Shakespeare's exploration of the basis for legitimacy continues in Act 1, scene 2, when Edmund, the Duke of Gloucester's bastard son, follows Lear's logic and, much like our contemporaries, announces his cynical belief that the social order is entirely arbitrary, with no basis in nature or a fixed idea of virtue.  The subplot reinforces the themes of the main plot in scene 1.

Accordingly, Edmund too seeks to disrupt the social order by fraudulently misrepresenting his legitimate brother Edgar to their father.  Appeals to legitimacy are, in Edmund's estimation, simply a form of injustice that is arbitrary and false - because they don't benefit him.  Like Goneril, Regan, and Lear himself, he is a selfish character without any care for the good of the body politic.

The rest of the act plays out with the banished Kent (returned in the guise of Caius) and Lear's Fool working hard to support the now defenseless Lear in dealing with the reality of a Kingdom in which virtue has been banished, and there is no obviously legitimate authority, only divisions of power.

The poor old king now suffers the nakedness of a civilization with no room left for piety.  In a contest of brute power, where only might makes right, he is left with a nature red in tooth and claw with ravine.

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