How many types of bastards exists according to your knowledge or experience from reading novels?

[Tatsuo]

Are bastards of only one type?

 

[Nolff]

Are bastards of only one type?

What are you talking about with that englishness

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Bastard Sword.
Royal Bastard.
Regular Bastard.
Right Bastard.

 

[Tatsuo]

What are you talking about with that englishness

Forgive my lowliness, your holiness, for my recklessness in the endless wilderness of grammarlessness.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

More seriously:

You have the genealogical bastard - the person not recognized by (or who does not know) who their male parent is.

You have the hand-and-a-half sword, the bastard sword.

You have a ruthless jerk - the 'right bastard'

And you have something that has been cheapened somehow, usually used to refer to things combined in a way that lessens them - "bastardized"

 

[PancakesWitch]

Ugly bastards

 

[CheertheSecond]

Ugly bastards

Why did I read this as ugly pasta :|

 

[Tatsuo]

More seriously:

You have the genealogical bastard - the person not recognized by (or who does not know) who their male parent is.

You have the hand-and-a-half sword, the bastard sword.

You have a ruthless jerk - the 'right bastard'

And you have something that has been cheapened somehow, usually used to refer to things combined in a way that lessens them - "bastardized"

Didnt know about the first and second one, learned something, this was helpful.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Didnt know about the first and second one, learned something, this was helpful.

The genealogical one is I THINK the origin of the term - it was a big deal in heraldry when a child was allowed to use the family crest because everyone knew who their dad was, even though that father refused to recognize them, either because they were the product of an affair, they were "produced" prior to the noble entering an advantageous marriage, or the noble just does not believe the kid was theirs (perhaps due to copious amounts of alcohol being involved), or because the connection could embarrass one or more families. In Game of Thrones, Jon Snow was a bastard of the latter type -

Spoiler

It was implied that he was Nedd Stark's child, born out of wedlock, but in fact he was the child of Nedd's wife and a Targareayn (sp.?), born in secretp

.
The rules in the England controlled briefly by Warlord Artorius (King Arthur) forbade him from openly accepting Medreunt (Mordred) because Arthur's wife was not only of a higher status but also not a half-sibling of Arthur himself - but Mordred was a bastard in temperament as well...

 

[GlassRose]

More seriously:

You have the genealogical bastard - the person not recognized by (or who does not know) who their male parent is.

You have the hand-and-a-half sword, the bastard sword.

You have a ruthless jerk - the 'right bastard'

And you have something that has been cheapened somehow, usually used to refer to things combined in a way that lessens them - "bastardized"

I thought the first one was more, a child born out of wedlock? Or is that a different type?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I thought the first one was more, a child born out of wedlock? Or is that a different type?

That is pretty much a modern simplification that downplays the historical importance of the male bloodline, at least in European culture. Originally it was explicitly a child who was not formally recognized by his father, regardless of the circumstances of his birth (at least in the Germanic and English material I've read - it is definitely possible that, say, the French or the Spanish do define it as simply "born out of wedlock")

 

[RedMuffin]

There's only one type and that's used as an insult.

 

[Nolff]

Forgive my lowliness, your holiness, for my recklessness in the endless wilderness of grammarlessness.