Fire & Blood Files: More Than A Bastard

Bastardy — as a concept and an identity — has long been a big thing in the “Song of Ice and Fire”/Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon narrative. It is a defining element of Jon Snow‘s (Kit Harrington) characterization. It underpins most of the conflicts in the second half of the first season of House of the Dragon. Now, in “The Red Sowing“, it comes up again as a key plot point, becoming yet another wedge in the growing rift between Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her (bastard) son, Jace (Harry Collet).

With Rhaneyra turning not only to distant strains of Targaryen blood in non-Targaryen noble families, but to the “baseborn” illegitimate children of Targaryens as a source for dragon riders, Jace finds himself at odds with the plan he conceived of for bolstering the Blacks air force in the first place. 

Being an (officially secret, but nearly an open one) bastard himself, Jace recognizes that he will need to cling to all the trappings of legitimacy he can to hold onto his status as heir and — eventually, theoretically — ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. Lacking the silver Targaryen hair (which doesn’t automatically mark him as a bastard, but doesn’t help, either), dragon riding was one of the things he could point to as a way to not only underscore his “Targaryen-ness” whenever the question of his parentage came up, but his “noble”-ness, his right to rule.

Rhaenyra’s plan seems to beg the question, if any ol’ bastard with a drop of Targaryen blood can claim a dragon, then what makes Jace — a Targaryen bastard — special? That’s what has left Jace in such a tizzy, but it’s worth taking a moment to explore how the concept of bastardry works in the world of Westeros, because it can be more complicated than it seems. 

On the bottom most tier, you have regular ol’ bastards, “baseborn” or “lowborn” bastards. These are children born of unwed parents, who often don’t know the identity of one or both of their parents. There is a huge stigma against them baked into Westerosi society (for all levels of bastardy, but especially for this lowest tier).

Bastards are considered children of “lust and weakness”, and this is held against them (despite the fact that, even if you consider the acts of their parents sinful, the bastards themselves had no control over the circumstances of their own conception). As a result, bastards are thought to be prone to betrayal and possessing a “wanton and treacherous nature”. Simply by dint of their birth, bastards are considered untrustworthy and immoral, before they’ve even taken a step or spoken a word.

Slightly “better” (in the eyes of “civil” society) are highborn bastards, bastards born out of wedlock to a noble father or mother. They are still bastards and “tainted”, but their share of noble blood helps offset some of the worse elements of bastardy. Furthermore, if these bastards are acknowledged by their highborn parent, their lives can turn out much better than their baseborn brethren.

For one thing, they get last names — each region of the Seven Kingdoms has a different “stock” surname for royal bastards, which is why Jon Snow is a Snow and not a Stark, but also, not just “Jon” or “Jon of the North” or some other descriptive moniker. As an acknowledged bastard, these children are often raised side-by-side with the other legitimate highborn children (as Jon was), gaining access to all the privileges that come with being part of the nobility, like literacy, weapons training, and not starving.

But, the key piece here is that even highborn bastards still need to be acknowledged as such, which is why Hugh, Ulf, Addam and Alyn don’t have the last name of “Waters” (the Crownlands designated highborn bastard surname): none of their high born parents have, as of yet, acknowledged them as their children. 

The third and final tier is a legitimized bastard. By royal decree (meaning a king is the only one who can grant it), a bastard can have their “bastardry” stripped from them, after which they gain the name of their house in place of their stock surname (we see this happen to Ramsay in Game of Thrones, as King Tommen legitimizes him after the Boltons take control of the North following the Red Wedding).

A king can do this for any bastard, but usually, it would only happen to an acknowledged highborn bastard who has a noble parent willing to push the monarch for it (as Ramsey’s father did). And while this legitimization theoretically means the bastard is magically no longer “shifty” in the eyes of society, well, society doesn’t always follow the letter of the law, and prejudice still exists towards even legitimized bastards. 

This is the concern driving Jace’s anger in “The Red Sowing”. As the son and named heir of the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, it doesn’t really matter if he’s a bastard or not. His status as Rhaenyra’s son is a de facto royal decree of legitimization. But Jace — having grown up in the Red Keep alongside half-brothers (and douchey Criston Cole) who never failed to cast aspersions on his parentage and, as a result, his character — recognizes the tenuous situation he’s in.

Even putting aside the circumstances of the moment (in which he’s helping his queen mother fight a war in the name of her own legitimacy), he knows that the taint of bastardy is strong in Westeros, and that all the technicalities and laws in the land can’t overcome that prejudice. Which means he needs every tool at his disposal to sell the realm on the idea that he is worthy to rule.

One of the biggest such tools he has is the fact that, regardless of his true parentage or legal status, he has access to hereditary weapons of mass destruction available only to those of royal blood. By handing at least a portion of that access to the people, so to speak, his mother has dulled one of the sharpest weapons in Jace’s legitimacy arsenal.