Royal bastard

A royal bastard is a child of a reigning monarch born out of wedlock. The king might have a child with a mistress, or the legitimacy of a marriage might be questioned for reasons concerning succession. Notable royal bastards include Henry FitzRoy, son of King Henry VIII of England, and the Duke of Monmouth, son of Charles II. The surname "Fitzroy" means "son of a king" and was used by various illegitimate royal offspring, and by others who claimed to be such. In medieval England, a bastard's coat of arms was marked with a "bend" or "baton sinister."

The stereotypical royal bastard is Edmund in Shakespeare's King Lear, intelligent, but villainous. Edmund says of his legitimate half brother Edgar:

Unlike medieval royalty, the Romans were more concerned with continuity of family name than with bloodline. If a man recognized a child as his, this was accepted by law, and the issue of who the biological father was did not arise. If a child was not recognized, he or she could be exposed or brought up as a slave. For example, Emperor Claudius initially accepted a girl as his daughter, but later rejected her and had her exposed. Emperors often adopted their successors. There are no recorded examples of aristocrats in classical times accusing other aristocrats of being illegitimate, as was common among in later periods.

Caesarion was possibly the bastard of Julius Caesar by Cleopatra, which would also make him Caesar's only known child.

A book published in February 2011 claimed that Albert II of Belgium has an illegitimate half-sister named Ingeborg Verdun, the daughter of King Leopold III and Austrian-Belgian ice skater Liselotte Landbeck.

Older bastards founded important family branches, as reported in the Trophées de Brabant: tome 1():

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