I’ll try and condense this question, but I can be long winded at times so no promises. Essentially I’m looking to do an early 1400’s living history impression/character (about 1420ish) and what I’ve considered for this person/character is that they’re a bastard of a somewhat prominent German Knight, and an English Hospitaller woman that met during the Crusade of Nicopolis. My biggest question is how plausible of a situation could that be? As far as I can see it seems quite possible, but I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything that would make it inaccurate. Also what surname might a bastard of a German knight/noble be at the time? Did they have any kind of prefixes for surnames that would denote a bastard? For all context what I essentially want this person to be is an illegitimate son of a German knight, raised in England, and potentially taken in as a squire by a Hospitaller Knight. (I just thought it might be a fun/interesting idea) Thank you in advance for y’all’s help, this is a little outside of my wheelhouse as I’m more knowledgeable in martial matters than anything.
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.
For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.