History Main / MamasBabyPapasMaybe

* On the {{Talk Show}} ''Series/{{Maury}}'', one person quoted the trope name. The guest who said it was a woman named Rachel, the ''mother'' of her two sons who were getting tested to prove whether or not they fathered their wives' children (and if so, making them ''her'' grandchildren); she was a real skeptic about the paternity and wanted confirmation from her friend "D.N.A." (It was the first of her ''two'' appearances on the show, and you can see/hear her say the trope name in this clip here on Website/YouTube, [[http://youtu.be/wg6XOqaJQ2k?t=21s not once]] [[http://youtu.be/wg6XOqaJQ2k?t=2m2s but twice]].

* On the {{Talk Show}} ''Series/{{Maury}}'', one person quoted the trope name. The guest who said it was a woman named Rachel, the ''mother'' of her two sons who were getting tested to prove whether or not they fathered their wives' children (and if so, making them ''her'' grandchildren); she was a real skeptic about the paternity and wanted confirmation from her friend "D.N.A." (It was the first of her ''two'' appearances on the show, and you can see/hear her say the trope name in this clip here on Website/YouTube, [[http://youtu.be/wg6XOqaJQ2k?t=21s not once]] [[http://youtu.be/wg6XOqaJQ2k?t=2m2s but twice]].)
* In Conn Iggulden's epic stories of the Mongol Empire, a recurring plot-theme concerns UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan's uncertainty over the paternity of his eldest son Jochi (at the time of conception, his mother Borte was a prisoner of the Tartars and was known to have been raped). Because he half-believes in the "this is a Tartar's bastard" stories, Genghis repeatedly shuns and blanks his oldest son, or else gives him punitive or seemingly impossible tasks to complete that he would not dream of imposing on the favoured younger sons. This had consequences that stretched down the generations and caused the Mongol empire to collapse prematurely.
* The whole reason Queen Isabella the I of Castille took the throne of her dead brother Enrique instead of his daughter Juana is due to the uncertainty of Juana's parentage; Enrique was rumoured to be "more interested in his guards than his queen" and the queen had many lovers and even several illegitimate children.
* Isabella's own parentage was seriously contested throughout her childhood, for exactly the same reasons: Juan II of Castille was even more openly gay than his son Enrique. Eventually, though, Isabella grew up to be her father's speaking likeness, which put doubts to rest.

* It is alleged that while the Kingdom of Ghana only had male rulers, the inheritance claim for kingship is based on the ''matrilineal'' line with the proposed reasoning being that a king can be certain that the son of his sister shares his blood, but cannot be so certain the son of his wife is actually his. Some historians however question whether the Kingdom of Ghana actually did that since the rest of their society was patrilineal.

* ''Literature/TheGoldenHamster'': In ''Freddy in Peril'', Freddy asks the rat Karen Graywhisker if Graywhisker the Great is her father. She answers, "Maybe, maybe not. He's our tribal chief, anyway."