With his eldest son's marriage settled, Ferdinand had laid one worry to rest. But whenever he remembered the five more boys waiting behind him, he could not feel happy.
Even if they were not heirs to the throne and had a slightly broader range of marital choices, at the very least they still had to marry into an old aristocratic family. That standard could not be lowered any further.
That was the price of being born into royalty. Having been clothed in finery and fed on delicacies since childhood, they had to make sacrifices in marriage.
Of course, that applied only to people who had grown up in ivory towers. Outside them, there were still many willing to make such sacrifices.
"Your Majesty, this is the Navy Ministry's new shipbuilding proposal. Please review it!" said Admiral Peiert-Ivanlov, the newly appointed Minister of the Navy.
Ferdinand casually took the document and studied it carefully.
Twenty years had passed since Bulgaria's earliest Dreadnought entered service in 1907. Its service life was about to expire, so new warships naturally had to be built to fill the gap.
After reading the document, Ferdinand said with a smile, "Your Navy Ministry is planning a complete changing of the guard this time."
According to the Navy Ministry's plan, over the next five years, the Bulgarian Navy would gradually retire eight Dreadnoughts, two battlecruisers, twelve cruisers...
They were practically replacing Bulgaria's entire main battle fleet. There was no helping it: from 1915 until now, over eleven years, aside from adding two aircraft carriers and replacing some smaller warships, the Bulgarian Navy had not built a single new capital ship.
"Your Majesty, there's no choice. Our warships have fallen far behind the times. We have to replace them," Admiral Peiert, the Minister of the Navy, said after a