The nouveau riche are plebeian by definition. The haute bourgeoisie/gentry/patrician class isn’t just defined by money. It’s defined by no one on the family having a memory of a member of the family not having had wealth, power and prestige.
That’s not really how it works. High nobility can be very poor. They still remain member of high nobility. White Russian still frequented other nobles in exile after the revolution when most of them had become penniless. It’s not strictly about money.
Yeps, thats right... back when i was in school i had a "von" type classmate, they even "owned" a castle (a ruin... back then on the wrong side of the iron curtain), and lived in a social housing project.
At no point did I refer to nobles or nobility. The Roosevelts, Vanderbilts and Hearsts have never been noble but they’re the same social class the British used to call gentry or the French haute bourgeoisie.
