Fratricide
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Fratricide (from the Latin word frater, meaning: "brother") 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 (systematic killings of a large number of children), filicide (the killing of one's child), patricide (the killing of one's father) and matricide (the killing of one's mother).
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Fratricides in literature
- Cain kills his brother Abel in the Book of Genesis.
- 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 son, 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. 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)
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Known or suspected historical fratricides
- 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, 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 band Zapp killed by his brother.
- 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.
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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.de:Brudermord