For some reason, despite the lack of time travel, or being an RPG(close enough though, considering how people view the Zelda series and all) it kind of conjures up thoughts of Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain. It starts just like that, you're a noble in a tavern, and as you leave you get assassinated, but then you're brought back to life by a necromancer, as a vampire. You eventually make your way back to the town for revenge, and then the game really starts from there.
Probably not it, but there were some similarities in the events described. I'm not an expert of PS1 RPG's(or the genre as a whole) though.
Maybe Valkyirie Profile, that'd be stretching it too, but it's about death, and how it works in Norse mythology. Everyone that joins your party had to die in order to do so.