Bastardy

A bastard is a person whose parents, at the time of their birth, were not married to each other.

As polite way of referring to someone who is bastard-born, someone may be referred to as a 'natural son' or 'natural daughter.' A less polite term is 'baseborn.' A euphemism for being bastard-born is 'being born on the wrong side of the sheets.'

Family Life and Status

In the series, it is not unexpected for noblemen to have bastard children, however, it is not typical for a noble to bring his bastards home and raise them with his own children. It's more usually expected that he will see to the child's well-being to some degree. A nobly born wife has right to take insult at her husband's bastards being introduced into her household and being commensurate rank with her legally born children.

Rights of Inheritance

The baseborn have few rights under the law and custom, when it comes to claims. A bastard may inherit if the father has no other trueborn children nor any other likely kin to follow him. Additionally, a bastard can inherit if he is legitimized by a royal decree. However, a legitimised bastard falls in the order of succession at the end, after all true-born offspring, including daughters.

However, any man can be knighted, even a bastard.

Social Status

It is considered rude to pry into the origins of a man's natural children. Men say that bastards are born from lust and lies, and so their nature is wanton and treacherous.

Surnames

Each of the Seven Kingdoms have bastard surnames decreed by custom.

• Flowers is the bastard name in the Reach
• Hill is the bastard name for the westerlands
• Rivers is the bastard name in the riverlands
• Pyke is the bastard name on the Iron Islands
• Sand is the bastard name of Dorne
• Snow is the surname for bastards north of the Neck, generally referred to as the North
• Stone is the bastard name in the Vale
• Storm is the bastard name in the stormlands (II: 119)
• Waters is the bastard name of Dragonstone (III: 929)

References and Sources

See: The Citadel: Concordance -2.3.2. Bastards

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Bastard (Law of England and Wales). The list of authors can be seen in the page history of Bastard (Law of England and Wales). As with A Wiki of Ice and Fire, the content of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.