Interesting isn't it? The same person who had the opportunity to chart that peaceable path away from auto and semi-autocratic rule wound up being the excuse, through his own assassination, for the other ancient monarchies to engage in war with each other.
A lot of people misunderstand the real role monarchy played in European history, linking the interests of the monarchy and the nobility against the lower orders when the original linkage -- and the linkage found when monarchy was performing best -- was between the monarchy and the lower orders against the nobility.
In the early period of nation state formation, the title of king was one that put the holder at the top of a network of feudal relationships, not necessarily one of political dominance. In fact, many medieval kings controlled less land and wealth than their great nobles, and the reach of the king's law often stopped at the border of the lands the king owned outright. The first great service of monarchy was to subordinate the political power of the great nobles to that of a central government, thereby reducing and finally eliminating the constant clan warfare of the countryside. To a medieval citizen, the political goal he most desired was to live "under the king's peace".
A common thread among the most notable reigns of Europe was the systematic undercutting of real noble power, often distracting the nobility from its true interests by giving them the charms and baubles of higher titles, more social privilege, more tempting royal courts in which to strut and prance in luxury. Louis XIV was the great master of these tactics, using the chateau of Versailles as a potent political tool. But they also marked the reign of Peter the Great, who created ranks of merit and forced much of his grudging nobility into education and pursuits more useful to the state. And they marked the reign of Alexander II, who took on his nobility in emancipating the serfs.
And a common thread among the least successful reigns was the monarch coming too much under the sway of his nobility: reigns such as those of Louis XVI, Mary Queen of Scots, James I/IV (at least after adding the English crown to his wardrobe).
Then there were two monarchs whose deaths might have been caused, at least in part, by their favoring broader interests over those of their nobilities: Richard III and Paul.
Franz Ferdinand's death was welcomed in some royal quarters, in part, because he was showing signs of aligning himself against entrenched court interests. In effect, the monarchs of the late 19th century almost universally failed to understand the nature of the relationships among social orders that worked best for monarchy. And this misunderstanding brought about the fall of those monarchies that failed in this understanding.
It is no coincidence that there is still a monarchy in England, the European country where the king's law supplanted the rights of nobles over their domains and the people in them earliest and most deeply.
Three Romanov rulers dying on the same day is coincidence enough, but all three having been murdered is pretty incredible.
What's even more incredible is that of the six Romanovs who met violent ends (counting Peter I's son Alexei),
four were killed by their family or court intimates. It's one of the reasons I don't get so horrified by the deaths of Alexander II and Nicholas II at the hands of the people. The Romanovs were considerably more murderous toward their own than their people were toward them. (And this is not even counting the plans Sophia had up her sleeve regarding her two brothers had the Streltsy been willing to do her bidding, or the several of Peter's kin who were killed in 1682 when the Miloslavsky faction rose up against the Naryshkin faction at court.) The Romanovs could be quite a nasty piece of work when their interests got crossed.
