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Fratricide (from the Latin word frater, meaning: "brother" and cide meaning to kill) is the act of a person killing his or her brother.
Related concepts are sororicide (the killing of one's sister), child murder (the killing of an unrelated child), infanticide (the killing of a child under the age of one year), filicide (the killing of one's child), patricide (the killing of one's father) and matricide (the killing of one's mother).
Fratricides in literature
- Medea killed her brother Apsyrtus in order to help Jason escape Colchis after obtaining the Golden Fleece. (Greek myth)
- Michael Corleone (in The Godfather, Part II) has his brother Fredo shot.
- Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his four siblings and his parents in what would later become known as "The Amityville Horror House"
- Romulus killed Remus, his twin brother and co-founder of Rome.
- Claudius killed King Hamlet, his brother, to marry his sister-in-law, Gertrude, in order to become King of Denmark in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
- Kain (Legacy of Kain), enraged with envy, ordered his Lieutenants or "sons" (Turel, Dumah, Rahab, Zephon, and Melchiah) to throw their eldest brother, Raziel, into the Abyss after Kain tore a pair of bat-like wings that Raziel grew when he evolved beyond his human-form before his superior Kain did. After surviving his long tumble into the Abyss, Raziel vows his revenge and returns to his land of Nosgoth and systematically hunts down and slaughters all of his brothers (despite their tainted monsterous forms) for their treachery and while simeaultaneously tracking down Kain to exact his final act of vengeance. This is fiction, but graphically dipicted in the Playstation game Soul Reaver. An excellent example of Fratricide.
- Absalom, son of King David, killed his half-brother Amnon for having raped their sister Tamar in the Book of Samuel.
- Osiris, one of the principle deities of Egyptian mythology, was murdered by his evil brother Set. His wife and sister Isis resurrected him and he became the god of the dead and the underworld.
- Eteocles and Polynices kill each other in ensuing battle over the throne of Thebes in Antigone (Sophocles)
- When both change into different armor, Sir Balin and Sir Balan kill each other in a duel, with Balin shortly outliving his brother and realizing what had happened. (Arthurian Legend)
- Mufasa is killed by his brother, Scar in The Lion King
Known or suspected historical fratricides
- Cain kills his brother Abel in the Book of Genesis.
- Caracalla, Roman emperor (188-217), arranged the murder of his younger brother and joint ruler, Publius Septimius Geta, in 212.
- Selim I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1512-1520), had all possible competitors for the sultanate assassinated, including two of his brothers, his nephews, and all of his sons but one, Suleiman I.
- Cesare Borgia (1475-1507) was suspected of being involved in the assassination of his brother Giovanni, duke of Benevento and Gandia.
- Shaka, king of the Zulu, arranged to have his half-brother and rival for chieftainship Sigujana assassinated in 1816.
- George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence (1449-1478) was executed on the orders of his brother, King Edward IV of England, for treason at the Tower of London.
- Aurangzeb, Mughal emperor of India (1658-1707), warred with his brothers for succession after their father’s incapacitation. He prevailed, and had his oldest brother executed and the other imprisoned.
- Cambyses II, king of Persia (530-522 BC), had his younger brother Smerdis murdered in order to maintain his control over the Persian Empire, circa 523 BC.
- Atahualpa, the last Inca ruler of Peru (1532-1533), disputed his half brother Huáscar’s inheritance of half of the Incan empire. After being defeated in the battle fought near Chimborazo in 1532, Huáscar was drowned on his brother’s orders.
- Roger Troutman of the band Zapp (band) was probably killed by his brother Larry Troutman during an argument in 1999.
- Cleopatra of Egypt may have had her younger brother and co-ruler Ptolemy XIV poisoned in 44 BC in order to replace him with Ptolemy XV Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar.
- Dipendra of Nepal (1971-2001) reportedly massacred much of his family at a royal dinner on June 1, 2001, including his father King Birendra, mother, brother, and sister.
Ottoman Empire
In the Ottoman Empire there was a policy of judicial royal fratricide. When a new Sultan succeed to the throne he would kill all of his surving brothers by strangling with a silk cord. The largest killing took place on the succession of Mehmed III when 16 of his brothers were killed and buried with their father. The aim was to prevent civil war as Islamic cultures had no fixed rules for royal succession (such as primogeniture) and bloody conflicts would errupt as the old king was approaching the end. The practice was abandoned in the 17th century by Ahmed I, a man known for his humanity, subsequently the Sultan's brothers were imprisoned in a prison known as the Kafes.
Fratricide and friendly fire
The term may also used to refer to friendly fire incidents. In a United States military context, it may also refer to an incident where the catastrophic failure and disintegration of one jet engine in a twin-engined fighter aircraft causes the damage or destruction of the second engine, and possibly leads to the loss of the entire aircraft.
"Fratricide"