They made the prince kill himself, but the prince did NOT kill Sophie. Neither did they have any proof that he killed anyone else.
They should have just leave it at that after Sophie escaped. He could join her and live together, without killing the prince, indirectly. The prince would think he killed Sophie, so he wouldn't search for Sophie or Eisenheim.
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"They made the prince kill himself"
No, they did not. What they did lead to his death, but they could not possibly have known or anticipated that he would commit suicide. Everything they did had one ultimate goal: remove him from power so he could not pursue and kill them. That did not necessitate in him being dead.
Framing him for Sophie's "murder" had one purpose and one purpose only: shaking Inspector Uhl's loyalty to the Prince so that he would betray the Prince's plans to overthrow the Emperor. The Prince could not possibly have been tried, let alone convicted, of her murder. The Prince knew that and so did Uhl, Sophie and Eisenheim. The only way to remove him from power was to reveal his treason.
At the end the Prince was not ranting about how he didn't kill Sophie, he was ranting about the state of the empire and how only he could fix it, but now that his plot was revealed everything would soon be in ruins. The Prince could have easily just shot Uhl or not shot him, sat down and let his father's men take him away. His father might have executed him or locked him up in a very posh prison. We can't know, but if he didn't kill himself he would be powerless and unable to harm anyone again. And if he was executed it would not have been for a crime he didn't commit, it would have been for one he did: plotting to overthrow his father. And in many respects Uhl is even more directly culpable in the Prince's suicide. If he hadn't told him that he had revealed his treason then the Prince would not have gone into a panicked, depressed rage and shot himself. His father's men would have walked through an unlocked door and taken him away.
"The prince would think he killed Sophie, so he wouldn't search for Sophie or Eisenheim." This doesn't ring true either. There was no way he was not going to punish and pursue Eisenheim wherever he went. We have the evidence of it right in the movie; him trying to ruin Eisenheim and have him arrested after Sophie was "dead." So if Eisenheim fled Vienna, he would have been pursued and if he reunited with Sophie then both of them would have been killed if they were found. Just because Sophie was "dead" didn't mean either of them were safe.
They didn't MAKE him kill himself. That's ridiculous.
shareThe Prince was trying to start a WAR which would have killed thousands. And does anyone think his father would have survived? Not to mention his little habit of throwing women out of windows when they displeased him.
He was a violent man, prepared to murder his own father - what would Sophie's life have been like with him?