Bastards were a common occurance, and everyone knew about it.

[Cèsar de Quart]

Hello, all.

I'm here to try and convince someone that bastardy was something so common in the Middle Ages, that it almost should bear no consequence into the game.

The Middle Ages were a time of intense contradiction; moral righteousness was at odds with the utilitarian approach much of the nobility and the common people had towards life. In many aspects, what CK3 presents is an idealised version of the Middle Ages where morals were important. Especially Christian morals. This was not so.

There was morality in the Middle Ages, but as anyone who's read Le Goff and Duby will know, it was the morality of the noblemen, of the warrior elite. Be generous, be fair, be honorable... and little else. The Feudal system in which favours and service are established social norms favoured that sense of morality.

In this world, lords had lovers, and even if they may not have been expected to, it was considered a normal thing for a king or a high lord to have a favourite concubine (Wives don't seem to have expected otherwise most of the time, although this is a delictate subject due to the lack of sources detailing what wives thought about their husbands having lovers). And this is especially true when we're talking high nobility. Many things were permitted to the mighty, just like today, but the constrains this game seems to put into these sorts of relations is too tight, in my opinion.

Having lovers can be a secret, but that being revealed should not be a great deal, after all, it was common. Very few kings in the Middle Ages had less than three or four different lovers, and few too had less than two or three bastards... which leads me to...

BASTARDS. The high nobility had bastards, it was a common things. And 95% of the time these bastards were not a secret, they were well known and usually had a high place inside the family of the father. When GRR Martin wrote Jon Snow, he was not making anything up. Having a bastard was not a dishonor to the family, and it was not a murky affair. Most bastards of great lords were proud and well positioned people. Think about the Great Bastard of Burgundy, think about Don Juan de Austria... they didn't need their father to "acknowledged them", and their father didn't get a big blow to his reputation.

+++

Long story short, bastards should be less of a secret. They were not a big deal. Make it so more great lords have bastards, and make it so they're not necessarily a secret or shameful thing. We need more Great Bâtards de France.

 

[Drstrangelove5]

The period you're describing seems like it was in Europe before the middle of the 12th century. But, then, it changed.

"Only beginning in the second half of the 12th century did birth outside of lawful marriage begin to render a child illegitimate, a ‘bastard’, and as such potentially ineligible to inherit noble or royal title.

"

The Strange History of the 'Bastard' in Medieval Europe

The insult used to describe a person born out of wedlock and without any claim to patriarchal lineage has a past intertwined with Catholic marriage law.

thewire.in

So, yea, being identified as a bastard IS a bid deal after around 1160, if you were in line to inherit, (at least in some places assuming you follow certain faiths), where it hadn't been so big a deal before that time, because you could lose your inheritance.

There are certainly a lot of areas outside of Europe, so it's reasonable it might not have been an issue elsewhere.

 

[Cèsar de Quart]

The period you're describing seems like it was in Europe before the middle of the 12th century. But, then, it changed.

"Only beginning in the second half of the 12th century did birth outside of lawful marriage begin to render a child illegitimate, a ‘bastard’, and as such potentially ineligible to inherit noble or royal title.

"

The Strange History of the 'Bastard' in Medieval Europe

The insult used to describe a person born out of wedlock and without any claim to patriarchal lineage has a past intertwined with Catholic marriage law.

thewire.in

So, yea, being identified as a bastard IS a bid deal after around 1160, if you were in line to inherit, (at least in some places assuming you follow certain faiths), where it hadn't been so big a deal before that time, because you could lose your inheritance.

There are certainly a lot of areas outside of Europe, so it's reasonable it might not have been an issue elsewhere.

I was describing Europe after 1150.

Let me rephrase what I meant: you're not in the line of inheritance, and you may get shit for being a bastard, just like some children get shit for being whatever thing kids want to pick you for. But having bastards is NOT a dishonor to the family (regardless of what the Church said) and it's not a shameful secret, because most everyone did it.

William of Normandy is always used as an example of how bastardy changed from the 1150's into the 1200's, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the game portrays bastards and the act of fathering (or mothering, although that was a completely different affair) a bastard, vs how it happened during the Middle Ages.

I'll repeat myself: check the Wikipedia page for a European king. Any king, France, England, Castile, Aragon, Sicily, Emperor of Germany, whatever. Chances are, whomever you check, he will have a couple of bastards and he will have had lovers, with various degrees of openness, most likley while married to another woman.

The game stigmatises you too much for fathering bastards, and prevents the bastards from being bastards of your dynasty unless "exposed" (whatever that means), which is an absolute mistake. That was my point.

 

[Drstrangelove5]

But having bastards is NOT a dishonor to the family (regardless of what the Church said) and it's not a shameful secret, because most everyone did it.

Nothing in my post was directed towards dishonor.

The "secret" part of the bastard is an issue of inheritance, not dishonor. Not shame. People LOST or gained inheritance depending on whether or not they were legitimate or people knew of that secret. Shame? Who cares about shame when you just lost a castle and 10,000 acres of land?

As a consequence, I responded to this: "that it almost should bear no consequence into the game."

Since the inheritance laws are integral to the game itself, and clearly have consequences, and which you appear to also concur as proper, I think we agree that it at least had consequences for titles and inheritance. That was my entire point.

 

[guinea prince]

The "secret" part of the bastard is an issue of inheritance, not dishonor. Not shame.

But the drops in level of devotion and the penalties for being outed as an adulterer/fornicator.

 

[Cèsar de Quart]

Nothing in my post was directed towards dishonor.

The "secret" part of the bastard is an issue of inheritance, not dishonor. Not shame. People LOST or gained inheritance depending on whether or not they were legitimate or people knew of that secret. Shame? Who cares about shame when you just lost a castle and 10,000 acres of land?

As a consequence, I responded to this: "that it almost should bear no consequence into the game."

Since the inheritance laws are integral to the game itself, and clearly have consequences, and which you appear to also concur as proper, I think we agree that it at least had consequences for titles and inheritance. That was my entire point.

You again misinterpret what I said. To father bastards had very little consequences for you. Having lovers had very little consequences for you. Yet the game wants you to think that people learning about your lovers and bastards is bad. It was not. It was commonplace.

It's like the game is feeding us the Middle Ages the Church wants us to know (sometimes).

No one lost a castle because they were suddenly declared bastards, this is not how it worked. Bastardy was not declared post hoc, it was something known, or it was not. Your lover gives birth, people know it's yours. Your lover is married and the child is acknowledged as the husband's, then he's not a bastard in the eyes of the law, regardless of what society said.

As for the "make someone bastard" intrigue plot, it really makes no sense. It's not something that ever happened, to my knowledge.

But the drops in level of devotion and the penalties for being outed as an adulterer/fornicator.

Precisely.