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. According to the Bible and the Qur'an, fratricide was the first type of murder committed in human history.

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), mariticide (the killing of one's husband) and uxoricide (the killing of one's wife). See also siblicide.

The term may also be used to refer to friendly fire incidents. It also refers to the possible destruction of one MIRV warhead by another.

Ottoman Empire
In the Ottoman Empire a policy of judicial royal fratricide was introduced by Sultan Mehmet II whose grandfather Mehmed I had to fight a long and bloody civil war against his brothers (which brought the empire near to destruction) to take the throne. 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 19 of his brothers were killed and buried with their father. The aim was to prevent civil war. The practice was abandoned in the 17th century by Ahmed I, replaced by imprisonment in the Kafes.

Fictional fratricides

 * In Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko Bellic is hired by Francis McReary to kill his brother, Derrick. However, Niko may choose to kill Francis instead, so, this may only be attempted fratricide, and indirect Fratricide if Derrick is killed.
 * In God of War, the protagonist Kratos is sent on a quest to kill Ares, the god of war; in God of War II, Kratos is told by a dying Athena that Zeus is his father, making Ares his half-brother.
 * In God of War III, Kratos is challenged by an angry Hercules for being supposedly Zeus' "favorite" (using the following examples: he was cleaning the Augean stables when Kratos was chosen to kill Ares, he was fetching the Apples of the Hesperides when Kratos was crowned God of War, and he killed the Nemean Lion, but Kratos' name was spread throughout Greece). He attempts to complete his "thirteenth labor": killing Kratos and becoming the god of war in his stead. Hercules is ultimately killed by Kratos using the Nemean Cestus stolen from Hercules to repeatedly smash his face.
 * In the Devil May Cry video game series, the twin brothers Vergil and Dante Sparda are shown to have an immense, fratricidal rivalry with one another due to Vergil having an intense desire for Sparda's power for no other purpose other than vain-glory while Dante passionately hates evil and opposes Vergil's desire of using the power of Sparda for such a purpose. In the first game, Dante kills Vergil while Vergil was assuming the form of the demon knight Nelo Angelo. Also, the character Nero attempts to kill his brother Dante in a fit of rage by repeatedly smashing Dante's face and throwing a sword at him, but was unsuccessful at killing Dante.
 * In the comic book series Spawn, God and Satan are shown as twin brothers and supervillains who squander their powers in a constant struggle to kill each other.
 * In the manga series Trigun, Knives attempts to kill his brother Vash several times throughout the series.
 * In Code Geass, Lelouch kills his brother Clovis by shooting him in the head.
 * In the manga series Shaman King, the characters Yoh and Hao Asakura are shown as having a fratricidal rivalry. In the anime, Yoh kills Hao by slicing him in half with Amidamaru's sword.
 * In the television series Lost, The Man in Black arranges the murder of his fraternal twin brother, Jacob. It is later revealed that when the Man in Black was a normal man, Jacob killed him by throwing him into a powerful light (which, ironically is what led the Man to have Jacob killed years later).
 * In the Disney film The Lion King, Scar kills his brother Mufasa in order to make himself king.


 * Rev. and Hon. Wilfred Bohun, in The Hammer of God by G. K. Chesterton
 * Claudius, in Hamlet by William Shakespeare