LOL, it'll be of no help to hate it, so you might as well to try and love it. It'll help make easier to try and improve it to your liking. It's really hard to do sacrifices for something you hate...

If it can help if you want to have fun studying the history of Italian unification you'll discover people back then tried to make the best they could but they were facing problems that were bigger than they were and ended up making many mistakes that, of course, ended up making matters worse.

Now that we know the consequences of those mistakes we can sit down and say: no, really, how could you think it would work? but back then, with the limited knowledge they have, dealing all of sudden with a kingdom that was that large and with the mentality that people had back then, they really didn't know any better. Sadly one will pay for each mistake he does. Many 'apparently right' choices were horrible mistakes and we're still paying for them.

As you said now it's only a matter of managing to let go of the past and walk toward the future, without forgetting the past mistakes but without allowing them to drag us down.