Mateiu Caragiale was the natural son of Ion Luca Caragiale, the greatest Romanian playwright. However, his literary output appears like a challenge to his heredity rather than a filiation. The world portrayed is the same, the Balkan one, with its mixture of pretension and indolence, grandeur and decadence, big words and great obscurities, but Caragiale the son has a completely opposite perspective than the one of Caragiale the father. He appears like an apologist of a magnificent mythology whereas his father was a keen, uncompromising satirist. Mateiu challenged not only his father’s point of view but even his own ancestry. He thought of himself to be a descendant of the Italian counts Caracioni of Urbino, while incidentally introduced himself as prince Besseraba-Apaffy. Beside the novel Craii de Curtea-Veche [Old-Court Philanderers], his masterpiece, the relatively small work of Mateiu Caragiale comprises poems, collected under the title Pajere [Arms], short stories, and a few studies of heraldry.