WI the Empress Dowager and Prince Tuan die at Peitang Siege?

[Alamo]

During the Boxer Rebellion, the Peitang Cathedral became a shelter for thousands of Chinese Christians. Defended by only 43 French and Italian soldiers, the cathedral held out until foreign troops reached the capital. However, the siege was marked by an odd incident. On the 27th of June, an Imperial party consisting of the Empress Dowager and Prince Tuan came by to observe the siege. The defending troops reckoned they were in range and prepared to fire at them, but Bishop Favier convinced them to hold off.

But what if, for whatever reason, the troops did open fire and the two were killed?

 

[Fearless Leader]

One major ramification could be that the death of the Prince and the Empress Dowager might enrage the Boxers enough to launch a full on frontal assault on the foreign legations and at the Peitang Cathedral. They never launched a full on assault in OTL due mostly to the prudence of Qing commanders. The rage felt by ordinary soldiers over the death of two prominent members of the imperial family might be enough to override this prudence and lead to a massed assault. Though the Chinese would certainly take heavy casualties, I've no doubt that the Cathedral and the Legations would fall and their residents largely massacred.

This of course would lead to Boxer protocols that are somehow even harsher than the ones of OTL, hard to imagine as that is. Perhaps more territory is ceded? The terms of these protocols could impact events like the Russo-Japanese war and other conflicts. I doubt however that China would be completely dismembered...some kind of Qing government would remain IMO though it's power, scope, and popular support would be somewhat less than OTL.

That being said, the death of the Empress Dowager coupled with the harsher Boxer protocols of TTL would be a deathknell to the hardline conservatives within the Qing court. The Guangxu emperor would be free to institute any number of liberal reforms which could conceivably lead to some recovery by the Qing. If the Qing dynasty can manage to reform itself enough to survive into WWI they could be well positioned to make gains at the expense of the Germans and later the Russians if the war goes according to plan...

 

[Color-Copycat]

I think that by the time of the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing Dynasty's endemic corruption and attitudes favoring a refusal to modernize were too far gone to be reversed. If anything, I might even go so far as to say the purging of the hardline conservatives may open up earlier opportunities for revolutionaries.