Nicholas believed in autocracy to the end, simply because it was tradition, no other reason. Nicholas felt that it was his sacred duty to pass the autocracy with all the power of the tsar to Alexei, and that if he did not he failed his coroation vows. I don't think he ever had any other motivation for not changing the laws. He stuck with tradition blindly.
He did not stick with tradition "blindly". Remember the changes made to his autocracy in 1905 after Bloody Sunday?? Also, if you guys had used search on this topic, you will see that there "is" some historical evidence from two first hand sources, that after the Spala incident in 1913, Nicholas posed the legal question to Tcheglovotov (minister of Justice and foremost expert on Russian Imperial Law) about changing succession in favor of Olga should Alexei be unable to succeed, and the answer was "yes he could" and a secret ukaze was drawn up by Tcheglovotov changing Nicholas' heir to Olga Nicholaievna should Alexei not be able to take the throne. Many historians doubt this occurred, however, Mossolov and Spiridovitch both say it did, and both were very close to Nicholas. As a question, it will only be answered for certain if the secret Ukaze ever turns up in GARF somewhere.
Ain't I dumb! As a matter of fact I wrote what you say in my draft, then I realized my answer was getting too long and I deleted it.
My logic tells me that the Emperor, being an intelligent man and as concerned for Russia as his vision of the world would allow him to be, would have realize that the Heir might never make it to the Crown, and I have a gut feeling that the ukaze you mention exists or existed, in the very least form, as a draft ready to make the necessary amendments. The male succession issue was all too important in Russia to leave it just hanging in there.
But I still insist that the revolution would have happened anyway.
Mariia, a constitutional monarchy is still a monarchy because the sovereign isn't an elected government official. In the case of Great Britain, citizens get to choose who will be the head of the government, that is, the Prime Minister, but the Head of State is the queen, whether they like it or not.
In a republic you know who rules.
When Nicholas II abdicated in is and his son's behalf in favor of Michael, he "passed it on" to the Provisional Government. Which opens a can of worms that has been discussed elsewhere. Michael didn't abdicate and didn't refuse the crown, he wanted people to decide if the empire should continue or not. It was a conditional abdication, the conditions of which were not met and consequently, a theoretical can of worms can be opened because I'm sure that a detailed legal analysis of the situation would prove that the communist (without a capital "C" on purpose) was a rogue regime... and this would also put the current regime in dire straights... as well as the pretenders of the throne.
Well, I don't intend to hijack the thread so I'll just leave for now.
I stand for what I said before: changing the law wouldn't have prevented the revolution from happening.
