Maybe I'm basing my conclusions on all the wrong assumptions. This question arises out of my experience with interacting with Romanians WITHOUT knowing much of their backstory.

The little I do know is that Romania is a Latin country with Russian/Eastern European influences but not Slav like its neighbours. Don't know more than that.

So in my interactions with listening to Romanians speaking MANY TIMES I've been confused between strangers speaking Romanian and Italian (I don't speak either). These two languages are so incredibly similar to the untrained ear that Romanian can easily pass off as Italian if you're not listening carefully. However if you do focus then yes you can probably tell - Italian seems 'softer' and also Romanian has loan words like 'Da' etc which are obviously not Italian.

Another thing is physically, many Romanians could pass off as Italian. I think a Romanians could quite easily assimilate into Italian culture if he/she wanted to.

Now I'm not saying that Romanians are Italians but of course there's something there that makes them closer than, say, a Croat, Albanian, Slovene, or even a Frenchman/woman because these countries are actually quite unique.

So at the end of my long and rambling essay, I wanted to ask:

a. in history (i.e. Risorgimento, Soviet occupation of Romania, drawing of the Iron curtain...) has there ever been a conscious effort on part of Italians or Romanians to somehow reach out to the 'Other' as some sort of long lost cousin?

b. during the Risorgimento or maybe even before that, was there ever any mention, even a passing one, of incorporating a far away (though strongly Latin) nation like Romania into the Italian polity?

Thanks!