It also took me a while to get my head around the real meaning of Va - My take: it's the maximum speed at which you will stall before you break the aeroplane if you do something silly. And it's easier to recover from a stall than glue a wing back on. Since stall speed goes up with weight, so does Va
But I saw an interesting Youtube video on this subject a while ago and cannot find it now. It was trying to make the point that GA pilots and big jet pilots view Va completely differently. GA pilots view it as a maximum, commercial pilots regard it as a minimum. ie they can always break their aircraft with violent control inputs before they stall. Does anyone happen to have seen the video or know if what I am saying makes any sense?