Basic Trope: Killing one's relative is considered a Moral Event Horizon.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz has killed a few heroic characters, but he's not considered irredeemably evil until he kills his parents.
- Exaggerated: Evulz has committed genocide, but his murder of his neglectful parents is treated as his worst crime.
- Downplayed: Most murderers are Shot at Dawn. A few get life in prison instead, but that never happens to those who have killed at least one of their own relatives.
- Justified:
- The work is set in a society that values loyalty to one's family and believes that Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil.
- Evulz kills his 5-year-old son. Not only is killing children considered especially heinous, but the victim was the little boy he was supposed to love and protect. Of course everyone is condemning him.
- Inverted:
- Evulz kills his daughter as punishment for having premarital sex, and the narrative treats this as less abhorrent than his other murders — the author agrees that she deserved to be punished and just thought Evulz went too far.
- Evulz Start of Darkness is murdering his Abusive Parents, which is portrayed sympathetically. It's not until he starts killing other people that he is irredeemable.
- Subverted:
- Evulz killing his parents is initially portrayed as shocking, but he later reveals that they frequently starved him and beat him up, making him a Sympathetic Murderer instead.
- Evulz didn't kill his parents until his physicians confirmed that, given how far their condition had progressed, their only options were a slow death and a quick death.
- Double Subverted: It turns out that Evulz's stories of abuse were made up in order to justify his crime. Once again, he's treated as irredeemably evil for killing the people who raised him and then slandering them.
- Parodied:
- Zig Zagged: Characters have varying opinions of Evulz's patricide, and the author doesn't seem to especially favor any one idea.
- Averted:
- Evulz kills his parents, and it's treated as no worse than his numerous other crimes.
- Evulz kills his parents, but they're portrayed as Asshole Victims who had it coming anyway.
- Enforced: Moral Guardians forced the writers to add scenes that anviliciously condemn Evulz's parricide (as if it wasn't already obvious that you're supposed to hate Evulz, and you didn't already know that killing one's parents is bad).
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked:
- Exploited: Empress Belladonna notices that Evulz has killed his parents, and uses her love for her mother to make herself look better.
- Defied:Hiro: This is the monster who callously tortured Lance to death. The murder of his own parents doesn't prove anything about him we didn't already know.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Implied: Hiro reads an article about two convicted murderers. The one who killed two people with the same surname as him got the death penalty, while the one who killed two random people got 30 years in prison.
- Played For Horror: Evulz murders dozens of people to cover up his parricide. He'll be considered irredeemably evil anyway if he gets caught, so why hold back?
- Deconstructed: This mentality prevents people from standing up to their Abusive Parents.
- Reconstructed: Self-defense is considered the only justification for killing one's parents.
Back to Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil.
