Bastard Angst

"Let me give you some advice, bastard. Never forget what you are, the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you."

—Tyrion Lannister to Jon Snow, Game of Thrones, "Winter Is Coming"

Illegitimacy (or bastardy) is the status of a child born outside marriage. Fictional characters born out of wedlock are often portrayed as conflicted about their status, for several reasons:

• The lack of inheritance and support. Historically, children born out of wedlock receive little to no inheritance (or at least far less than their legitimate siblings). The mother and child may also receive very little support from the father. ^note  In most modern settings, there is less of a legal emphasis on legitimacy in regard to inheritance and support, although it still sometimes becomes a factor in nationality laws. See the article on The Other Wiki for more on that.
• Societal belief that their extramarital birth affects their character. Historically and in fiction with a historical or quasi-historical setting, bastards were often assumed to be of poor character, either by virtue of being "tainted" by a sin of lust or out of jealousy of their legitimate siblings, hence the trope Bastard Bastard (the increasingly-common subversion to that trope is Heroic Bastard).
• Because of the above, they are ostracized by the community and often treated poorly (especially compared to the legitimate children, if they are shown at all). Some of this survives to the present day, as "bastard" is considered an insult to a person's character.
• If at least one of the bastard's parents are present in a work, expect a mention of how the extramarital affair resulted in a strain on their marriage. See Affair? Blame the Bastard. This is less common in settings where one is expected to have extramarital affairs (e.g. concubinage).
  • If the illegitimate child's mother is the wife, she may grow resentful of her child due to the resident Double Standard — a man may father illegitimate children without much societal consequence, but a woman is Defiled Forever. Sadly, this is Truth in Television, as historically women have been subject to violence at the hands of their families for giving birth to bastards in the name of honor. See also Child by Rape for a darker way this can play out.
  • If the illegitimate child was conceived by the husband and another woman, the wife may still resent the child as a product of her husband's infidelity.
  • The illegitimate child's relationships with their legitimate siblings, if focused on, often vary; but in settings where this trope is prevalent, the trueborn offspring are expected to be somewhat distanced from them.

Because of any combination of the above, bastards in fiction often feel the need to prove — be it to society, their parents, or themselves — that the circumstances of their birth have no effect on their ability to become a valuable member of society. Out of a desire to overcome the stigma of illegitimacy, they seek to be recognized and do this by attempting to achieve fame and glory. Depending on how heroic the bastard in question is, this may or may not play into Ambition Is Evil. This is especially likely if the bastard in question is older than their legitimate siblings.

If the child's parents are royal or noble, expect an attempt to usurp the estate. This may be of their own volition or traitorous members of the court manipulating them in order to seize power for themselves. More idealistic settings with more sympathetic bastards will get them a sizable inheritance at the end, if not make them the Unexpected Successor to the whole shebang. In more modern settings, bastards usually strive for distinction in their field of interest.

If the child's illegitimacy isn't public knowledge, steps may be taken to ensure that they come off as legitimate.

The Bastard Bastard and Heroic Bastard may both experience this, as well as the Child by Rape, Child of Forbidden Love, and Son of a Whore. Compare Half-Breed Discrimination, in which a character faces much of the same prejudice on a societal level, and Half-Sibling Angst, in which a character is anguished due to being a half-sibling.

Has nothing to do with being a Magnificent Bastard, Manipulative Bastard (although a bastard with the right temperament can certainly grow into one), or You Bastard!.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Seta Soujirou of Rurouni Kenshin is a darker take on this trope — his entire stepfamily was abusive towards him for his illegitimacy, which caused him to snap and kill them all.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Krista Lenz, aka Historia Reiss, is the illegitimate child of the most powerful nobleman in the series. Because of this, she was sent to away and grew up isolated and lonely, with the few neighbors acting cruelly — to say nothing of her mother showing nothing but hatred all the way until her traumatic death. After all that, she joined the military under a false name in order to get away. Although she's kind and nice, other characters note that her actions seem deliberately suicidal than outright helpful, and point out that she only joined the military looking for a glorious way to die.
  • Reiner Braun is the product of an illicit Secret Relationship between an Eldian woman and a Marleyan man. He was abandoned as a result, with the mother resentful of her lower status and the child obsessed with reuniting their parents somehow. It's unknown whether being born out of wedlock to a mother that was too afraid to identify the father had any extra negative stigma or not.
• Kallen from Code Geass. Because her biological father's wife could not bear children, Kallen was adopted into her noble father's household. Her biological mother gets herself hired as a maid and eventually turns to drug use in order to relive happier days. This heavily strains Kallen's relationship with her mother but they make up by the finale.
• Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club is the illegitimate son of a Japanese man and a French woman. His Evil Matriarch grandmother brought him to France in exchange for paying for her financial troubles and forbade him from ever having contact with her again. Despite this, his grandmother still treats Tamaki like crap, always reminding him that he's "filthy."
• Maid-Sama! has the character of Usui, who was conceived during an illicit affair between a married British woman and a Japanese man. As a result, he has a strained relationship with his biological family and avoids bringing them up as much as possible.
• One Piece: Ace is the bastard son of Pirate King Gold Roger, and as such he had a big stigma put on him (although given who his dad is, being legitimate wouldn't have made the world view him much better in any case). For his whole life, Ace always wondered whether he deserved to be born because of this.
• Asahi Saiba, the main antagonist of the final arc of Food Wars!, was conceived by a one-night stand. That coupled with the fact that his mother was an abusive alcoholic who'd often try to drown him in the kitchen sink has given him serious issues and craving for a loving family.
• Tweeny Witches: Lennon was conceived in a secret Common Law Marriage because of the laws against relationships between witches and humans. The stigma of his birth resulted in his living alone on the Interdimensional Sea since childhood, where he developed internalized racism and a belief that his mother abandoned him out of shame.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin reveals that Casval and Artesia Som Deikun's mother Astraia and father Zeon never actually married, since Zeon was already married but his wife was infertile. After Zeon died their illegitimacy became a problem because Zeon's legal wife Roselucia locked them out of their inheritance due to resenting Astraia, eventually leading her children to be separated from her. You probably know these two as Char Aznable and Sayla Mass and the wildly different paths their lives took afterwards.

Fan Works

• The Queen of Hearts:
  • Elsa finds out that most likely her parents couldn't conceive and asked another man to help. She has trouble coming to terms with the fact, especially since it makes her an illegitimate heir to Arendelle. Even after it turns out to be true, her sister Anna refuses to take over as queen.
  • Hans' older brothers ostracized him for being a bastard raised as a prince. However, Hans himself is oblivious to the fact that he's the half-brother of Anna and Elsa through their mother.
• In A New World on her Shoulders, Ciel's half-brother, Otto Moore, has some very deep-rooted issues due to him being a bastard since his birth caused his mother to be abandoned by his father and become destitute. Being reminded of it almost causes him to cry due to how unpleasant the memories are.
• In Where Talent Goes on Vacation, Chiyuri Nagato turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of the son of Talent High School's chairman, and it's revealed that she got in as part of a deal that the administration made with her mother to keep her father's identity secret. Chiyuri also suffered from bullying due to rumors about her parentage, and ended up having to transfer schools in elementary school after retaliating against one of her tormentors. As a result, Chiyuri had no friends in her childhood and tried to play the "good girl" in order to get by.
• Played with in wasting beats of this heart of mine, where Zagreus reincarnates as a mortal and is adopted by Philomenus the farmer. Zagreus isn't a bastard, but resembles his foster siblings just enough to be mistaken for one because they share a grandmother in the goddess Demeter, and had to endure the shame of his neighbors his whole life.

Comic Books

• Sleepless: Lady Poppy is the daughter of King Verato of Harbeny and the court's fortune teller Amena of Mribesh. Despite her technically illegitimate status, Poppy is widely beloved by the people of Harbeny. She even has a close relationship with Verato's wife Queen Leotta (whose own children with Verato all died before reaching adulthood, and who is very good friends with Amena). Though Verato granted Poppy lands and a title to ensure that she would be provided for if anything ever happened to him, he never legitimized her into the royal family or line of succession. This leaves Poppy in a tenuous political position after his passing. Queen Leotta offers to appoint Poppy to her retinue at the Dowager's palace, but King Surno (Verato's brother and successor to the throne) refuses to let Poppy leave the court even in the face of an attempt of her life. He cites that any action that could be read as a dismissal of Poppy could anger Verato's loyalists, and failure to demonstrate that he can protect his niece would reflect poorly on his nascent rule.

Film - Live-Action

• Swallow: Hunter is neglected and abandoned by her mother due to being a Child by Rape that her mother, due to her religious beliefs, couldn't abort.

Literature

• Shows up in Wilkie Collins's novels:
  • The titular "dead secret" and reveal of The Dead Secret is that protagonist Rosamund is actually an illegitimate child passed off as an heiress. This causes much internal and external conflict, as her husband refuses to accept her inheritance.
  • In The Woman in White, Glyde is revealed to be illegitimate. He knew about this and went to great lengths to conceal it in order to preserve his title and estate.
• Outlander: William Ransom has been raised as the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere. All his life he's been told that his mother died in childbirth and his father died of despair on the same day. He was then taken in by his aunt and her husband, who acted as his mother and father. William is devastated when he meets Jamie Fraser, his spitting image, and realizes that Mac, the Scottish groomsman who'd worked at his family estate when William was a child, is actually his biological father. This was a time when Scottish were firmly second-class citizens in the British empire and being a bastard was a death knell for societal standing.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has several bastard-born children, but the ones who exhibit this trope the most are:
  • Heroic Bastard Jon Snow, the acknowledged illegitimate son of Lord Eddard Stark. Jon grew up feeling like somewhat of an outsider among his family, though he is loved by his father, trueborn siblings,^note Though Sansa, the child closest to Catelyn, is more distant toward Jon because of his illegitimacy and uncle, and Jon loves them. Jon struggles with his illegitimacy due to societal prejudice against bastard-born children, limited options for his future, and because he is resented by his father's wife Catelyn, who dislikes Jon for being Eddard's illegitimate son who Eddard brought home to raise alongside his and Catelyn's trueborn children, Jon's half-siblings.^note Catelyn fears Eddard loves Jon's Missing Mom more than her due to Eddard's protectiveness of Jon and resents that Jon inherited the Stark look instead of her sons with Eddard, who inherited her Tully features. She also fears that any children Jon may have one day might contest the succession for Winterfell of her grandchildren. Jon yearns to know who his mother is but his father refuses to talk about her for mysterious, unknown reasons. Partly because of angst over his illegitimacy, desire to prove his worth, and to follow his dream of becoming a First Ranger like his uncle, Jon joins the Night's Watch for the sake of honour. Nonetheless, Jon has had a far better upbringing than most in Westeros, not to mention many other noble-blooded illegitimate children (Gendry, Falia Flowers, Mya Stone): his father openly acknowledges and raises Jon himself in his castle alongside his trueborn offspring and gives Jon a highborn education and castle training alongside Jon's trueborn brother, Robb, with whom Jon is very close. Part of Jon's character arc is recognizing his privileged upbringing. Notably, Jon turns down Stannis Baratheon's offer of legitimization and the chance to inherit Winterfell out of loyalty to his father's gods and because Winterfell belongs to his sister Sansa.
  • Bastard Bastard Ramsay Snow, the unacknowledged illegitimate son of Roose Bolton. Unlike Jon Snow, Ramsay is poorly treated by his father and receives nothing from him. Ramsay goes to great lengths to prove to his father that he's just as horrible as the rest of their family and deserving of the family name, including torturing, mutilating, and brainwashing a family rival. It's implied he murdered his legitimate brother to become his father's only heir.
  • Downplayed with Mya Stone, the unacknowledged illegitimate daughter of King Robert Baratheon. Mya is a good-natured, kind girl who knows her father is King Robert Baratheon. Though she angsts about her illegitimate birth making her unable to marry the minor lord she fell in love with, Mya is otherwise content with her life. Though Robert did not officially acknowledge Mya, he appears to have affection for her, having expressed an interest in bringing her to court, and visiting her daily before he became king.
• In War and Peace, Pierre Bezukhov is the bastard of one of the wealthiest, most powerful counts of Russia, who, upon his death, legitimizes him. He was educated in Paris and came back with very liberal ideas that make him a big outsider in the Russian aristocratic circles.
• Pierre Tartue/Lumen in the Arcia Chronicles comes from a bastard-born bloodline of the Lumens — one of the two clans vying for the throne of Arcia from book three onwards. He does a lot of very unsavory things to cover up his illegitimacy both before and after he usurps the throne, and hates being reminded that he is still a bastard.
• The plot of Emma revolves around the titular character trying to find her friend Harriet a suitable husband even though she’s a bastard. Harriet’s father is obviously wealthy because he’s paying for to go to a boarding school with her own private room but that still puts her below other rich girls. Emma is very progressive in this regard for something that was written in the early 19th century but despite her best intentions, she causes a lot of trouble in doing so.
• A downplayed version in A Civil Campaign is when Count Rene Vorbretten is threatened with a succession suit because an ancestor was a bastard, thus clicking complicated tangles in local laws. An added public relations difficulty was that the father was a soldier in an invading army.
• Stragen from The Elenium is hypersensitive about his illegitimate birth.
• Demigods from The Camp Half-Blood Series are illegitimate children by default, and there's generally a lot of resentment towards the gods for being inattentive parents who only turn to them when they need something accomplished (this is in fact what turns some demigods against them in Percy Jackson and the Olympians). The fact that gods like Hera tend to have strained relationships with their spouse's offspring don't help matters.
• Mariam of A Thousand Splendid Suns is pawned off to a rich man by her father after her mother is Driven to Suicide. Both she and her mother are on the receiving end of stigmatization by the local community (Truth in Television in fact, since Afghan society considers it quite scandalous).
• The Long Walk: Stebbins is actually the bastard son of the Major himself, one of several unacknowledged ones as he notes. He wants his prize for winning the Long Walk to merely be his acceptance into his father's home.
• Inheritance Cycle: Eragon is briefly distraught to learn that his mother and father weren't married. Orimis, whose culture doesn't really have marriage per se, tells him that he's sure they considered themselves the equivalent of married at least. Eragon is cheered up by this and lets it go.
• Theo Smith from An Unkindness of Ghosts is the product of a probably non-consensual affair between Sovereign Sedvar and a black woman. The resulting scandal forced Sedvar's resignation, causing him to deeply resent Theo.
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe reveals that General Hux was an illegitimate child of his father and some lowly kitchen woman. This apparently caused him a lot of grief, as many of the First Order Officers, such as Admiral Brooks, look down on him because of this fact.
• The Clans of Warrior Cats don't really have marriages, because, well, they're cats, but this trope does tend to apply to those whose births weren't supposed to happen according to their laws, such as the products of inter-Clan relationships or liasons with non-Clan cats, or the offspring of medicine cats, who are supposed to be celibate. Such cats are often unacknowledged by one (or both) parents, referred to by slurs such as "half-Clan" and punished, on rare occasions even killed, for their parents' indiscretion.
• In Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, the entire cultivational world knows that Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao is the bastard son of sect leader Jin Guangshan and high-ranking brothel worker Meng Shi, and he frequently suffers public mockery by the gentry (and later brutal abuse from his father's actual wife) for it. And it turns out that he's far from the only bastard the notorious philanderer sired, as Mo Xuanyu and Qin Su are brought into the story later, with yet more unknown children implied.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! has multiple examples of this, with one that even plays with it. Keith Claes and Anne Sherry, Catarina's adoptive brother and maid, respectively, were born from noblemen sleeping with a prostitute and a mistress, respectively, and Keith got a double-dose of this because his adoptive father was Mistaken for Cheating by his wife and she went Affair? Blame the Bastard. The first set of relatives Keith stayed with was even worse since the light novels note that Keith wasn't allowed to call his parents "Mother" or "Father," and Keith had to use respectful language on his siblings, who bullied him. Maria Campbell plays with it because she actually isn't a bastard, but the fact she's a commoner that had won the Superpower Lottery by getting light magic when such thing is usually only found in nobility, caused her mother to get Mistaken for Cheating. All three of them went through hell in life because of it, getting ostracized as lesser beings. It's not until Catarina came into their lives that they were able to start moving away from this angst and gain happier lives.
• Dragonvarld: It's not that heavy, but Marcus has some anxiety over this. Though he was raised as a prince by his father, whose queen accepted him as her son, people still whispered how he'd been born out of wedlock to another woman. He also knows people believe bastards are prone to evil, and don't trust him as a result, along with him having a mental illness as a child.
• The Book of Eve: Beatrice is known as the bastarda of the wealthy Stelleri family. She was The Un Favourite compared to her half-brother and was pushed into a convent as a child following her disfigurement. She grew up to be a bitter, sullen person, though this bitterness is only partially related to her bastard status.

Live-Action TV

• Antagonist Zoey Tanyag from Abot-Kamay na Pangarap is not protagonist RJ Tanyag's daughter - but rather, an illegitimate child, with Analyn Santos being his true child. Zoey loathes Analyn and her mother Lyneth because she feels unfavored because RJ pays more attention to Analyn than Zoey prior to the revelation that Zoey is not RJ's child.
• All My Children's Edmund Grey practically has a nervous breakdown upon learning that he's the illegitimate son of his mother's employer, as the guy was a grade-A jerk. Ironically, the man he thought was his father wasn't much better, being horrifically abusive to him and his mother, possibly because he suspected Edmund wasn't his son.
• Protagonist Se-ri from Crash Landing on You is her father’s bastard but she has two half-brothers from his marriage. A lot of family drama stems from this. Her stepmother resents her for overshadowing her sons and her brothers resent her for their dad respecting her business acumen. It’s only exacerbated when her dad picks her to run the family chaebol over the two of them (even though she’s much more competent and level-headed than the two of them).
• Game of Thrones: Like his counterpart in the books, Jon Snow angsts over the liminal status of being an illegitimate son of a high lord (raised better than other commoners, but never truly accepted) and how he doesn't knowing anything about his mother. It's then revealed that he's not actually a bastard. His assumed father Ned Stark is actually his uncle and he's the trueborn son of the former Targaryen heir to the throne.
• House of the Dragon: Rhaenyra's illegitimate sons don't look anything like their legal father Laenor Velaryon and everything like their mother's sworn shield Harwin Strong. As a result, the boys are dogged by rumors about their parentage from childhood, including from rivalrous relatives. By the end of the first season, this has affected the elder two in different ways: Jacaerys feels like he has to overcompensate and be the perfect princeling; Lucerys feels like an inadequate heir.
• Joy of Life: Subverted with the main character, Fan Xian, who couldn't care less about being an illegitimate child, but played somewhat straight with his betrothed, Lin Wan'er, who is only too aware about how her status has affected her family and how she was raised (i.e. in isolation).
• Don Draper of Mad Men experienced this, being the bastard son of a whore. When his biological father died his stepmother made life miserable for him, spurring him to take over a dead man's identity and become the Manipulative Bastard he is in the show.
• My Country: The New Age: Seon-ho wants to become an officer so people will stop seeing him as just a concubine's son.
• The Power (2023): Roxy is not happy at all to be sidelined as a result of being her dad's love child, which is shown especially after he doesn't even mention her when listing his children while making a speech. She blames his wife, her half-siblings' mom, for this.
• Reign: Sebastian, the king's bastard, is usually caring and supportive of his legitimate siblings. But when he becomes attracted to Mary, Francis's betrothed, who plots to make him king for other reasons, he seizes the opportunity. Later, in an attempt to prove himself beyond his familial connections, he seeks to defeat the Darkness ravaging the countryside. In a moment of introspection in the series finale, he admits that he fell into this trope, telling Kenna that he continuously needed to feel like he was "enough."

Tabletop Game

• In the Ironclaw novella Scars main character Danica is the illegitimate daughter of a grey fox noble. One day she got in a fight with one of her half-brothers and accidentally scratched him, her father reacted by having her declawed (normally done to serious criminals and slaves) and threw her out on the street, where she was found and raised by a Bounty Hunter. Dani's father turns out to have been the recently deceased High King Fidelio d'Rinaldi, and she recognizes the mad "impostor" she was hired to capture as the real Prince Fedrizzio by the scars she gave him when they were kits.

Theatre

• Marie Antoinette (Musical): One more thing that's made Margrid's life hard as the illegitimate daughter of the Emperor of Austria. She spells it out to Fersen in the 2018 Toho, Korean, and Hungarian productions.
• The reason for Elphaba's terrible home life in Wicked: her father favors her younger siblings because he's pretty sure she isn't his daughter.
• Comes up often in the works of William Shakespeare.
  • The Big Bad of King Lear is Edmund, whose first soliloquy expounds his frustration over his father's preferential treatment of legitimate son Edgar, and his own inability to inherit the land that he feels ought to be his. So he sets out on a plot of murder, manipulation, seduction, and political machination that ultimately sees ten cast members dead, including himself and the entire line of British succession.
  • Don Jon, the apparent villain of Much Ado About Nothing, is the illegitimate half-brother of Don Pedro, prince of Aragon. He has just lost a rebellion against his brother when the story begins and spends five acts angsting about it while his lackeys do the evil stuff for him.
  • The arguable protagonist of King John, the "Bastard Faulconbridge," encounters this briefly, when it is discovered in Act I that he is not truly his father's son. But he chooses to embrace his birthright as the illegitimate son of King Richard the Lionheart and uses it to better himself and his station in life.
  • Even Hamlet may be an example of this. If the speed with which Hamlet's mother Gertrude and his Evil Uncle Claudius marry after the death of Hamlet's father is any indication, we can assume they have been having an affair for years. Combine this with the fact that Hamlet's father seems to have been away at war for much of his reign, and Hamlet's angst about being "too much in the son" takes on a new twist.
• Alexander Hamilton's illegitimate birth did nothing to help his family's situation in the Caribbean, and the narration of Hamilton always makes sure to bring it up to emphasize the opposition Alexander faced on his rise to the top.

Video Games

• Sandor from Might and Magic: Heroes VI is the eldest-but-illegitimate son of Duke Slava of the Griffin Duchy, and is overlooked to become the next duke in favour of his younger brother Anton. He decides to leave the politics of the Duchies behind him and find a new life as a Barbarian Hero among the Orc tribes of the Pao Islands.
• Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins is conflicted about his status as the bastard son of the deceased King Maric of Ferelden, since it was made clear to him from the start that he was, at best, the Hidden Backup Prince to his legitimate half-brother Cailan, and his foster-mother Isolde eventually pressured her husband and Alistair's foster-father Eamon to send him away to the Templars because of rumors that he was actually Eamon's. And when he meets his half-sister Goldanna by his mother as an adult she makes no secret of her resentment towards him since their mother suffered Death by Childbirth after Alistair was born and Goldanna was paid off and effectively forced out of where she'd been living in Redcliffe castle. The tie-in novels also reveal that story is actually a lie, and Alistair's real mother is an elven Grey Warden named Fiona, with Goldanna's removal from the castle being part of the coverup of Alistair's real maternity.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • Jusis Albarea was, and is, severely emotionally neglected, possibly even abused by his father Helmut because he's an illegitimate child conceived with a commoner. This led to a cold demeanor resulting from him trying to prove himself as a noble, which he overcomes as a member of Class VII.
  • In Cold Steel III, it's revealed that Jusis' "older brother" Rufus isn't Helmut's son at all but his nephew, and he knew it all along. Because Helmut's brother and legal wife were both nobles, and the affair coming to light would have created a terrible scandal, he had to put up with being paraded around as Helmut's son knowing full well he wasn't, and then he had to watch Uncle Helmut treat his real son like crap for being half commoner. The result is a resentment of the nobility, major Daddy Issues, and a severe identity crisis that caused him to crave power, leading to his descent into villainy.
• Lucien Moreau from the Nexus Clash Laurentia arc sent his illegitimate son Jacques away to Walk the Earth in hopes that the experience would turn him into The Ace like his father. Instead, this trope wore Jacques down and made him a jaded and power-hungry mercenary ruthless enough to return after his father's death, rebrand himself as a Hidden Backup Prince, and push Lucien's legitimate children aside to inherit Lucien's legacy himself.
• Persona 5: This trope is a major component to why Goro Akechi is the way he is. After spending years being passed around through abusive foster homes and being spurned, he obtained the power to traverse the Metaverse, and he spends over two years nursing his Persona-summoning powers in order to cause the downfall of his father, Masayoshi Shido. In his daily life, he is extremely particular about his physical appearance and lifestyle, and he opted to become something of an idol among detectives in order to alleviate the loneliness he feels, all to cast aside any doubt that he was an unwanted bastard.

Visual Novels

• In Shining Song Starnova, Nemu Akimoto is the illegitimate child of the heir of Amaterasu Television. While her father’s wife Haruna adopted her into the Akimoto family following her birth mother’s death, Nemu is convinced that Haruna resents her for being a constant reminder of her husband’s infidelity and only adopted her to avoid a scandal regarding her parentage. The fact that Haruna won’t let Nemu follow in her mother’s footsteps by becoming an Idol Singer adds further strain to their relationship.
• In Umineko: When They Cry:
  • Sayo Yasuda gets hit with a double dose of this, as Sayo is both illegitimate and a Child by Rape, conceived when Kinzo Ushiromiya forced himself on his own daughter Beatrice II. To say Sayo takes it badly upon finding this out is a vast understatement.
  • Maria Ushiromiya has a lesser version of this since comments made by her mother Rosa indicate that Maria's birth was, at best, an accident, and her biological father already had a family of his own and has refused to be part of Maria's life. Maria took her mother's statements that she "has no father" literally and concocted a narrative that she was like Jesus and the result of a Mystical Pregnancy rather acknowledge the truth, and part of the reason Maria and Rosa's relationship is so troubled is that Maria thinks her mother wishes she was never born.

Webcomics

• Tamaura, who is conspicuously the only redhead in her dark-haired family from Blindsprings was secreted away in a cloister before being brought to court by her mother, the Empress of Aberwelle, to take over the position of High Priestess from her legitimate sister Aliana, who absolutely hated losing her position. Tammy had to put up with mutterings of "bastards at Court" behind her back and an enormous amount of scrutiny at or before the age of 12.
• Unsounded: The reason Sette never met any of Nary's other children is because he paid to have all of his bastards killed, and she was his only child with his wife to survive birth.

Real Life

• Brothers Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth, and Junius Brutus Booth Jr. were the result of an extramarital affair actor Junius Brutus Booth had. This spurred them to make names for themselves, becoming rival actors. Edwin became a noted Unionist, while John, well, grew up to assassinate Lincoln. In spite of his loyalties, Edwin had difficulty living this down, along with the rest of their family. Junius Jr. never achieved their fame. Edwin, ironically, had rescued Robert Lincoln from accidentally falling in front of a train fairly shortly before the assassination (though he didn't know who it was at the time).
• William IV's inability to have surviving legitimate children with his wife, Adelaide, is part of the reason why Queen Victoria became, well, Queen Victoria. He had ten children by his mistress, Dorothea Jordan, and provided for all of them; however, because they weren't legitimate, they weren't seen as royal. The majority of them were largely dissatisfied with their situations as a result; they weren't acknowledged by their grandfather, and rarely given any notice by other members of the royal family, because of their parentage.^note Victoria was an exception, as she treated these cousins with kindness and gave some of them positions in her households. Queen Adelaide was also a Good Stepmother to them. In particular, William's eldest son George frequently quarreled with him publicly about the matter. George's bastard angst eventually led to a complete estrangement and he ultimately shot himself without ever reconciling with his father.
• Rapidly entering Discredited Trope territory in western countries, particularly EU and US where by The New '10s nearly half of all births are to unmarried women and thus being a "bastard" in the traditional sense is no longer unusual, when it was rare only a generation or two ago. Values Dissonance applies, given many non-western countries still frown upon unmarried couples so much as looking at each other funny.