The destruction of Romulus was sooooooooo dumb. Romulus' star wasn't going to go nova anytime, not for countless of millions of years. Having a star go nova that isn't supposed to go nova for countless eons is bad, bad, bad writing. Even if Romulus' star was going predicted to go Supernova in 2387, Romulus would have been on the ass end of it's death spiral countless tens of thousands of years before the Romulan star Empire and the world sterilized.
Do you what a better storyline would have been for Romulus?
Romulus was one of the two major powers in the Alpha Quadrant to come out of the Dominion War intact in 2375. The Klingon Empire was severely mauled and depleted after the war. The Cardassian Empire was in complete ruins. The Breen were on the losing end and will have paid a major economic and territorial price for losing. But the Romulan's came into the war late, and because the Klingon's were hell bent on taking the full brunt of the counter punches from the Dominion (Thanks Gowron), the Romulan's were able to come out of the war with relatively few casualties.
You could have weaved a story of the Romulan Star Empire taking advantage of the destruction brought upon the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. If you wanted an action adventure series/movie you could easily have one by having the Romulan's going to war with the Federation. If you wanted to have a more philosophical, trekkian like series or movie, you could still have an aggressive Romulan Empire pursuing expansion, but you go into depth about how a heavily militarized Federation would deal with this threat. Would the Federation continue to militarize? Or would it see how militarization and 3+ years of constant war (Federation was at war with the Klingon's just prior to the Dominion War) eroded the principles and ideals to which the Federation was built upon. There was so much squandered potential here.