What reactions emerged from the theory of Absolutism?

In government, Absolutism was/is the belief in the power of the monarch to make all decisions regarding social life, law, morality, foreign affairs, and questions of the state. Many European monarchs claimed to rule by 'divine right," which implied that they had been specifically ordained by God to watch over their people, and that their decisions were in reality a reflection of God's will being executed through the king.
The idea of absolute monarchy was especially salient in the seventeenth century, specifically in Western Europe, where the consolidation of state institutions (such as the church and the king's army) and the publication of pro-monarchical philosophic treatises cultivated a milieu in which the authority of the king was unquestionable. The most notable example of absolute monarchy in this period was the Bourbon dynasty of the French state, which exerted its most lasting influence from 1589 to 1792.
For example, the French political thinker Guillaume Du Vair, speaking to king Louis XIII in 1621, was quoted saying:

Do you not consider that in Your Majesty consist the entire salvation of your state, do you not understand that many millions of men who surround you only breathe by your lungs, and that if this light is extinguished, we will all live in the darkness of confusion, of misery, and of inestimable ruin.

In France, the spirit of absolute monarchy was apotheosized under the rule of Louis XIV, perhaps the most powerful man ever to sit on the French throne.
Other European states in the early modern period embodied the ideals of absolute monarchy as well. In the Russian empire, for example, the Russian tsars from Peter the Great to Nicholas II enjoyed the unquestioned obedience of both the nobility and the common people, who were collectively referred to as their "servitors."
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the European Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution began to cast doubt on the legitimacy of divine right as a justification for rule. Furthermore, the squalid conditions that ordinary citizens were forced to endure in the major European capitals—the lack of food, poor sanitation, dangerous work conditions, insufficient housing, and much else—became increasingly insulting when compared with the lavish lifestyles of the nobility and imperial court. French aristocrats, for example, staged massive spectacles at the celebrated Palace of Versailles, filled with performances and sumptuous feasts.
Aristocratic detachment from the sufferings of the common person was probably most egregiously encompassed by the infamous (and alleged) comment made by Marie Antoinette, wife to the French kind Louis XVI. When asked how to address the pervasive problem of hunger in Paris due to a lack of wheat, she notoriously quipped: "Let them [the peasants] eat cake!" (there is no direct evidence ever linking her to this statement).
Bourgeois sentimentality of Europe's elite classes, aristocratic arrogance, and rising social unrest eventually spelled the end for absolutism as a justifiable principle of rule. In 1789, French citizens, revolutionary leaders, and parliamentarians overthrew the monarchy in what is known as the French Revolution. In 1792, representatives of the French National Assembly declared France a Republic, and one year later the French king Louis XVI was executed.
In the Russian Empire, the tsars faced similar threats to their rule. In 1825, for example, members of the Russian intelligentsia calling themselves the Decembrists revolted, denouncing the accession of tsar Nicholas I and demanding the publication of a Russian constitution. Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 by political radicals. Nicholas II was similarly required to give up pretensions to absolute monarchical authority after the 1905 Revolution, in which he was forced to recognize the existence of political parties in Russia and give them voice by creating a quasi-representative assembly called the Russian Duma.
In all of these cases, the Russian monarchs (like the French) were forced to abandoned any pretensions they may have had to absolute rule. Throughout the nineteenth century, similar revolts challenging the authority of the sovereign occurred throughout Europe, in places such as Spain, Italy, Greece, and Poland.
Absolutism, then, helped generate the conditions for its own downfall. By cultivating an aloof, high-minded, pretentious aristocratic class that unabashedly lauded royal prerogative at the expense of the well-being of ordinary people, absolute monarchies across Europe suffered social backlash. Once the French Revolution set a precedent for the overthrow of such regimes, successive absolute governments fell like dominos, ushering in the age of nationalism.