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The study of the topos of the unknown or hidden birth allows us to apprehend an imaginary of the nobility who are the subjects of heroic novels. The heroes of these novels are represented as self-made men rather than as heirs: because they make a name for themselves, they are deserving of their father’s name. In this way, two conceptions of nobility are reconciled: the “feudal conception,” in which nobility derives from the exercise of the profession of arms, from valor, and from virtue, and the “modern conception,” in which nobility is the result of birth. The story of all these heroes of unknown birth develops the tension between these two conceptions, before everything is put in order. These fictions thus continued to maintain the myth of the congruence of nobility, military prowess, and virtue until the 1670s.