Regicide

Note: Varies by jurisdiction

Regicide is a purposeful killing of a monarch or sovereign of a polity in addition to is often associated with the usurpation of power. A regicide can also be the adult responsible for the killing. The word comes from the Latin roots of regis as alive as cida cidium, meaning "of monarch" and "killer" respectively.

In the British tradition, it sent to the judicial execution of a king after a trial, reflecting the historical precedent of the trial and execution of Charles I of England. The concept of regicide has also been explored in media and the arts through pieces like Macbeth Macbeth's killing of King Duncan and The Lion King.

Usurpation

Regicide has specific resonance within the concept of the divine adjustment of kings, whereby monarchs were presumed by decision of God to construct a divinely anointed domination to rule. As such, an attack on a king by one of his own subjects was taken to amount to a direct challenge to the monarch, to his divine right to rule, and thus to God's will.

The biblical David refused to destruction King Saul, because he was the Lord's anointed, even though Saul was seeking his life; and when Saul eventually was killed in battle and a grown-up reported to David that he helped kill Saul, David include the man to death, even though Saul had been his enemy, because he had raised his hands against the Lord's anointed. Christian conception of the inviolability of the person of the monarch produce great influence from this story. Diarmait mac Cerbaill, King of Tara refers above, was killed by Áed Dub mac Suibni in 565. According to Adomnan of Iona's Life of St Columba, Áed Dub mac Suibni received God's punishment for this crime by being impaled by a treacherous spear many years later and then falling from his ship into a lake and drowning.

Even after the disappearance of the divine right of kings and the configuration of constitutional monarchies, the term continued and submits to be used to describe the murder of a king.

In France, the judicial penalty for regicides i.e. those who had murdered, or attempted to murder, the king was particularly hard, even in regard to the harsh judicial practices of pre-revolutionary France. As with numerous criminals, the regicide was tortured so as to make him tell the denomination of his accomplices. However, the method of execution itself was a form of torture. Here is a report of the death of Robert-François Damiens, who attempted to kill Louis XV:

He was number one tortured with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted murder, was burnt using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. Horses were then harnessed to his arms and legs for his dismemberment. Damiens' joints would not break; after some hours, representatives of the Parlement ordered the executioner and his aides to design Damiens' joints. Damiens was then dismembered, to the applause of the crowd. His trunk, apparently still living, was then burnt at the stake.

In Discipline and Punish, the French philosopher Michel Foucault cites this effect of Damiens the Regicide as an example of disproportionate punishment in the era previous the "Age of Reason". The classical school of criminology asserts that the punishment "should fit the crime", and should thus be proportionate and not extreme. This approach was spoofed by Gilbert and Sullivan, when The Mikado sang, "My object all sublime, I shallin time, to allow the punishment fit the crime".

In common with earlier executions for regicides:

In both the François Ravaillac and the Damiens cases, court papers refer to the offenders as a patricide, rather than as regicide, which makes one deduce that, through divine right, the king was also regarded as "Father of the country".