According to Athenian law, when Oidipous casts himself as Laios’ son he legitimates his prosecution of Laios’ killer(s), for it was a technical requirement of Athenian jurisprudence that a case of murder could only be prosecuted by one of the victim’s relatives. If Laios were Oidipous’s father, it would (in terms familiar to the Athenian audience) set his investigation on a more tenable footing. Yet his wish to have Laios, murder victim, as his father is like the inverse of his wish not to harm his father by murdering him as the Oracle said he must. Both wishes are inappropriate because they imply a willingness to overturn fact or necessity. The same kind of wish seems to be at work to render Oidipous incapable of considering that any man he kills might prove to be his father. This is particularly evident when he fails to consider that if he were granted the wish to have Laios as his father, he would necessarily find himself already married to his mother. This implication should be especially troubling to a man who has been told that he must marry his mother and who has constructed his adult life to avoid just that eventuality. That Oidipous misses it altogether suggests that his devotion to civic law is blinding him to divine prerogative.