me to not vote at all until the election, I'll do that instead.))