Talk:Regicide/Archive 1

Crowned regicide?
Are you certain the use of the term "crowned regicide" (See the Mary Queen of Scots section re:Elizabeth) is a proper phrase? Sounds a bit dodgy grammar wise. 23skidoo 04:13, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I added the phrase copied from some source or other I can no longer find. But it's meaning is clear: Betty was a crowned monarch and a regicide. Philip Baird Shearer 12:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Category
See: Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_December_16

I think the community over at WP:CFD should have advertised their intentions here. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:01, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Why is categorised under History of Connetticutt? Penrithguy 17:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Probably because of this phrase "others like John Dixwell, Edward Whalley, and William Goffe fled to New Haven, Connecticut," --Philip Baird Shearer 18:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok I didnt see that line Penrithguy 18:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Regicide in Popular Culture
I think that regicide in popular culture should be eliminated as a seperate heading as we only have one example of it and it should be moved to a position as trivia.

Pstanton 00:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Savang Vatthana
From the history of the page: )
 * 1) (cur) (last) 17:29, 17 January 2007 Philip Baird Shearer  (rv to last version by PBS. No sources to indicate that it was a "deliberate killing of a monarch")
 * 2) (cur) (last) 20:20, 17 January 2007 Couter-revolutionary  m (Undo revision 101365095 by Philip Baird Shearer I think putting a King in a death camp with the rest of the royal family is an intention to kill.)
 * 3) (cur) (last) 09:11, 18 January 2007 Philip Baird Shearer  (Rv. "you may think" but do you have a verifiable reliable source that agrees with you?
 * 4) last)  11:05, 18 January 2007 Couter-revolutionary  m (Undo revision 101525607 by Philip Baird Shearer (talk)) [rollback]

Please note that reversals should not be flagged as minor edits, (see Help:Minor edit). Please see WP:V:
 * The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, which should be cited in the article. If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. Any edit lacking a source may be removed, ...

Please supply verifiable reliable source for the statment that the death of "1984?? King Savang of Laos by Communists" was a regicide, or please stop re-including the line. There are two problems with the statement as stands. (1) it is not clear in the wikipedia article on Savang Vatthana that he was formaly king, and it is not clear that he was deliberately killed, therefor it is not unreasonable to request a source confirming that it was a regicide. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I am afraid, sir, that your comments are really so offensive to me that I feel I do not one to engage in this discussion. He was formally King and, secondly, when communists put the Royal Family of their country in a death camp it is a fact that they intended to kill him.--Couter-revolutionary 15:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The wikipeida article on Savang Vatthana says "he informally ascended the throne upon the death of his father" but it is not sourced so you may be correct in asserting that he was "formally King". If the communists put him in a "death camp" and not for example a "reeducation camp" and deliberately killed him through hanging whatever, then please produce sources to back up the claim that he was a King and a source that says he was executed/murdered because the only sourced statment in the wikipedia Savang Vatthana article says he died (not killed) in 1984 at the age of 77 --Philip Baird Shearer 08:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you understood anything you would know he was only "informally" King because he was never crowned or anointed, aside from this he was constitutionally King of the Kingdom of Laos. Yours &c. --Couter-revolutionary 11:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Major Problem
There is a major problem with this article. A small number of users are treating it contrary to WP:OWN and do not accept any edits made to it. They are applying their own criteria for what classifies as Regicide and not accepting any other user's valuable in-put.

This issue needs addressed.--Counter-revolutionary 08:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems users who are more than willing to claim ownership of this article won't enter into discussion on the Talk Page.--Counter-revolutionary 13:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Regicide of Mary Queen of Scots
This section says almost nothing about the actual regicide of Mary and seems to be a rather dubious commentary on the treatment of Catholics in Elizabethan England. At the very least there needs to be a citation to indicate that Catholics were routinely burned at the stake or the misleading language needs to be removed. Also, I think maybe a little bit more about Mary and how she came to be headless would be good in a section that is ostensibly about the Regicide of Mary Queen of Scots. --72.191.31.112 (talk) 22:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


 * After unsuccessfully searching for a reference that would indicate that drawing and quartering was a punishment used for religious dissent in England, I deleted the last line of the section. The section still needs a lot of work and probably in its current form would be better deleted than anything else. --72.191.31.112 (talk) 12:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Men were hanged, drawn and quartered for treason but women were burned at the stake for treason.


 * It was not per say religious dissent that Elizabeth objected to, it was political dissent. Elizabeth was realistic enough to know that she could not stop people believing what they would "I would not open windows into men's souls.", but she and her ministers could and did act very severely against people who put their hostile thoughts into practice by defining those actions as political actions not religious ones. This means for example that there was no theological debate over the trial and execution of Jesuits such as Edmund Campion, because they were tried for treason not heresy. This is standard text book stuff(see the Jesuits section this reference see also Treasons Act 1571). --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Louis XVI of France
If there is a reason why Louis XVI is not included in the list, may I hear it before I add him? The fact that he had already been deposed (as is noted regarding Nicholas II of Russia) should not be a bar, since many executed or assassinated monarchs were more or less de-throned before being killed, e.g. Mary Queen of Scots. FactStraight (talk) 05:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)


 * He is along with Maximilian I of Mexico -- See the first sentence of the section--Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Regicide of King Birendra
Request by user:Prittwitz791 for more information on the Regicide of King Birendra see User talk:Prittwitz791. The request was made on this page but I have moved it to Prittwitz791's user talk page as it was not directly relevant to the development of this page. --PBS (talk) 18:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Tzar
Was the execution of Nicholas II a regicide? He'd abdicated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.91.165 (talk) 10:58, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

William of Orange
It might be argued that the 1584 murder of William of Orange (aka 'the Silent') was a regicide. He was reigning Prince and Stadtholder ("de facto hereditary head of state") of Holland at the time of his death. Also, he was the founder of the current royal house of the Netherlands. I believe it's generally thought of as a regicide in the Netherlands. Then again, he never held the actual title of 'King' himself, so it's debatable. I'm for inclusion though. Junuxx (talk) 03:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Does regicide include consorts?
Does regicide include consorts, such as queens and empresses who are killed while their ruling/reigning husbands are still alive? &equiv; CUSH &equiv; 02:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, a queen consort is a regina. It's possible. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (talk) 09:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So, the murder of, say, Elisabeth of Austria was regicide? &equiv; CUSH &equiv; 10:16, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, she was a crowned and consecrated regina. Her murder (or her murderer) is indeed sometimes called a regicide but I can't say that's correct. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (talk) 10:28, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Ceremonial regicide
As prominently documented in the tome on mythology, The Golden Bough, the killing of the king was a ritual in many ancient societies. This should be discussed here. __meco (talk) 11:45, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Barrack? Please use International English
The sentence "The captain of the guard at the trial, Daniel Axtell who encouraged his men to barrack the King when he tried to speak in his own defence" uses barrack as a verb meaning something other than "to put in a barracks". This usage of barrack as a verb seems to be specific to British English, not to any other variety of English (e.g., not to Australian English, US English, etc), according to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/barrack - I have a rather good vocabulary and I've never seen it used in this sense previously. When I asked for clarification of this word, this was reverted with the claim that it was a "perfectly acceptable English word"; that isn't the objection, the objection to it is that it's hard to understand for most people outside the UK. I can think of a number of US-specific words that are perfectly acceptable English words, but I still wouldn't use them in a Wikipedia article (meant for people outside the US to read). Allens (talk) 17:17, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Slight amplification - please see COMMONALITY. Surely there's some more-generally-comprehensible word? Allens (talk) 17:54, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks like (as per discussion on my talk page) barrack is indeed about the most specifically correct word/phrase, and that (despite what Wikidict says) Australian English actually does include the UK meaning... along with the opposite one, unfortunately. Therefore, I'm going with linking it to the appropriate Wikidict etymological grouping. Readers from Australia, etc will hopefully be able to figure out which of the senses is meant from context. Allens (talk) 00:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Really, of all the words in the dictionary your still convinced that barrack is the best fit?P0PP4B34R732 (talk) 01:04, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Murat
Should Joachim Murat be listed here? He had been a reigning monarch, and he was tried and executed by firing squad, rather similarly to Maximilian of Mexico. The Bourbon regime, of course, did not recognize Murat as having been a rightful monarch, but I'm not sure that matters - certainly Juarez and his supporters did not view Maximilian as a rightful monarch, either. Thoughts? john k (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

2002-2003
Sjc - I'm not sure I agree. "Regicide" (to me, at least) doesn't carry any more political overtones than "matricide" carries pro-feminist overtones or "suicide" carries egotistical overtones... --taras

It most surely does have political and ideological overtones in trumps. Let us take Charles I: convicted by Parliament, this was a legally prosecuted execution. A royalist account will call this regicide; a pro-parliamentarian account will most certainly not. Matricide is perhaps an unfortunate example in as much as it also carries overtones which imply social disapprobation of the act and thus an inherent ideological basis. As do all the -cides... user:sjc


 * It was not wholly legal. You're forgetting Charles was also king of Scotland, yet the Scots were not consulted with regard to his execution - indeed, many would have opposed it: Charles II was officially crowned King of Scotland during the period of Commonwealth in England.

Au contraire. It was perhaps one of the most thoroughly prosecuted cases in English jurisprudence. Charles' tenure of the Scots throne is an irrelevance; he was prosecuted for his crimes against the English people and found guilty of them by an English court. It is like saying you have an Irish grandmother and are not bound by the laws of Britain. The English have always been particularly quick in this respect in any case, preferring to decapitate first and ask questions later, although perhaps not thorough enough in their prosecution of the aristos. The French were much more rigourous in this respect, and consequently suffer much less from their depradations on the public purse :-) user:sjc

Fair enough :) taras

Your claim that 'regicide' indicates a pro-monarchist viewpoint is faintly ludicrous. It can indicate that, or it can mean someone in writing about a monarchical killing is using technical dictionary terms; it can indicate someone who uses formal terms in a historical text; it can mean an author is using a term that by definition indicates the relationship between the killer and the monarch killed, ie, that there was a theoretical loyalty owed by a subject to their king 'by the Grace of God', but that the killer chose to disregard that relationship, (Just as someone committing matricide ignores the expected familial relationshipby killing their mother.) In the era of the Divine Right of Kings, a special bond was presumed to exist between the monarch and subject, which was equated as between 'God and His Church', 'Master and his slave', etc, ie one had authority by the will of God over the other, and to challenge it was to challenge the will of God. So regicide was presumed to be an attack not just on the person of the King, or even on the monarch, but on 'God's will that he be king' and on the God created 'natural order'.

It is a term used by many historians. Even Eric Howsbawm, a Marxist historian, has used the term. And by no stretch of the imagination can Eric be called a 'pro-monarchist'. I've removed what was clearly a POV from the text.

PS: Parliament was wrong to executive Charles I for the crimes he committed in England. He was head of state of two states, and under law dating back to the time when Moses was in short pants, one kingdom should not unilaterally execute another one's head of state, even if they share the one head of state between them. If you do so, you are deemed to have committed an act of war. At the very least they should have requested that Scotland depose Charles, thus allowing his execution by England. But then the gloriousness of that period after the English Civil War and England's 'republic' has always been mythologised; even the 'hero' Cromwell, though respected in parts of Britain, is hated in others and detested in Ireland as a Saddam Hussein type mass murderer, for the massacres he carried out in places like Drogheda. When a local historian proposed bringing Cromwell's death mask to Drogheda, people threatened to burn down the museum, understandably. For bringing the butcher of Drogheda's death mask back to the town where he massacred thousands of men, women and children was about as insensitive as bringing one of Hitler's bones to Jerusalem. JTD 04:37 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

nerr nerr, told you so :p taras 04:08 Aug 04, 2003 (UTC)

How about adding references to Biblical regicides, such as King Saul's assassination by an Amalekite refugee, who was later executed for this by King David (2 Samuel 1:1-16)? Nahum 01:09 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Edward II of England you think?

I said Biblical. But yes, Edward II should be there too. - Nahum 05:25, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Is regicide the deliberate killing of a king by one of his subjects
Literaly "Regicide" would be the killing of a King by anyone not just a subject. However in English it has a much more specific meaning, which to date only fits the execution of Charles I.

Many Kings in England have been killed in battle in civil wars and that is not called Regicide eg Richard III. Some have been killed in foreign wars eg Richard I. Kings in England have been murdered (In one case half way up a wall according to the old joke). The only case of Regicide in English history is the public execution of King Charles I after an quasi-legal ("I would know by what power I am called hither. I would know by what authority, I mean lawful" authority) trial.

So I think that in the current list, only other execution to meet the criteria is that of Louis XVI of France in 1793. Philip Baird Shearer 17:12, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Imperium maius
Is it regicide to murder an Emperor? Was it regicide to murder a Tsar?

--Philip Baird Shearer 00:51, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I suppose yes. The term "rex" can be construed as encompassing all kinds of monarchs. Killings of two Russian emperors are included in the present list of regicides. Mapple 15:53, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is because two emperors are included that I was asking the question! Philip Baird Shearer 06:58, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Question
Is there a term for the murder of Presidents? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.234.198.87 (talk) 20:32, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Assassination is what America uses, but that applies to any public figure who is killed for political purposes. If say a President were murdered by his wife for cheating on her, I think most people would just call that homicide (or mariticide if they wanted to be pedantic]]) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.200.54.239 (talk) 19:39, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Why so much focus on England?
Why is this article so heavily focused on the English monarchy? Regicide is an almost universal occurrence at different intervals across Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, etc. Aside from ignoring a giant civilization like China altogether and its emperors who were killed, I'm actually quite surprised that none of the ancient Roman emperors are mentioned! No Caligula! No Nero! Caracalla or Elagabalus! If one didn't know much about history, they would come to this article and see the very first section being about Mary, Queen of Scots, and come to the assumption that that is when regicide first occurred. That's obviously not the case, since cases of regicide go back at least to the time of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire, the latter experiencing a long trend of regicide starting with Mursili I until legal reforms of King Telipinu dealing with the royal succession were implemented. I know some will just argue to be bold and edit the article, but I don't have a lot of spare time. However, I would implore future editors to please address this concern, as the article is woefully unbalanced, spotty, erratic, and misleading. Pericles of Athens Talk 21:29, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * see the next section. -- PBS (talk) 17:41, 25 May 2017 (UTC)