Has there ever been a stronger argument against hereditary monarchy than the reign of the last Romanov czar, Nicholas II, who ruled from 1894 until the Russian Revolution in 1917? The sudden death of his father, Czar Alexander III, who had regarded his son as stupid, weak, and “girlish,” made the reluctant Nicholas the absolute ruler of the world’s largest state. Both pig-headed and indecisive, he resented his ministers for bothering him with urgent public affairs. When his new prime minister,