10 Monarchs Who Killed or Mutilated Their Own Sons


History provides us with many examples of how absolute power can corrupt even the closest family ties: suspicion of rebellion and conspiracy; the appearance of too little aptitude for rule - or too much, making a young prince too popular; or just a moment of rage. These have been enough to cause powerful fathers to kill sons, secure in the knowledge that they could do so with impunity. If you are a monarch, you might kill your son and still be remembered by posterity as “The Great”, or even kill two sons and be remembered as “The Magnificent”…

1. Macedonian king Lysimachus kills his son Agathocles

Lysimachus, king of Thrace and Macedonia, was already a grandfather at the time he decided to remarry. He chose as his new bride Arsinoe, the younger sister of his daughter-in-law Lysandra, who was herself the wife of his eldest son and heir, Agathocles. Like Lysandra, Arsinoe was the daughter of Ptolemy I - king of Egypt, in the line that would later produce the famous Cleopatra - so it is not surprising that the young woman eventually held great influence over her aging husband. The king honored her so much that he even renamed a city after her – for a while, Ephesus became “Arsinoeia”.
But Arsinoe wanted more than honors: she wanted one of her sons to succeed him on the throne. The main obstacle was Agathocles, the heir apparent, already an adult and an experienced military commander, who was liked by the people, the army and the ruling class. So she persuaded the king that Agathocles conspired against him and instigated a rebellion, and the father arrested and executed his son. (It is said that earlier, and with Lysimachus’s consent, she tried to poison Agathocles, but he sensed the poison and spat it out – so they had to resort to a public execution to be rid of him.)
The country was shocked. Afraid for her children, the widowed Lysandra fled with them into the protection of the neighboring king Seleucus, who, like Lysimachus and Lysandra’s father Ptolemy, was a former general of Alexander the Great. Seleucus used the opportunity to invade his neighbor and Lysimachus died in the ensuing battle – the only one from this long list of murderous parents who was punished by fate for his deed.

2. Constantine the Great kills his son, and then his wife, and becomes a saint

Roman emperor Constantine ended the persecution of Christians – a decision that spared thousands of lives and resulted in his veneration as a saint - so few remember that he was also the author of one of the most shocking crimes in all Roman history: He executed his firstborn son, Crispus, heir to the throne and a promising military commander, and also killed his wife Fausta, who was suffocated in an overheated bath soon after.
The reasons will forever remain a mystery. Both were subjected to “damnatio memoriae”, their names were erased from all inscriptions and contemporary historians kept an embarrassed silence, so the truth is lost. Only a pagan historian, Zosimus, mentioned the suspicion of Crispus “debauching” his stepmother Fausta. Modern historians have multiple hypotheses. Did Crispus and his young stepmother really have an illicit affair? Or did Fausta falsely accuse Crispus of such indecent proposals, hoping to eliminate him from succession in favor of her own sons? And did Constantine then first believe her and punish him, then discover the intrigue and punishe her? Or did Fausta simply accuse Crispus of conspiring against his father? We’ll probably never know.

3. Emperor Heraclius mutilates his rebel bastard son, Atalarichos

John Atalarichos was the illegitimate son of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, born of a concubine. At one point the emperor gave him to the Avars as a hostage. Many monarchs on this list unjustly suspected their sons of conspiring, but this time the son was part of an actual conspiracy to kill his father and make himself emperor. And he wasn’t the only member from the imperial family: his cousin Theodore, the emperor’s nephew, was involved too - he hated Emperor Heraclius for imprisoning his father (also named Theodore). The emperor had imprisoned his own brother because he dared to criticize Heraclius’s incestuous marriage with their niece Martina. As you can see, the imperial family relations were really complicated.
Many high-ranking officials in Constantinople were also involved in the conspiracy. One of them revealed the plot to Emperor Heraclius, who promptly arrested the conspirators and punished them all, including his own son Atalarichos, by cutting off their noses and their right hands. The harshest punishment befell his nephew, Theodore, who besides his hand and nose also lost one leg. This was one of the first instances of punishment by mutilation that would become a Byzantine tradition.

4. Empress Irene blinds her son, Emperor Constantine VI

When the iconoclast Byzantine emperor Leo IV died, his wife Irene became regent for their 10-year-old son Constantine VI. She earned the favor of the church and the common people by reversing her husband’s policies and allowing the use of icons – for that, the Orthodox Church considers her a saint. She stayed in power even after Constantine grew up, encouraging the youth to have fun and let the boring administration of the empire to her. Constantine was 20, but the Empire was still ruled by the regent.
Encouraged by some courtiers, Constantine thought about taking power and exiling his mother to Sicily. When Irene found out, she exiled his supporters and gave him a beating like to a disobedient little child. But when she wanted the army to swear allegiance only to herself, the army revolted against her rule and gave the power to the young emperor. He proved to be incapable, impulsive and cruel, blinding his enemies or cutting their tongues (the punishment by mutilation was already a tradition in Byzantine Empire).
But he wasn’t harsh to his mother. He gave her all the honors, although no real power. So, she tried an intrigue, using her beautiful lady-in-waiting, Theodote, as bait. Young Constantine fell in love so much that he divorced Maria, his wife chosen once by Irene, forcing her to enter a convent, and married the temptress, a fact that revolted his subjects. When the emperor’s popularity further decreased due to a military defeat, Irene’s supporters reinstated her. Constantine attempted to flee to Asia Minor, but his shrewd mother blackmailed his last supporters to surrender him to her. Constantine was blinded and exiled on an island - some sources say that he died soon after from the wounds, others say he lived blind for years. And Irene ruled in her own name – the only woman ever to do so in the Byzantine Empire.

5. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent kills two sons and four grandsons

Mustafa, Suleiman’s firstborn son, a promising young man, was beloved by the Turkish people and by the army. Suleiman was old and ill with gout and now preferred to rest in his palace in Istanbul and keep peace with his neighbors. The army was eager to see their beloved young and energetic prince succeed to the throne and restart the age of conquests.
However, there was one person who didn’t love Mustafa: his beautiful and powerful step mother, known in Europe as Roxelana and in Turkey as Hürrem. A simple Ukrainian girl captured by the Tatars and sold to the sultan’s harem as a slave, her beauty and charm captured Suleiman’s heart so much that he freed her, married her and had 4 sons and a daughter with her. Now, she wanted one of these sons to succeed to the throne, not only to keep her in power, but also because a new sultan could kill his rival brothers with the law on his side. She made a powerful ally in the shrewd Rüstem Pasha, the grand vizier, who married her daughter.
When Rüstem Pasha was sent with an army against the Safavid (Persian) Empire, their main enemy, and saw his soldiers, against his orders, making a detour to pay homage to Mustafa, he described the situation to the sultan as an almost open rebellion. To be more convincing, it is said he forged a letter from Mustafa to their enemies, the Safavids. Worried, Suleiman - who remembered how his father Selim deposed his grandfather Bayezid with the help of the army - took command of the expedition himself and sent an order to Mustafa to join him in the camp.
Mustafa was warned that his father may kill him, but he faced an insoluble dilemma: he was falsely accused of rebellion, but if he didn’t do as his father ordered, he would commit a real act of rebellion. So, trusting his innocence, he decided to go. He went to the sultan’s tent, surrendered his sword to the guards and entered, greeting his father, when, at Suleiman’s sign, three mutes (the sultan’s most trusted servants) strangled him with a silk cord in front of his father.
Now Suleiman had only 2 sons left: Selim and Bayezid, both Roxelana’s sons – and the rivalry between the brothers was fierce. Suleiman, as an impartial father, gave them both provinces to govern at equal distance from Istanbul. Distance was important, because in the Ottoman Empire, the succession wasn’t based on primogeniture: any son of the deceased sultan could become sultan, if he arrived first in the capital. But, maybe afraid of rebellion, the aging Suleiman didn’t like to have his sons too close – so he decided to move them to equally-distanced but farther away provinces. Selim, the older, obeyed immediately, but Bayezid, the younger, hesitated and moved reluctantly – a sign of rebellion for Suleiman.
So, the sultan sent Selim with an army against his brother. Bayezid, defeated, took refuge, with his family, in the neighboring Safavid Persia. The shah Tahmasp I received him with great honors and magnificent banquets – until Suleiman offered him a great sum of money in exchange for his son. The shah agreed – and the sultan sent a great delegation, with the money and the executioner, who strangled not only Bayezid, but also his 4 boys, Suleiman’s grandsons.


6. Spanish King Philip II kills his son Don Carlos

Don Carlos’s tragic fate inspired a theater play and an opera, in which he is described as a noble and generous prince, taking the side of the oppressed people against a tyrannical father who married his son’s beloved fiancée. The historical truth is quite different. Born with a shorter leg and unequal shoulders, with a speech defect, a high, childish voice and a feeble mind, Don Carlos was a victim of his royal ancestors’ repeated inbreeding: physically deformed and mentally deficient, with a violent temper, unfit for ruling and maybe even for marriage - his boyish voice made him suspect of impotence. That’s probably why the French princess Elisabeth, first engaged to the prince, later married his father, the king. And when Philip II wanted to arrange for his son a marriage with Emperor Maximilian’s daughter, Anna, at the emperor’s request, physicians tested the prince’s potency. Apparently, Don Carlos passed the test and became engaged to the princess, but the marriage didn’t happen and later, after both Carlos’s and Elisabeth’s deaths, Anna also married the prince’s father.
Unfit as he was, Don Carlos was the only son of King Philip II and therefore his heir. But he grew more and more irritated that his father and his courtiers didn’t offer him enough power and respect. Once, in a temper tantrum, he even hit the powerful duke of Alba. Some rebels used his discontent and his naïveté and convinced him to join their rebellion in Netherlands. The king discovered the plot, entered his son’s room late in the night, with his guards, searched the room for evidence of treason and arrested him. At first he kept him prisoner in his room in the palace, but later sent him to a prison fortress, where Don Carlos died the following year in mysterious circumstances. There were rumors about him being poisoned at the king’s orders, but it’s possible that his father just kept him in such conditions that, combined with his already frail health, lead to his death.

7. Tsar Ivan the Terrible kills his son

Tsar Ivan the Terrible was a very religious man. That didn’t stop him from taking many wives – if one upset him, especially by not giving him sons, he would send her to a monastery and marry another. He did the same with his son’s wives: two were sent to monastery, one after another, for not getting pregnant soon enough.
The third daughter-in-law got pregnant, but that wasn’t enough to earn her the tsar’s favor. Once, despite her long-awaited pregnancy, the tsar beat her because he thought she was dressed too “immodestly”. Tsarevich Ivan, his son and heir, intervened to save his wife and unborn child (she miscarried afterwards) and confronted his father. Furious, Ivan the Terrible stroke him in the head with his scepter. The young Ivan died after some days of agony, during which the remorseful father prayed to God for a miracle to save his son’s life.

8. Sultan Mehmet III kills his son Mahmud

Prince Mahmud was a youth eager for military deeds – he asked insistently his father, the sultan, to give him an army and send him to fight against a rebellion that was happening in Anatolia. For Mehmet III, that was already suspicious: why did his son want an army if not to rebel?
But the fatal blow to the young prince came from the superstition of his mother, Halime, one of the sultan’s concubines. She was anxious to know if her son will be the next sultan, not only from ambition, but also because there was a custom, and even a law, allowing the new sultan to kill his rival brothers. Mehmet III had 19 brothers and killed them all, so Halime had reasons to think that her son will either become sultan or be killed. So, she sent a message to a Sufi sheikh, who was considered clairvoyant, asking how much more will the sultan live and whether her son will become the next sultan.
The answer of the supposed clairvoyant was very reassuring of Mahmud’s succession following the sultan’s death. However, it never reached Halime. It was intercepted by the harem’s chief eunuch and given to Mehmet, who interpreted it as a clear sign of conspiracy. So, the sultan ordered his deaf-mute servants to strangle his son with a silk cord, as he had done with his 19 brothers before.

9. Tsar Peter the Great kills his son Alexei

Peter the Great is remembered now as a great ruler with modern, enlightened views – but his views on family weren’t enlightened at all. He sent his first wife to a monastery, letting his little son without a mother; he was cold, authoritarian and demanding with him, wanting to model him in his image. But the boy was very different; he was weak, quiet and pious and wasn’t interested at all in the military. When Peter had a second son by his new wife, he threatened Alexei with disinheritance if he didn’t man up, but Alexei was glad to renounce his right of succession, hoping his father will let him live a quiet private life. But Peter insisted that, if Alexei renounces the throne, he must enter a monastery.
That was too much for Alexei. Yes, he was pious, but not that pious – and besides, he had a Finnish mistress, Afrosinia, a former serf. So, for the first time in his life, he did something audacious: he fled to the Habsburg Empire, putting himself under the protection of Emperor Charles VI. There, he lived in peace with his beloved Afrosinia, but not for long. His father sent a very shrewd emissary, Count Pyotr Tolstoy (ancestor of the writer), who convinced him to return, with the promise that the tsar would pardon him.
He returned, renounced the throne officially and thought that his troubles were over. In fact, they were just beginning: his father started to interrogate him about his accomplices to his escape – for Peter, the escape itself was conspiracy and treason. Pressured by his father, Alexei gave several names, his closest friends and supporters. Most of them were promptly executed, the luckiest ones received only whippings. But the tsar wasn’t content yet: he arrested Afrosinia, who was pregnant; when she saw the torture instruments, she “confessed” to everything her zealous interrogators wanted. Her confession was fatal to her lover. Alexei was sent to prison and, under torture, accepted all accusations. Besides torture, Afrosinia’s betrayal broke his heart. He was sentenced to death by the tsar’s council, but the tortures he endured killed him before the ruling could be carried out.

10. Korean king Yeongjo kills his son Sado

As heir to the throne, prince Sado was raised by eunuchs in a separate pavilion, only rarely seeing his father the king – he grew so afraid of him that he was barely able to speak in his presence. Soon, signs of madness appeared. The prince was so afraid of thunder that he couldn’t bear to see the word “thunder”. Each day he had to have a dozen new clothes to choose from – he would burn the ones he didn’t like. The worst thing was his mad violence: he cut off a eunuch’s head and showed it to his wife and her ladies-in-waiting, he beat his favorite concubine to death, he raped his wife’s ladies-in-waiting and, if they resisted, he beat them. Even the process of dressing, of choosing his clothes, could end in injuries or even death for his servants. His wife, Lady Hyegyeong, later described all this in her memoirs.
Finally, the king decided to get rid of this dangerous son - but how? If he executed Sado as a criminal, according to the Korean laws, he would have to also execute the criminal’s son, Jeongjo, a child and the only heir left. So, he chose an unusual punishment: he ordered his son to enter a big rice chest and locked him in it. The prince survived inside for 8 days, begging for his life. When he didn’t give any more signs of life, they opened the chest and found him dead.