A characteristic of Mateiu Caragiale's life was his search for noble origins, contrasting his illegitimate status. According to historian Lucian Nastasă, it clashed with his father's discreetness in relation to his Greek ancestors—Ion Luca is known to have described his own origins as uncertain, even though these had been well recorded, and to have later commented that any noble lineage in Romania relied on spurious genealogies. Caragiale-father is also thought to have discouraged his son's claims, and to have mockingly noted that their own family's origin could not have been aristocratic. Early in his youth, Mateiu jokingly referred to himself as "Prince Bassaraba-Apaffy", mixing the title used by the early Basarab Wallachian princes and the Apaffy family of Hungarian nobility. Letters he wrote while still a student show that he was envisaging a marriage of convenience as a means to increase his wealth and status.