Accidental Vice & Democracy

 Democrats will tell you that commoners declared war on the aristocracy and won. Like everything democrats say, this is a lie. Reminder: the aristocracy was underpaid and quit. Commoners created too many problems and not enough wealth, resulting in the profitability of open leadership going negative. The option went out of the money. Only fools and deviants remained in openly ruling classes.
 While it is true that during the transition many lesser aristocrats got killed, they did so as a result of being left behind. They thought the commoners could be reasoned with, or thought they could 1-v-all the commoners and win, or otherwise had distinctly common thought processes, resulting in commoner-like fates. 

 France and Russia in particular went down to royal dysgenics. They thought they were breeding for virtue. The breeding was highly successful, as expected of the upper classes. However, it turns out compassion for strangers is a vice. Loius and Nicolas had great compassion for the serfs, meaning, when the serfs defected on them, they cooperated. Anyone with genuine arete had fled the dynamic years or decades beforehand. That is: when Ukraine has a Maidan, you flee the country then. You don't wait until Russia is driving tanks across the border, unless you're an idiot who deserves to get trapped. (That or you hold a counter-coup, but why bother? You can't coup the peasants into being less troublesome.)

 Louis should have just used the grapeshot on the commoners. "Hint: nope." Nicolas should have quit when it turned out he had less than half the trustworthy administrators he needed. Attempting impossible things doesn't make you noble, it makes you a loser. Nicolas' fine facial structure reveals glorious ancestry, while his lazy eye and stunted stature reveals he was a highborn commoner. Deadbeat kicked the can, ran up a debt; such a debt he couldn't pay it alone and his whole family ended up paying the price. 

 Spiritually, it is clear the serfs deserve to be oppressed. Nicolas and Louis successfully pursued Christian ideals, which caused them to attempt to invert justice, and the result was hideous death. Indeed, it's clear serfs demand oppression; what really gets the mob going is not lack of circuses, not lack of bread, but lack of tyranny.
 At the country level, once the unjust hate-loving pressure was removed, as per usual it turns out karma is a bitch. The physical vigorously realigned with the spiritual. The debt was energetically paid. 

 

 Population growth ensured there simply weren't enough tyrants to fully supply the demand for tyranny, and as is his job, the figurehead took the blame. P.S. Modern empires have researched and developed many ingenious tyranny-amplifying techniques and mechanical tyrant devices, drastically increasing the supply of oppression - although not yet enough to quell the restless lower classes

 Louis, last king of France, and Nicolas, last king of Russia, were not spiritually different from Tarquin, last king of Rome. When commoners become king, the kingship itself is lost. The difference is superficial; Athenian Sophism made Tarquin produce tremendous misery in one step, while Christian Sophism made Louis and Nicolas produce tremendous misery in two steps. Tarquin fed Rome poison, while Nicolas and Louis fed their countries poison that tasted good.

 Of course kingship itself is a form of black government, an inherently doomed, self-hating parasite. While this fatal karma often takes the form of a Sophism infection, ultimately Sophism is merely the opportunistic infection, not the cause of the underlying disease. Even the most glorious bloodline will be corrupted by engaging in traditional kingship forms - more glorious lines merely resist for longer.