Granted a Merchant of Venice...I'm not Venice

Anyone else run into this? I am playing as Arabia currently. I was granted a Merchant of Venice instead of a standard great merchant. It even can purchase and puppet a CS (even though the dialog says it will put it under the command of Venice). Venice is not an AI player in this game either. I had completed the Patronage track and a CS granted it to me. I went back before it happened with the Autosave, but couldn't replicate; the next time it gave me an Author instead.

Yes this has happened to people before and no it's not a bug or anything like that.

I wish the same threads would stop appearing.

Hi Tylerwnzl, if you look around you'll see numerous other threads discussing this exact topic. I count 4 such threads sitting in the most recent 4 pages of this forum. (True, one is a parody thread making fun of the other threads, but that alone should tell you something.)

A city state gifted me a Khan. I am not Mongolia.

A Militaristic city state gifted me a Musketeer. I am not France.

So thus, the MoV is fair game as gifts from a city state.