To those in Northern Virginia for sure down in South Eastern Virginia, we gravitate more to North Carolina especially if you’re from the Chesapeake or Suffolk.
Central Virginia also has a ton of interchange with Maryland. Most Richmonders are Nats and Skins fans today, but there are still O's and Ravens fans and people I went ti high school with who go to O's and Ravens games...
And there are a good amount of people in the Tri-Cities who are from Maryland initially or have family there...
When we moved east we landed in Woodbridge/Fairfax, then moved to Prince George/Hopewell. So I grew up in those two areas, and as an adult lived in Richmond, Petersburg, then Virginia Beach. I'm 703x804x757 as it gets for a non-native Virginian. Virginia is my home...
Tidewater and Southside (Danville, Emporia, South Hill, Martinsville areas) have a relationship with NC. Central, Northern Virginia, and the Eastern Shore have a relationship with Maryland. I know the deep SWVA has a relationship with Tennessee, but places like Roanoke and Lynchburg, never been so I don't know who they associate more with...
Charlottesville and Culpeper may be as Virginian as it gets in present day. One of my best friends, a homegirl, grew up in Culpeper so I spent a few trips there. They moreso align towards NoVa, and Charlottesville for all intents and purposes is a satellite city of Richmond. Those two cities don't really gravitate much towards another state as other parts of Virginia...
I also wanna take the time to clear the misconceptions about both Rich and C'Ville. Yes Rich was the Capital of the Confederacy.........160+ fukking years ago. I don't know why that label has stuck with Richmond, considering a)it was drafted as the capital because of its proximity to DC, not that it volunteered; b)at the onset of the Civil War city residents were split between Union and Confederate loyalties; c)the city of Richmond is one of the oldest established places in the country since Euro invasion, dating to the 1680s, so to narrow Rich's history to a 4-year period it didn't even volunteer for does no one any favors, historically the Civil War is just a chapter in the city's long history; and d)the modern city of Richmond has never been Confederate-sympathetic, and I'm going back 25-30 years here. Anyone who has actually spent time IN THE CITY knows it is nowhere near a white supremacist encampment...
Richmond is one of the most diverse and eclectic large cities in the nation. It is a truly special place and one of the more unique cities nationally, a different brand of Virginia from the Seven Cities and NoVa, as authentically Virginian as it gets. It's by far the most esteemed and important city in The Commonwealth. So it's monuments and shrines to The Confederacy were established as an effect of both the city's importance and influence, and the fact that it was the Confederate capital----->but people know all that Confederate shyt was kept on the grounds of the monuments and frequented by hicks from the burbs and rural Virginia. Nobody from the city kept those memorials alive and you have to know that the pasties who kept em alive often cane from old money...
C'Ville is really just a smaller, less black version of Richmond. Anyone who spends time in the city of Charlottesville knows that Klan rally isn't descriptive of the actual vibe of the city...