Which country in history has had the highest number of presidential assassinations? [closed]

Question

Presidents, kings, emperors, prime ministers, etc.

I'd also be interested to know which country has had the most assassinations in, say, the last 200 years.

Answer 1

You'd be hard pressed to find a country with more assassinated leaders than ancient Rome. By at least one count, out of 84 emperors (not counting any eastern emperors from Leo I onwards):

• 32 (38%) were definitely murdered
• 11 (13%) may have been murdered
• 1 (1%) was executed by order of the Senate
• 28 (33%) died of natural causes
• 12 (14%) died in violent ways that probably don't count as assassination (suicide, forced suicide after capture, death in battle, etc.)

In other words, the majority of Roman emperors (67%) died a violent death.

Then again, you'll need to define a few points more clearly if you want a better answer:

• What counts as a country? (Are you counting different dynasties of China as the same country? Is the USSR the same country as Russia? Is present-day Scotland a country? Was Vermont a country?)
• What counts as an assassination? (A mob storms the palace and kills the leader, one of the leaders kills the other, the leader is captured and executed by their opponent in a civil war, the leader's spouse kills them in a fit of domestic rage...)
• Who counts as the leader? (Who's the leader of the UK, the monarch or the prime minister? If it's the prime minister, when exactly did that change? Who was in charge of the USSR, the general secretary, the premier, the chairman of the presidium...?)