Avunculicide

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Avunculicide is the act of killing an uncle.[1] The word can also refer to someone who commits such an act. The term is derived from the Latin words avunculus meaning "maternal uncle" and caedere meaning "to cut or kill". Edmunds suggests that in mythology avunculicide is a substitute for parricide.[2] The killing of a nephew is a nepoticide.[1][2]

In history

In fiction

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In gaming

  • In God of War III (2010), Kratos brutally murders his uncle Helios by tearing his head off his shoulders and later in equally brutal and different methods kills his uncles Hades, Poseidon, and Hephaestus.
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Huang avenges his father's death by killing his Uncle Kenny Lee because Lee killed Hunag's father and tries to kill Huang.
  • In the video game The Darkness, Jackie Estacado, the game's protagonist, kills his "uncle" Paulie in revenge over the death of his girlfriend Jenny Romano which Paulie himself was responsible for.

In literature

  • Hamlet kills his uncle, King Claudius, in revenge for his father King Hamlet, whom Claudius murdered to seize the throne of Denmark.
  • In Vladimir Nabokov's 1928 novel King, Queen, Knave, Franz intends to murder his uncle; the narrator tells us that later on he will be "guilty of worse sins than avunculicide".[7]
  • In the Hellsing (1997–2008) manga series, Integra kills her uncle, who wanted the Hellsing organization for his own selfish purposes, in self-defense after unintentionally reviving the vampire Alucard with blood from a gunshot wound.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, Tyrion Lannister is accused of committing nepoticide and regicide.

Onscreen

In Fanfiction

  • In Dark Realms, Barrel cause her uncle, Top Gun by let go of him which led to his death because he committed terrible sins.

See also

Familial killing terms:
Non-familial killing terms from the same root:
  • Deicide, the killing of a god
  • Genocide, the systematic killing of a large group of people, usually an entire ethnic, racial, religious or national group
  • Homicide, the killing of a human
  • Infanticide, the killing of an infant from birth to 12 months
  • Regicide, the killing of a monarch (king or ruler)
  • Tyrannicide, the killing of a tyrant

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Time Magazine: Nepoticide v. Avunculicide Retrieved 2009-06-06
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  7. Leona Toker. Nabokov. The Mystery of Literary Structure. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1989. Page 63. ISBN 0-8014-2211-6