The assassination of Benazir Bhutto (54) in Rawalpindi has a grim symbolism. It was there nearly 29 years ago that her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, also a former prime minister, was hanged by a previous military regime.
Ms Bhutto's death in the middle of an election campaign throws the political future of the country into confusion. Yet she was never in doubt about the potential threat to her life.
Three weeks before she died, she spoke of a plan for Asif Zardari, her husband, to move from New York to Dubai to be with their children and her ailing mother, in case the family was "left with a single parent to look after them".
For a politician who had survived many close encounters with death, it was merely prudent planning.
Ms Bhutto's decision to end eight years in exile was not easy. She had been forewarned by Pakistani intelligence services that 10-20 suicide bombers were already waiting to target her during the election campaign.
"It is very, very hard to tell if I will live through this [ election campaign]," she said in her last FT interview earlier this month. "I am ready to take the risk. The people of Pakistan are prepared to take the risk. When Pakistan's very existence as a moderate country is at stake, then we all have to take the risk."
Those fatalistic words followed a 30-year career in the increasingly violent world of Pakistani politics, where women are usually relegated to secondary roles. Few would have imagined her rise to fame as the world's first Muslim woman to head a government in 1988 at the age of 35.
If her personal circumstances had been different, Ms Bhutto's feudal family background from the interior of Pakistan's southern Sindh province might well have confined her to a role as a begum, no more than being a full-time affluent housewife and part-time politician. But Ms Bhutto's two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, chose to live overseas after Pakistan's military, led by the late General Zia ul Haq, overthrew the government headed by her father in 1977.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested after the coup and hanged two years later on a controversial charge of ordering the assassination of a political foe. Young and western-educated, his daughter was the obvious choice to stay to lead her father's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) through Gen Zia's harsh military dictatorship.
For Pakistanis of a whole generation, Ms Bhutto's late father will be remembered as the ultimate unifier, taking charge in chaotic circumstances after Pakistan was dismembered by the secession of former East Pakistan in 1971. "He lifted this country from its ashes of defeat back to self-confidence," she said in an oft-repeated remark.
Ms Bhutto left Pakistan in the early 1970s to study first at Harvard University, and then at Oxford University, seeking to enter a diplomatic career upon the completion of her studies.
But the 1977 military coup forced her into politics and exposed her to enemies ranging from the late Gen Zia and an increasingly militant Islamist movement, to the more conservative political parties opposed to the populist PPP.
"I had so many enemies when I was in the opposition and I always thought when I win elections, when we form the government, they would disappear," she said once. She quickly found that "life never does get stable because there are really always new causes to fight for and new challenges to meet".
While the PPP remained a populist party with widespread appeal ranging from industrial workers to peasant farmers, Ms Bhutto's own career was interrupted by her dismissal twice - in 1990 and again in 1996 after she was re-elected in 1993 - on charges of corruption against her and her husband.
She declared the courts established to try her for alleged corruption during her tenure as irrelevant, "because the people's court are my constituency and they want me to be their leader".
She struggled without success to reach some understanding with the military establishment. "They will always reach out to politicians who can be easily manipulated," she told the FT. "The PPP's strength doesn't help us."
Her father's hanging in 1979 did not end her family's ordeal. Seven years later, her brother Shahnawaz died in mysterious circumstances in France while Murtaza was killed in 1996 in Karachi, caught in an exchange of fire between his bodyguards and the local police.
Critics suggest that Ms Bhutto's return to political prominence owed much to outside influence. Her return from exile was preceded by reports of contacts with senior officials of the Bush administration as the US sought an influential mainstream politician in Pakistani politics as a counterweight to the rise of militant Islamist politicians.
There is no obvious alternative PPP leader. He or she will not be able to reclaim either Ms Bhutto's charisma or her global profile, but she was convinced that the party's ability to stay united remained unparalleled in Pakistani politics.