Fratricide

Fratricide (from the Latin words frater "brother" and cida "killer," or cidum "a killing," both from caedere "to kill, to cut down") is the act of a person, directly or via use of either a hired or an indoctrinated intermediary (an assassin) that ultimately results in the killing of their brother.

According to the story of Cain and Abel, fratricide was the first type of murder to be committed. In the mythology of ancient Rome, the city is founded as the result of a fratricide, when the twins Romulus and Remus quarrel over who has the favor of the gods, and Romulus becomes Rome's first king and namesake after killing his brother.

In the Hindu epic Mahābhārata, Karna was killed by Arjuna who didn't know that Karna was his eldest brother. Though not exactly fratricide the otherwise meticulously pious Arjuna's actions - where he pitilessly and against the rules of honorable warfare slayed an unarmed Karna - are nevertheless considered utterly deplorable and heinous. However, the context of the crime becomes markedly different when seen from the following angle: 1. Arjuna was oath-bound to avenge the death of his only son and heir apparent Abhimanyu who had been mercilessly slaughtered by a gang of bloodthirsty warriors which included Karna. 2. While Arjuna was blissfully unaware that Karna was his own blood-brother, the latter was apprised of the same by their common mother Kunti. And hence, even though he was privy to the bond of brotherhood, Karna still wholeheartedly (due to his allegiance to prince Duryodana) readily elected to indulge in fratricide. The 13th century poet, Kavi Kabila while commenting broadly on the Ramayana and on Rama's killing of Raavan with the active support of the latter's estranged younger brother Vibhisan - on whom Raavan had vowed black vengeance and on the killing of Bali (again by Rama) with the ready contrivance of his younger, disgruntled and banished, sibling Sugreev, has succinctly expressed this in a couplet: "Irony? What Irony?! If not that the seed of destruction carried in the heart of one brother was sowed and reaped to the full by the hand of another!"

In the Ottoman Empire a policy of judicial royal fratricide was introduced by Sultan Mehmet II whose grandfather Mehmet 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 Mehmet III when 19 of his brothers were killed and buried with their father. The aim was to prevent civil war. Reflecting public disapproval, his successor Ahmed I abandoned the practice, replacing it with life imprisonment in the Kafes, a section of the Ottoman palace.

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