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Originally Posted by Louis14
All the best to you and long life to the tsarist Russia.
Par la Grâce de Dieu, Louis-le-14ème.
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Agree the last Russian tsar was more benevolent, to say the least, than Stalin, in hindsight. But he was a dictator all the same. Then again, what's so bad really about a benevolent dictator? After all, Russia especially hasn't really had much, well, practice with a democratic system..
As for the French, yes the country is at a cross roads and yes a monarch could serve as a unifying force. But, that monarch would have to be in place already, to be able to be that unifying force. And not sail in only now, and add to the flames, politically, of confusion and people's overall frustration.
For example, the Netherlands, another country in the midst of re-thinking their system, their values, was very lucky to have queen Beatrix bravely step in at the right, tricky moments: after film maker van Gogh was killed by a member of an extremist minority group, she did the exact right thing and the next day, showed her face in the city of the crime, and went to talk to people of that minority.
She manifested herself on that occasion truly as the unifying force, as the true leader of her nation. BUT, she wouldn't have been able to do the same thing if she first would have had to fight herself onto an empty throne! if that had been the case, she would have been a dividing force and not the opposite.
Sure, I hear your point, France could use a true leader, but I think that to look to descendants of the last French monarchs for that, is looking in the wrong spot.