#but yeah i was literally born the fifth of my name. V as a suffix. like some 16th century princeling

[captorations]

it's still deeply unsettling that there are real actual people i have never met who know about me because i was born the male heir of a old american southern line. like, my brother (who is also trans) visited the old family house out of idle curiosity, over two decades after it did not belong to us anymore and we had distanced ourselves from every aspect of the culture. and the people now living there assumed he was me. they saw a man with our last name and figured he *had* to be me, since i was the only amab child.

like it's so so weird for these people, another old southern family, to have kept track of this shit well enough to make that mistake. and even weirder for them to treat my brother like returning royalty. they sure as hell didn't retract any hospitality once he clarified, but i'm pretty sure my brother could have admitted to war crimes and they still would have rather died than violate upper class southern hospitality rules.

like i know why this happens. i know that the american south is still hella aristocratic in places. i understand that this other family values the shared history between our families, even if most of it was us being shitheads. even if my family no longer shares their status culturally or economically. even if my dad would likely have sold the old place himself, only prevented from doing so by my aunt deciding to be a hilarious stereotype and manipulating my dying grandfather into changing the will in her favor so she could sell it instead. point is that these people Know I Exist and Care About My Existence and it freaks me out