After the War of the Spanish Succession, and thanks to his support of the Habsburgs, Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy was awarded the southern Kingdom of Sicily, which had previously been a part of the Crown of Aragon. However, this was short lived, as eventually he would swap his control of Sicily for the crown of Sardinia, much closer to hid native land. In his place, a member of the House of Bourbon and son of the Spanish King became King of Sicily as Ferdinand III. The Savoy Kings would modernise Sardinia in the post-Napoleonic world, eventually becoming the base for the Kingdom of Italy. The Bourbon-Two Sicilies kings on the other hand would run their kingdom into the ground, leaving it underdeveloped and rural, while still leading extravagant lifestyles, eventually being deposed in favour of unification with the Savoy controlled unified Italy.

So what if it was the other way around? What if Ferdinand became King of Sardinia (and Corsica too, maybe), and the House of Savoy remained Kings of Sicily? Would this see the south become the dominant force in Italian Unification? Would this mean faster unification or could it result in slower? Would Sardinia even be included or would it stand as its own thing? Could Sicily become a power in and of itself? Or would it remain a backwater