What if Gavrilo Princip had failed at assassinating Prince Franz Ferdinand?

[thucythucy]

5. Robert Massie asked the same question

in his book "Nicholas and Alexandra."

He speculates even further. At roughly the same time Ferdinand was murdered in Bosnia, Rasputin survived an assassination attempt while visiting his home town in western Siberia. (One of the women he had raped attacked him with a butcher knife and nearly disemboweled him). Massie asks, what if Ferdinand, a man who wanted to reform the creaky Austro-Hungarian Empire and bring it into the 20th century had survived, while Rasputin, whose influence was a major factor in bringing on the Russian Revolution had died?

Perhaps a revived Austro-Hungarian Empire, rejuvenated by moderate reforms?

Perhaps no Russian revolution, but rather the course Russia had been pursuing since the revolution of 1905--a slow but steady drift into a constitutional monarchy, with a Duma assuming more and more powers, and a weak-willed monarch freed from Rasputin's reactionary influence?

How different it all might have been.