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| - Faced with very low expectations for inheritance, many noble-born bastard sons, even acknowledged ones, voluntarily join the Night's Watch to seek prestige and equality. The Night's Watch is highly egalitarian compared to the rest of Westeros, and at the Wall every man is given what he earns. Both bastards and criminals can become high-ranking officers and commanders for their service. Bastards may also take up the life of knighthood in the hope of being granted a place in a lord's household, or even gaining lands and titles for services to their liege lords. In this way, a bastard may become the founder of a noble house. Bastard children may also be given over to the Faith of the Seven as acolytes, to join monastic orders or the clergy, and bastard sons may be sent to train as Maesters. B
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| abstract
| - Faced with very low expectations for inheritance, many noble-born bastard sons, even acknowledged ones, voluntarily join the Night's Watch to seek prestige and equality. The Night's Watch is highly egalitarian compared to the rest of Westeros, and at the Wall every man is given what he earns. Both bastards and criminals can become high-ranking officers and commanders for their service. Bastards may also take up the life of knighthood in the hope of being granted a place in a lord's household, or even gaining lands and titles for services to their liege lords. In this way, a bastard may become the founder of a noble house. Bastard children may also be given over to the Faith of the Seven as acolytes, to join monastic orders or the clergy, and bastard sons may be sent to train as Maesters. Because the order of Maesters is all-male, bastard daughters face limited prospects outside of the clergy or a good marriage. There is no outright law punishing noble men or women for having bastard children. Instead it is considered a social and religious disgrace. In any event, since a highborn bastard carries the blood of a noble house, rival claimants may still consider them a potential threat. For this reason, King Joffrey orders the massacre of Robert's bastards because they are his true children and thus stronger claimants to the throne than he is. When Roose Bolton and Ramsay Snow discuss their search for the remaining male Stark children, Ramsay suggests that they get rid of Jon Snow, reasoning that since he is Eddard Stark's bastard son, Jon could become a threat to their rule in the North, even though he has joined the Night's Watch and given up any possible future claim. It is possible for the king to legitimize a lord's bastard children, but this special dispensation is difficult to acquire and does not happen frequently. It will usually be granted only if a lord has no legitimate children (or at least no male children) to carry on the name of his house. However, the social stigma is not automatically removed after the bastard is formally legitimized. Ramsay Snow is a case in point; even after he had been legitimized as Ramsay Bolton, his future was still uncertain. Since Roose Bolton's trueborn child by Walda Frey was a boy, as they had expected, he may have had a stronger claim to the Bolton lands and titles, something that Sansa Stark openly noted. Although Roose Bolton said that Ramsay always would be his firstborn, Ramsay still stabbed him to death afterward, out of fear that his inheritance would fall to his trueborn brother once he reached the rightful age to claim their fathers lands and titles.
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