List of regicides
Regicide means killing a king or queen. The word comes from Latin rex (king) and caedere (to kill). But people disagree about who counts as regicide. Some definitions cover only when a monarch is killed; others include someone who killed a former king who was still seen by some as the rightful ruler. After abdication or deposition, the line can be blurry.
A famous debate is the 1793 execution of Louis XVI. Legitimists call it regicide by the revolutionaries; revolutionaries call it a lawful execution after a fair trial.
Not every royal killing is considered regicide. For example, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not yet king, so his death is usually not labeled regicide. Suicides are not regicide, and killings of royal spouses or other relatives (such as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898 or Earl Mountbatten in 1979) are also not regicide.
Because definitions vary, there is no universal list of regicides. The following is a list of monarchs who were deliberately killed by someone else, according to reliable sources.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:02 (CET).