In death, Benazir Bhutto has been eulogised as a latter-day political saint, brave and bold, defiant of dictators and dedicated to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. In real life, she was part of a feudal dynasty that had done more than its fair share of damage to the country's integrity.
Nevertheless, her assassination is a tragedy for her family, for her political party, for Pakistan and for the safety and stability of the world.
With Bhutto alive, Pakistan's prospects were difficult. Even had the elections been free and fair - a doubtful prospect - the choices were depressing: President Pervez Musharraf's Muslim League; Nawaz Sharif, whom Mr Musharraf had removed, citing corruption, in his 1999 coup; and Bhutto, until recently in exile in London and Dubai with corruption charges hanging over her head.
US President George W. Bush had pinned his faith on Bhutto in a partnership with a civilian President Musharraf. It was another example of the shortsightedness of western rulers seeking a simplistic short-term solution to complicated problems.
With her Harvard and Oxford education, fluency in English and western ways, and her undoubted charm, Bhutto was attractive, certainly compared to Sharif who is close to Saudi Arabia, where he had spent his exile.
But part of Bhutto's tragedy is that she inherited much from her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, deposed and hanged by a previous military coup maker. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has an important place in Pakistan's present-day story. He, too, was billed as a great democratic leader who fell foul of, and was felled by, the military. In reality, he learned his politics as the spin doctor and foreign minister of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the most sophisticated of a succession of military rulers. They fell out and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto founded the Pakistan People's Party, with slogans of democracy, socialism and bringing the essentials of food, clothing and shelter to the masses. He was a spellbinding orator and he won the 1970 elections in the then West Pakistan convincingly.