Could a noble's son be a noble?

Answer 1

Depends on which society the noble is in. In typical European nobility, a noble's son is a noble, though not necessarily the same degree of nobility as his father, due to the custom of Primogeniture, which favored the eldest son (and consequently, was the proximate cause of numerous fratricides).

However, the question suggests the peculiar status-churning customs of the ancient Natchez. These had four degrees: Suns (the upper crust), Nobles, Honored Men (what the English would call Gentlemen) and the Stinkards, the despised poor.

People of the three upper classes had to marry Stinkards, and while the children of female Suns, Nobles or Honored Men (who all had Stinkard husbands) took their mother's status, the children of high-ranking fathers fell one class. Thus, the children of male Suns were Nobles, those of Nobles were Honored Men and those of Homored Men were Stinkards.

To call this system weird would be putting it mildly, but it effectively prevented the establishment of a PERMANENT family-linked upper class, which has been the inspiration for rebellion. The striking thing is that the Stinkards, who were obviously the same stock as everybody else, were nevertheless treated very badly, just as the lower classes are in stable societies when the wealthy can pretend that there's just something wrong with the poor. The Natchez had to have realized that one's social status was purely artificial and it was all a grand game, but they were apparently just as bigoted as if the differences had be real.