Challenge: turn the least competent historical figures into competent people, what changes?

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi chooses more competent advisors and listens to them and steers Iran towards a constitutional monarchy by the mid 1980s. He also chooses non-alignment and keeps his military spending to a necessary minimum, preferring improved training instead of blowing millions on useless and unnecessary weaponry and jet fighters.

Also he doesn’t spend money as lavishly on the Persepolis celebration and keeps it in line with Iranian traditions instead of wasting millions on outside products and services
 
Make Stalin less paranoid/more capable of assessing threats. The Red Army would go into WWII with far more of its best officers (Tukhachevsky for instance), and wouldn't be completely blindsided by Barbarossa. The Soviet Union would probably go on to liberate not only the entirety of Germany, but large chunks of Italy and France.

Terrifyingly, this may also entrench Stalinisation in the Union for a very long time.
 
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are better able to handle the problems that occur during their reign. This, combined with Louis' social and economic reforms, means things go much better for the French monarchy.
 
Hitler takes Austria as in OTL and stops there, and also manages to keep his hatred of Jewish people and the other groups he hated under control. Things are still very unpleasant for German and Austrian Jewish people, but no worse then Tsarist Russia in 1900. Individual Jewish people still meet unpleasant fates but there is no Holocaust and very few outright pogroms. Nazism stays in power until the 1990s, when a reformist leader (the Nazi equvilent of Gorbachev ) allows reform and other political parties to exist, which ends up making the Reich fall apart like the USSR in OTL. To this day, the Nazi Party is one of the main political parties in Germany and Austria. With no Holocaust or WW2 in this timeline, Nazism is seen not as *good* but not as the evil incarnate either.
 
Charles the First of England first listens more to his Parliament and avoids trying to force his ideas of religion on Scotland, and also makes the families of Parliament members live in the Tower of London as very well treated hostages, so if they revolt their family members could easily be killed. The kings of England retain power for centuries as a result.
 
Hitler takes Austria as in OTL and stops there, and also manages to keep his hatred of Jewish people and the other groups he hated under control. Things are still very unpleasant for German and Austrian Jewish people, but no worse then Tsarist Russia in 1900. Individual Jewish people still meet unpleasant fates but there is no Holocaust and very few outright pogroms. Nazism stays in power until the 1990s, when a reformist leader (the Nazi equvilent of Gorbachev ) allows reform and other political parties to exist, which ends up making the Reich fall apart like the USSR in OTL. To this day, the Nazi Party is one of the main political parties in Germany and Austria. With no Holocaust or WW2 in this timeline, Nazism is seen not as *good* but not as the evil incarnate either.


Or dies of a stroke a week or two after Munich. Then he dies a terrific success, and WW2 either doesn't happen or else takes place under a successor. In the latter case, AHers and even historians go on endlessly about all the carnage that would have been avoided "if only" he had lived.

Mary I also looks far better if she dies just after defeating Wyatt's rebellion, and James II if he snuffs it immediately after Sedgemoor. Timing is everything.
 
Constantine the Great:
He thinks first before assassinating his most competent son Crispus and instead leaves the empire to him instead of going full gavel-kind and dividing up with his other sons. This increases stability with an actual legitimate and respected dynasty on the throne giving Rome a chance to have a stable dynastic succession like Julio-Claudians and Antonines.
Heraclius:
He went insane during the Arab invasions. By Asb make him as competent as he was in his youth and he should be able to crush the Arabs and save the Empire's Eastern holdings and focus on retaking the Balkans. This leaves way for his genius administrator of a son Constans II to have the resources and funds to launch his reconquest of Italy.
 
Caligula doesn't suffer the severe illness that caused his personality change (and possible insanity) and stays more or less the way he was before it. This means he spends more responsibly and doesn't alienate the Senate. He succeeds in adding Britannia to the empire, and historians have a generally positive opinion of his reforms and administration.
 
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