Rexus was closer to his beloved parents than many scions of the high nobility, but there was still a veritable laundry list of teachers, tutors, nurses and nannies present for all of his upbringing. One gentle but uncompromising word was all it took.
He never stood a chance.
"Hm? Oh! Oh, yes, of course. Apologies, madam. Please." His belated realization that Maria is waiting for him to be a gentleman brings some color to his cheeks, not for the last time that evening, but he does know the steps of this dance, in the end. "You know, it's actually been quite a long time since I've sat down to a proper meal like this. I've been... I mean, I may be a bit rusty. Please excuse any slips of etiquette."
It's easy to get the resident linguist and scholar to start talking. It requires a firm hand like Maria's to get him to shut up, but Rexus is a kind heart, and he does not talk over others, at least not intentionally, and his genuine interest in others encourages Maria to share her own stories and unusual background, and to bring him up to date on things. As enthusiastic as he can be, even Rexus will admit that battles and rescues are rather more exciting than decoding pages of old parchment.
He's amused, and just a tiny bit miffed at being told to go to bed. "Am I to wash my face and hands as well?" He doesn't dare refuse, though, and ends up doing just that. The exhausted man is fast asleep long before Maria's ten minutes passes.
The evening dinners quickly become a restorative, and something he obviously looks forward to. His attempts to help are well-meaning, but Rexus's cooking skills are distinctly "dirtbag bohemian student hovel" and not "pride of the Greens", and quickly become limited to helping with setup and cleaning, for everyone's good humor (and health).
Rexus, to his credit, takes the very personal question in stride with an airy wave and a smile. "Oh! Well, I was a girl at the time, of course. Lady Docur is not the exception-making sort."
Realizing that probably doesn't explain things as well as Maria expected, he continues. "I was raised for years as, admittedly, a rather fiery and exuberant young lady, thanks to the circumstances of my birth. As I grew older, it felt a bit hollow, wrong, clothes that didn't fit, but my parents grumbled all the time, about all the grating aspects of noble life, and the oppression and lockstep of life in Cheliax keeping them from doing as they really wished, so I thought it was simply how things were for everyone. Nobody's happy. Bah!"
"I finally put words to how I felt, finally realized my future was far more moldable than I'd ever considered after meeting a new music tutor. They were an elf, a Shelynite, who migrated between genders as other people might migrate between nations. That insight led to a 'growing up' I’d always coveted but never imagined was really practical or possible for someone in my position. Knowing a number of talented mages did bear some real benefits."
"But, I was half right. My parents embraced their newly revealed son immediately, bless them, but the news absolutely scandalized their stodgy social circles. Well, that's unfair. The ones worth staying close with, like the Jarvises, were lovely about it. Lady Docur was the soul of kindness, but of course, did point out that I would need to transfer to the Alabaster Academy now. The others... well, I don't have to tell you what most proper, diabolic, nobles in Cheliax think of such things. Lost a great many contacts and friends who had never been anything of the sort, and started down the long road to... well, here." He waves his hands about to indicate they were having dinner in the underground base of a militant revolutionary cell, after all. "I started very softly. Generic good feelings, I suppose. I wanted nothing more than for everyone else to experience the relative safety of an aristocratic upbringing. No one should ever worry where their next meal would come from, or whether walking home by night would be a life-ending mistake."
"But discarding Nahia Victocora and living as Rexus meant discarding much of my social circle, and picking up a new and much more interesting one. Musicians, servants, students, street urchins. For all their energy and thoughtfulness, my new friends endured worse on a daily basis than any insecurity I'd been exposed to. And that was intolerable. What exactly I could do about it escaped me for a long time. I was an intolerable dilettante in my adolescence and my Academy days. I must have stumbled through a dozen different causes with a dozen different ideologies. I finally settled on the one that had been sitting in front of me the whole time, the Sacred Order of Archivists, as my parents had. It had barely been a week since I'd informed them of my intentions. I came over for a family dinner, and I saw the smoke in the distance..."
"Barzillai Thrune has made most of my decisions rather easier now, though I couldn't have imagined they'd have led me here, or here." He indicates the little table and Maria with his second 'here'. "The Silver Ravens have proven to have silver linings. Maybe with some fortune, we'll all come out into a better place in the end."