Charles de Morny as Mexican Emperor?

[Eparkhos]

I've had this question in my head for a while, and I'd like to get it out so I can focus.

Charles de Morny was Napoleon III's illegitimate half-brother. He repeatedly put himself forward as a candidate for a restored Mexican Empire, but (Wikipedia doesn't have a source for this) Napoleon refused to allow him to take the throne, advocating Maximilian I to deny him this. What if a) Napoleon never prevented de Morny from trying to take throne and b) the Mexican monarchists were receptive to this?

As far as I can tell, Charles would've been a far better ruler than Maximilians, being a capable administrator and commander. He was also far more pragmatic than Max, and would be willing to ally whole-heartedly with the conservatives rather than wavering as Max did. I'm not qualified to speculate beyond that, but I am fairly certain that if he was able to take the throne he could stay on it.

 

[Fulano]

I don't think it's impossible, but I think of him as some kind of "last resort" of sorts. We need for Maximilian to outright reject the idea, and for none of the minor Spanish Bourbons to take his place, who were the next in line if we go by the rumors of that time.

And yeah, I am sure he would be better than Maximilian, considering he was a really proactive and ingenious gentleman (if we go by the few bits of info we know of him) plus the fact that he already had children, so the succession wouldn't be seen as convoluted as what Maximilian tried to do.

The problem I see against him is being of lowborn origins. He was nobility, yeah, but a Napoleonic one so he really didn't have "weight" in the "Concert of Nations" if he stayed Emperor of Mexico. Maybe with time he could be more accepted, but definitively not at the start, besides it depends how much time Napoleon III keeps his throne as well. The longer he keeps it, the better for him.

 

[Kellan Sullivan]

The problem I see against him is being of lowborn origins. He was nobility, yeah, but a Napoleonic one so he really didn't have "weight" in the "Concert of Nations" if he stayed Emperor of Mexico.

Wouldn't call him "lowborn" by any stretch of the imagination. His mother is a Beauharnais, and all that that entails. His father is an illegitimate son of Talleyrand by the comtesse de Flahaut. The comtesse de Flahaut is suspected to be an illegitimate daughter of Louis XV. Yes, his descent is entirely the wrong side of the blanket, but considering that in 1846 Flores was proposing the uterine half-brother of Queen Isabel II as "king of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia" for exactly the same reason - unroyal enough to not spook the liberals, royally connected enough that he can give "lustre" to the realm, but not connected in such a way that it would bother someone like Britain and look like a French conquest (which Louis Philippe's insistince that the duc and duchesse de Montpensier be named to the crown instead did) and upsetting the balance of power in the western hemisphere in the process.