fratricide

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), matricide (the killing of one's mother), and uxoricide (the killing of one's wife)).

The term may also be 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 in legend and fiction

• Cain kills his brother Abel in the Book of Genesis.
• In PS2 God of War (video game), when Kratos is given the task to kill Ares, for tricking him into killing his family and causing trouble in Athens, a city named in honor of Athena, he didn't notice that he was also committing Fratricide; in the sequal, it was revealed that Zeus is not only the birth father of Ares and Athena, but of Kratos as well.
• Medea killed her brother Apsyrtus in order to help Jason escape Colchis after obtaining the Golden Fleece. (Greek myth)
• In Völuspá, the forecast of the world in Nordic mythology, one of the signs of the end of the world is an increase in fratricides.
• Höðr murders his brother, Baldur in Nordic mythology.
• Romulus killed Remus, his twin brother and co-founder of Rome.
• Osiris, one of the principal 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, Greece 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)
• Claudius killed King Hamlet, his brother, to marry his sister-in-law, Gertrude, in order to become King of Denmark in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• Michael Corleone (in The Godfather, Part II) has his brother Fredo shot.
• Scar murders his older brother Mufasa in order to usurp his throne in The Lion King
• In the Thomas Harris novel Hannibal, Margot Verger kills her brother Mason as revenge for his abuse of her when they were younger, as she was encouraged to do by her former therapist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
• In Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, when twin girls were not available, twin brothers were used in a ritual in which one brother strangles the other. The one documented occurrence of this is when Itsuki Tachibana killed his brother Mutsuki. It is implied that Ryokan Kurosawa also killed his twin brother.
• In the Valve Corporation video game Portal, the player character Chell euthanizes her weighted companion cube, unlocking a fratricide achievement. Though not technically her brother, the cube was her only friend.
• In the 1979 anime, Mobile Suit Gundam, Kycilia Zabi kills her brother, Gihren Zabi, to avenge her father's death.
• In Final Fantasy XII, Vayne Solidor kills two of his older brothers at the order of his father, Emperor Gramis Solidor.
• In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Henry Sutpen murders his half-brother Charles Bon.
• Absalom, son of King David, killed his half-brother Amnon for having raped their sister Tamar in the Book of Samuel.
• In the video game Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Raziel kills his vampire brothers as he seeks out his creator Kain
• The brothers of Joseph attempted fratricide by throwing him in a well.

Known or suspected historical fratricides

• 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.
• 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 was probably killed by his brother Larry Troutman during an argument in 1999.
• Ronald DeFeo, Jr. killed his four siblings and his parents in what would later become known as "The Amityville Horror House"
• Fourteen-year-old Blaine Basler killed his fraternal twin Blake during an argument over a pack of chewing gum in October 2006, in Ashland City, Tennessee.
• Dipendra of Nepal (1971-2001) reportedly massacred much of his family at a royal dinner on June 1, 2001, including his parents, sister, and brother Prince Nirajan

Other

Ottoman Empire

In the Ottoman Empire a policy of judicial royal fratricide was introduced by Sultan Selim I. When a new Sultan ascended to the throne he would imprison all of his surviving brothers and kill them by strangulation with a silk cord as soon as he had produced his first male heir. 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 erupt as the old king was approaching the end. The practice was abandoned in the 17th century by Ahmed I, replaced by imprisonment in the Kafes. This practice is alleged to have sent several future Sultans mad.

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