Ferdinand III of Aragon (The Once and Never Kings)

Ferdinand III (born: Ferdinand Charles Leopold Alfonso) is the current reigning monarch of the Crown of Aragon. He is the second eldest son of King Charles IX, and the second of his children to rule, after the death of his older brother, Charles X.

Life
The future Ferdinand III was born on March 26, 1981 in the royal palace in Zaragoza, Aragon. He lived a rather uneventful childhood, attending private school during his school years. Ferdinand never particularly took interest in learning about government administration, leaving that to his older brother and heir Charles.

When their father died in 2003, Charles expectedly accepted his succession. But the now Charles X proved an ill ruler. He expended treasury funds, of not on his frequent lavish parties, on his personal pet projects, such as the ill-fated 2005 Antarctic expedition, where Aragon's team was beaten to the South Pole by the Luxembourgish team by five weeks. Charles X became unpopular among the populace, particularly the lower classes, on who he raised taxes. This unpopularity allowed Volkardist parties to gain a sizable number of seats in the regional and general parliaments.

Ferdinand meanwhile, while he enjoyed attending Charles' parties if even to flirt with noblewomen both foreign and domestic, also began to resent his brother's policies. Some foreigners have suspected the fall down the stair which crippled, and later resulted in killing, Charles X was the doing of Ferdinand. Nevertheless, Ferdinand succeeded his childless brother on November 25, 2007, in what he described as "One of the best and the worst birthday presents I have yet received".

Ferdinand reversed most of his brother's expensive projects, which began to heal public trust and approval in the monarchy. He invested more new money into education than the last three monarchs combined, as well as improving the rail system across the realm, even going so far to negotiate with numerous Francian and Imperial states to create a continuous Valencia-Naples rail line.

A devote Catholic, Ferdinand has made no secret of his disdain of the Islamic fundamentalist Hafsid Kingdom, and has overseen a large military expansion program in what is thought to be preparation for conflict. These programs were at first seen as wasteful, but critics were silenced when Ferdinand personally commissioned the Témerres, the first "all big-gun" battleship in 2008. Témerres kicked off a new naval arms race among it, Luxembourg, Brittany-Aquitaine, Denmark, and others.

Titles
The full titles of Ferdinand III are as follows:

Ferdinand III, By the Grace of God, King of Aragon, King of Valencia, King of Majorca, King of Sardinia, King of Sicily, King of Naples, Prince of Andorra, Count of Catalonia, Count of Rousillon, Count of Toulouse