Learchus (regicide) Learchus (regicide) Learchus () was an adviser in the government of the Kingdom of Cyrenaica during the reign of king Arcesilaus II. Learchus is best known for perpetrating the murder of this very same Arcesilaus II. Little is known about Learchus, besides what is written in Plutarch's "Moralia" and the "Histories" by Herodotus, who mentions him in passing. Learchus appears to have been an early acquaintance of murder, having killed a Cyrenaean noble who was the husband of the Princess Critola and father of Queen Eryxo. When Battus II of Cyrene died, his son Arcesilaus II ascended the throne, along
Regicide killed in battle by their subjects (for example Richard III), but none of these deaths are usually referred to as regicide. The word regicide seems to have come into popular use among foreign Catholics when Pope Sixtus V renewed the papal bull of excommunication against the "crowned regicide" Queen Elizabeth I, for—among other things—executing Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. Elizabeth had originally been excommunicated by Pope Pius V, in "Regnans in Excelsis", for converting England to Protestantism after the reign of Mary I of England. The defeat of the Spanish Armada and the "Protestant Wind" convinced most English people