Bastards
Bastards in Arx are viewed and handled much differently than other, similar settings.
Because Limerance, the god of Love and Fidelity, and the society as a whole places such a high value on personal integrity and honor, having a bastard child when there is freely available birth control is seen as highly irresponsible. Bastards are thus rather rare, and are almost always acknowledged and supported by both parents. This does not mean a noble must legitimize a bastard, with all the inheritance uncertainty that comes with that, but they MUST acknowledge (with a white journal) and financially support that child. Not to do so is seen as a very serious breach of honor and an insult to Limerance.
Because of the undue burden this type of situation would place on the mother (or father) and the unclaimed child, we won't be adding unacknowledged or secret bastard children to @family unless the child is the result of a GM plot.
Entries
Question: We have lots of cases of noble men knocking up commoners and we know that their children grow up as commoners until/unless they're acknowledged (Dawn, Victus, Gideon), but we don't have any cases (that I know of) of noble/royal women having bastard children. Would their children automatically inherit their mother's status? Does this require the head of the family to acknowledge them? Does it change if the father does or does not acknowledge them?
Answer: No difference in genders. No child is automatically considered legitimate and noble unless it's born in wedlock between two noble parents. If a noblewoman had a commoner lover and gave birth to a child outside of wedlock, the same kind of condemnation due to recklessness would apply for not using contraception, along with the expected acknowledgement of the child, with then societal pushback if the child was further granted noble title.
Question: Yes, I realize that the Peerage gets flak/negative press for ennobling them from commoners and possibly the Peerage, but how does the Peerage view/should view/treat said legitimized Bastards? Their social ranks are the same, but I've noticed a marked difference in response to ennobled bastards and those born noble. Just wondering about the intricacies of the social perspective. I don't want to name names, but there seems to be a double standard. Some don't mind specific bastards and they are afforded the respect of their social rank, others are looked down on.
Answer: Just to clarify something about social rank, many players think it is an informal ooc metric for judging where characters fall into society. That's not the case at all, it's actually a very strict IC hierarchy used by the peerage, where the term 'social rank' is an IC term that a peer would often use, describing someone higher born as 'outranking them'. For below the peerage, in ranks 7-9, it's really a metric of the kind of job they have, where commoners are accorded certain courtesies based on their professional or position and the dignity afforded to it. So in other words, just because someone is treated as being a certain rank, that doesn't mean the peers have to like it, or necessarily respect it- it's a formal thing, the king is the king, whether they think he's a terrible monarch (hi darius), a legend (Alarice), or... Alaric. Either way, that's first in social rank and the rest fall accordingly.
So once ennobled, the peers have to suck it up, and that person is that rank. However, most peers view that as a direct assault on their institution, and anyone being ennobled for less than truly legendary accomplishments is diminishing them as a result. They hate that. Many peers will probably never be okay with new blood unless that new blood goes out of their way to be servile, and that might very well be a losing battle. In practical game mechanics, eventually there will be extremely large fame/legend penalties for any house doing an ennoblement, based on how well it can be justified (and it's -always- a cost).