With Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumed the title King of Italy.

The unification of Italy, also known as the Risorgimento, was the 19th century political and social movement that in 1861 ended in the annexation of various states of the Italian peninsula and its outlying isles to the Kingdom of Sardinia, resulting in the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the outcome of the Congress of Vienna, the unification process was precipitated by the Revolutions of 1848, and reached completion in 1870 after the capture of Rome and its designation as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.

Victor Emmanuel II was King of Sardinia from 23 March 1849 until 17 March 1861, when he assumed the title of King of Italy and became the first king of an independent, united Italy since the 6th century, a title he held until his death in 1878. Borrowing from the old Latin title Pater Patriae of the Roman emperors, the Italians gave him the epithet of "Father of the Fatherland".

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the northwest. Piedmont also borders Switzerland to the north and France to the west.

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and 16.45 km south of the French island of Corsica. It has over 1.5 million inhabitants as of 2025.