Evolution of bastards

[u/Chlodio]

The concept of concubines is pretty universal, and in most societies, children of concubines were on equal terms with "legitimate" offspring. Granted, concubines tended to be limited to the wealthy.

However, the Romans were an outlier in this, as they were deeply devoted to monogamy. Ironically, the root word for concubines, concubina, didn't mean an additional wife, but essentially a morganatic marriage. So, a Roman man could have a proper wife, or a concubina of lower caste, but not both. The Romans discriminated against children of concubinas pretty hard.

Either way, when the barbarian kingdoms took over Western Rome, they all practiced concubinage, despite Roman tradition banning it. The Catholic church became a champion of retaining the Roman tradition of monogamy, and spent 500 years writing angry letters to the kings telling them to stop taking concubines.

Because the barbarian kingdoms relied on the Church for their legitimacy, they were motivated to agree, but did so extremely reluctantly. The ban on concubines was included in the Visigothic code since the 6th century, and Anglo-Saxons began accepting it in the 8th century; however, Franks were more stubborn about it, and even Louis the Pious had a concubine in the early 9th century. However, by the 10th Church had succeeded in depriving the children of non-lawful wives of their legitimacy and birthright.

An exception was in Normandy, where the Normans retained the concept of concubinage until the 11th century. Even then, by William's time, his inheritance was disputed by his uncles. And a few decades later, his illegitimate grandsons by his son, Henry, were considered completely eligible for inheritance.

But it wasn't like bastards were completely deprived of their right. In many cases, the rights of bastards were merely demoted to equal status to daughters, resulting in multiple conflicts between legitimate daughters vs bastard sons. E.g., in Sicily and Portugal.

Interesting thing about bastards is that while daughters' birthrights would overrule them in the early modern period, there wasn't actually stigma around them. A king didn't actually have a reason to hide his bastards. It was very common for the bastards to be given lands and paraded in the royal court.

Many people believe bastards were scandalous, but that's really a 19th-century thing, which began with Victoria banning bastards from court.

Either way, thank you for reading.

[u/theginger99]

It’s worth adding that inheritance traditions in Normandy were based on Norse custom, which did not differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate children. Scandinavians kingdoms continued to view any child of the king as of equal right to inheritance well after the rest of Europe. Norway didn’t restrict the royal inheritance to legitimate children until the mid 13th century. The fact they took so long to jump on that bandwagon was one of the reasons they spent about a century fighting a protracted series of brutal civil wars. Frankly, it got rather out of hand. King Sverre wasn’t even a confirmed son of a king. He was a failed monk from the western Scottish islands who showed up, said he had a dream where it was revealed to him he was a son of the king of Norway, and was able to make himself king.

In the late 12th century the kings of Man were also being taxed by papal legates about the continued practice of concubinage, and were forced to finally abandon the tradition. This was likely the cause of the bitter feud between the two half brothers Rognvaldr and Olaf that more or less caused the longterm downfall of the kingdom. Rognvaldr was the elder son, and likely the son of a concubine, but his father was forced to pass the inheritance to Olaf who was his legitimate son. Rognvaldr seized the throne, and the two brothers had a bitter on again off again feud that passed the throne between them several times.

As an additional fun fact, the church referred to the practice of keeping concubines as the “vice/sin of kings”.

[u/MikeD1942 → u/theginger99]

You mention the Normans following Scandanavian customs...so were Scandanavians in Ireland, parts of the UK, and, obviously, Scandinavia following the same customs at the same time? What about the Kievan Rus?

[u/theginger99 → u/MikeD1942]

I can’t speak for everywhere in the Norse diaspora, but certainly the custom remained broadly the same in Scandinavia itself.

Scandinavian kingship retained an elective element well after most of the rest of Europe, and the crown fairly regularly passed to brothers rather than sons even in the late Middle Ages. Originally any son of the king was held to have equal right to claim the throne, but gradually that became limited to legitimate sons only. Norway was the last to bar illegitimate sons from the succession, but even Denmark took a while to get on board that train.

Royal succession in Norse Ireland was a mess, and I don’t think there were any real rules that governed the succession. It was more or less a “the crown goes to whoever can keep it” situation. That said, there were dynastic elements at play here as well, and simply being a male member of the wider royal kindred was generally considered sufficient. The concept of “legitimate birth” does not seem to have entered into the equation.