The recognized distinction to powerful groups in the Old Regime society was, above all and above all, an eminently public issue. That means that individuals, groups and distinguished families had to worry about assembling a coherent speech that could explain to the common the reasons for their privileged position. The difficult thing about this narrative operation consisted of many times to reconcile the novelty that could derive from a privilege with a social world in which permanence and continuity became higher elements. Hence, the use of the past, even the most remote, was an ideal resource in the exposition of reasons for that communicative strategy launched by privileged minorities. This work adds, as an analytical key, the appeal to the past as the main argument created and recreated in the projection of the distinction and privilege. Whether through the genealogical, historical story, the funeral honors, art, everyday goods, kitchens or collecting, the various authors examine fundamental processes that have to do with the elaboration and uses of the personal and family past as a link as a linkFundamental discursive in the transmission of the distinction and explanation of many of the arcana that involved their present.