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

Suspected

 * 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.
 * Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) was suspected of being involved in the assassination of his brother Giovanni, duke of Benevento and Gandia.
 * King Juan Carlos of Spain, according to most accounts, accidentally shot and killed his brother Prince Alfonso at the family's summer home in 1956.
 * Roger Troutman of the band Zapp was probably killed by his brother Larry Troutman during an argument in 1999.
 * Bison Dele (formerly Brian Williams), former professional basketball player in the NBA, is believed to have been murdered at sea by his older brother Miles Dabord (formerly Kevin Williams) in 2002.

Legend and mythology

 * 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 Sophocles' 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, according to Arthurian Legend.
 * The Biblical story of Cain and Abel.