However, while bastards stand outside the lines of succession and inheritance, there are still exceptions which have caused immense problems. King Aegon IV Targaryen legitimized three of his bastard sons and one of his bastard daughters on his deathbed.
His sons and descendants launched four more attempts to take the Iron Throne before their final claimant, Maelys the Monstrous, was slain by Ser Barristan Selmy during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. This is sometimes used as an example of what happens if a bastard is treated too well and given too much power and legitimacy. In practice, however, a nobleman would be much more likely to acknowledge a bastard child born to a noble lady, than he would a child born to a commoner.
For example, while Robert Baratheon is rumored to have fathered over a dozen bastard children, the only one who he acknowledged in the books was Edric Storm, because his mother was a noblewoman, Delena of House Florent - the younger first cousin of Selyse Florent , the wife of Robert's younger brother Stannis.
It is unclear how the system of special bastard surnames developed in Westeros. Since at least the unification of the Seven Kingdoms during the Targaryen Conquest three centuries before the narrative begins , the use and implementation of the bastard surnames has been quite uniform: there is one bastard surname used for each of the nine regions in the realm the original "Seven Kingdoms", plus the borderlands that became the Riverlands , and the new region of the Crownlands that the Targaryens carved out around their new capital city, King's Landing.
Before that, it is unclear if they were introduced by the First Men who migrated to Westeros 12, years ago, or by the Andals who migrated to Westeros 6, years ago, or if they simply originated on their own in Westeros itself at a later date. Westeros was not always divided into these "Seven Kingdoms" however, and after the Andal invasion the continent was still divided into dozens of petty kingdoms, which only unified into seven larger kingdoms within the past two thousand years or so.
Dorne was the last of the kingdoms to be unified, only about one thousand years ago. When Highgarden and Oldtown were both at the center of rival and independent kingdoms, before they were united in the "Kingdom of the Reach", it isn't clear if they even used the same bastard surnames.
Moreover, the Riverlands were a border zone always contested between its powerful neighbors - when the Riverlands were conquered and held by the Stormlands for three full centuries, did bastards born there use the special surname "Rivers" or "Storm"? When the ironborn conquered the Riverlands from the Stormlands and held it for three generations, did Riverlands bastards start using the surname "Pyke"? For that matter, House Greyjoy of Pyke only became the ruling family of the Iron Islands after the Targaryen Conquest exterminated House Hoare, whose seat was on Orkmont island - what surname did ironborn bastards use before that?
While the other kingdoms gradually coalesced over centuries, the Targaryens created the Crownlands all at once, implying that at some point they had to make a formal decree creating the new surname "Waters" for bastards from the region.
The answers to these questions are unknown. The bastard surnames are used by nobles belonging to every religious or cultural group, from Oldtown to the North, and the Iron Islands to Dorne. Still, Dorne also uses the bastard surnames.
The ironborn also practice a limited form of polygamy - they can have only one "rock wife", but can take multiple " salt wives " - captives taken as formal concubines.
The children of salt wives are not considered to be bastards, though they rank behind the children of a lord's rock wife in the line of succession. Bastards need to be acknowledged by a noble-born parent in order to use the special bastard surnames. The only known exception to this rule in the books is Mya, the eldest of Robert's bastards: she is commonly known as "Mya Stone" although she has never been officially acknowledged by Robert.
He actually did spend some time with her when he was living in the Vale and she was a toddler, and apparently this gave him a fondness for her that he didn't have for his numerous other bastard children: at some point during his reign Robert openly expressed interest in bringing her to live at court in King's Landing, probably to formally acknowledge her as well. Nothing came of this, however, because Cersei bluntly implied that she would have the girl killed if she came to the capital city.
Thus it is possible that Mya Stone uses the bastard surname because Robert wanted to acknowledge her, and her status as his daughter was an open secret.
Fans sometimes derisively assume that " Joffrey , Myrcella , and Tommen Baratheon " should really be called by the Lannister surname because of their status as the bastard offspring of the incestuous relationship between Cersei Lannister and Jaime Lannister , and not the sons and daughter of King Robert Baratheon at all.
This is actually an error, as according to the customs of bastardy, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen don't even have the right to use the surname "Lannister". As Jaime's bastard children, given birth to by a woman from the Westerlands Cersei , the three would have to use the bastard surname for the Westerlands: "Hill".
There's also the possibility that he might use "Waters" given that both Jaime and Cersei had been living in the Crownlands for many years, and the three have lived their whole lives there. All of this, of course, would only happen if Jaime were to openly acknowledge Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen as his children, which is an impossibility given the disastrous political fallout this would create. Further, as the product of not merely bastardy, but incest , the Faith of the Seven would want to outright kill them as abominations before the gods if their actual parentage was ever revealed.
Given these factors, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen are entitled to no surname; the legal status of a baseborn commoner. Marriage in the real-life Middle Ages was primarily focused on producing "legitimate" children - i. Yet the status of children produced outside of marriage varied quite widely across time and place. Before the Gregorian Reform in the eleventh century, concubines often had semi-official or even official status and rights, as did their children.
It was only starting in the eleventh century that the Christian Church began to stress that only children produced from the marriage of one man to one woman were legitimate, and any produced outside of that marriage were "illegitimate". Before that time, not nearly as much stigma was applied to bastardy. However, it took time for this new definition of marriage - and the notion that children born outside of it were shameful "bastards" - to take full effect.
William the Conqueror, who became King of England in , was - by some definitions - a bastard son of Robert, the Duke of Normandy. The Normans were actually descended from Scandinavians who settled in northern France i.
These ancestors had practiced polygamous marriages and relationships in the past, and some of their Norman descendants continued to keep concubines. While these concubines were no longer considered to be fully "married" to the man, their children were usually considered just as legitimate as children produced within marriage. Robert recognized William as his heir, and by Norman standards of the time, William was not considered illegitimate.
Conversely, English standards of the same period were not as accommodating; the local Anglo-Saxon population initially labeled William as William the Bastard, not the Conqueror. William's son King Henry I of England had six publicly known concubines and at least twenty acknowledged children by them. Clearly at that point in time, the Church had yet to fully impress upon the general populace the new value that "bastardy" was shameful, to the point that a King of England openly had many bastard children, and even gave them lands and titles.
As the 's progressed, however, this new definition of bastardy as something shameful was becoming generally accepted: [10] In Henry I's case, his only legitimate child upon his death was his daughter, Matilda. Even though Henry had officially declared Matilda his successor, and taken significant steps to secure his nobles' allegiance to her, many reneged on their oaths following Henry's death.
Matilda's attempts to claim the English throne was to throw the country into almost 20 years of civil war, a period known as The Anarchy and which directly inspired George R. Martin to write the Dance of the Dragons in Westerosi history.
At the same time, however, it was never suggested that any of King Henry's illegitimate sons should take up the throne as his father William the Conqueror had done, demonstrating that changing views of bastardy were already taking effect.
In subsequent centuries, ecclesiastical law in most of Western Europe dictated that a bastard child who had been born to two unmarried parents was automatically legitimized if the parents subsequently married.
Under English Common Law, however, a bastard could only receive legitimization by being issued letters patent requested from the king. For example, John of Gaunt asked and received a legitimization decree from King Richard II for his children by Katharine Swynford - his sons had been born out of wedlock but he later married Katharine as his third wife.
In the core regions of the Seven Kingdoms, standards about bastardy are more similar to late Medieval Europe: bastards are considered "illegitimate", a shameful reminder of sins of the flesh, and they cannot inherit lands and titles from their parent. Standards about bastards in Dorne are closer to how bastard children were treated in the early Middle Ages.
The system of special bastard surnames used in Westeros are a fictional invention of George R. Martin for his fantasy world, and does not reflect real-life practices. Game of Thrones Wiki. Game of Thrones Wiki Explore. Game of Thrones. House of the Dragon. Peterson - linguist. Patel - director. Vhagar Caraxes Syrax Meleys Sunfyre. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? View source. History Talk Do you like this video? The Sand Snakes, acknowledged children of Oberon Martel, wear their last names as a source of pride.
Which would stand to be an awkward meeting. November 11, by: Wongo Okon. November 9, by: Zac Gelfand Twitter. November 9, by: Wongo Okon. Everyone else is a bastard or a bitch, a vile, egocentric, power-hungry villain who should probably look behind them once in a while, not for the living, but for the marching dead. In other news, Grantchester season 7 is already filming, here's everything we know so far. Skip to content.
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