Editing Regicide (section)

==Usurpation==
{{See also|Usurper}}[[Image:Death-of-Henry4.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[François Ravaillac|Ravaillac]] murdering [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]], rue de la Ferronnerie in Paris, 1610]]
Regicide has particular resonance within the concept of the [[divine right of kings]], whereby [[monarch]]s were presumed by decision of [[God]] to have a divinely anointed authority 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 harm 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 person reported to David that he helped kill Saul, David put the man to death, even though Saul had been his enemy, because he had raised his hands against the Lord's anointed. Christian concepts of the inviolability of the person of the monarch have great influence from this story. [[Diarmait mac Cerbaill]], King of Tara (mentioned 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.<ref>Adomnan of Iona. Life of St Columba. Penguin books, 1995</ref>

Even after the disappearance of the divine right of kings and the appearance of [[Constitutional monarchy|constitutional monarchies]], the term continued and continues 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 especially hard, even in regard to the harsh judicial practices of pre-[[French Revolution|revolutionary]] France. As with many criminals, the regicide was [[torture]]d so as to make him tell the names of his accomplices. However, the method of execution itself was a form of torture. Here is a description of the death of [[Robert-François Damiens]], who attempted to kill [[Louis XV of France|Louis XV]]:
{{blockquote|He was first 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 cut 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 case of Damiens the Regicide as an example of disproportionate punishment in the era preceding the "[[Age of Enlightenment|Age of Reason]]".  The [[Classical school (criminology)|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 shall achieve in time, to let the punishment fit the crime''".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://gsarchive.net/mikado/webopera/mk206.html|title=The Mikado by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan|website=gsarchive.net|access-date=29 April 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171002005841/http://gsarchive.net/mikado/webopera/mk206.html|archive-date=2 October 2017}}</ref>

In common with earlier executions for regicides:
* the hand that attempted the murder is burnt
* the regicide is dismembered alive

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