Here's what I think. I shared with Wing Zero Alpha yesterday on Fanfiction.net when I was sharing my thoughts on what I'd do with Wing if and when I wrote my Universal Century story and finished it.
"In the final years of the Anno Domini era, the wealthy and powerful industrialists and politicians of those days began to purchase titles of nobility at a higher rate than today which eventually legitimized under new international laws and resulted in the return of aristocracy and the birth of new countries such as the Kingdom of Sanc under the royal family that would refer to themselves as the Peacecrafts. Just before plans for permanent space stations to be established in Earth orbit started to develop, a group of aristocrats that make their fortune and influence around militarization and conflict, join together to instigate short-lived, but profitable conflicts that actually brought Rome (then a even more significant city to the world than today) to the ground (Gundam did burn Berlin and turned Sydney into a crater, so I think it's alright as long as I say I don't mean any offense to the Italians), hence the name "Romefeller". Over the decades into the After Colony period, the Foundation and it's personal protection/infiltration force called OZ wield a controlling influence in the Earth Sphere economy and the Alliance power structure that lasts as long as the Romefeller nobles as satisfied by their monopoly until the rise of the Catalonia family in their secret society."
The rest goes on how I'd make Duke Dermail an even more dangerous and heartless character in canon, but I'll save that for another time.