Classes do evoke certain imagery and ideas for the basis of their existence, but so long as it doesn't affect mechanics you can RP your character's background however you want.
Bloodragers (and even barbarians) don't need to be savage brutes.
Although, bloodrager is a self-taught class based on the parents classes of barbarian and sorcerer. It's something you intuitively learned, rather than had to be trained in. That doesn't mean you couldn't have done to the war college to learn to be a fighter, but after starting realized you had this burning power deep inside that allowed you to do things other couldn't. The character probably wouldn't have continued in the war college.
If you want to stick with the "established" bits of lore in each class. But for the most part, you don't need to stick with these sorts of things, and can just describe it however you want, IMO.
There is even an Urban Bloodrager archetype. No reason at all that you couldn't have a civilized Bloodrager.
I think it is also worth noting that although it is called Bloodrage, there is nothing that says you have to go all Hulk with it. You are using your own magic to cause the Bloodrage. Seems like what you are doing is akin to releasing internal magical power to super-charge yourself and partially transforming.
When a bloodrager enters a bloodrage, he often takes on a physical transformation influenced by his bloodline and powered by the magic that roils within him.
Several bloodlines make mention of a physical transformation when you bloodrage.
The bloodrager I play wanted to be a wizard. Val Baine was a sympathetic NPC in the Fires of Creation module that begins the Iron Gods AP. She is the daughter of the wizard Khonnir Baine, who adopted her after her Kellid barbarian family died. He paid a local barbarian guard to give her some instruction in Kellid language and culture, and Val persuaded the guard to add some Kellid-style combat training, too. When the party went searching for her lost father, they invited her along as the 4th party member. (Details and spoilers at Iron Gods among Scientist.)
Val had a spellbook and for the first three levels, she carefully prepared her cantrips every morning (she has cantrips like with the Enlightened archetype). But once her father was rescued, he explained to her that instead of learning new spells via arcane knowledge like a wizard, she had reached into some deep inner elemental bloodline and cast spells like sorcerer.
She likes acting like a wizard. She gained a bloodline familiar, and pretends to everyone in her hometown that she is an apprentice wizard who travels with her smith friend to search for rare metals.
She looks more like a buccaneer than a barbarian. In combat, she wields an adamantine sword in one hand and a firedrake pistol in the other. Her armor is a mithril armored coat that she crafted herself. Her familiar is a tiny clockwork dragon. Her favorite spell is Mount, because she believes that magic is mostly for tasks that her weapons cannot handle, such as transportation. Her rage is more enthusiasm than anger.
I feel like the Bloodrager is one of the most thematically versatile classes out there. Specifically, you were someone who was generally on some manner of martial bent (you're a full BAB class after all) who at some point realized that some quirk in his or her DNA makes them prone to unusual anger, and liable to get fairly unnatural when they really wig out.
You don't even have to pair bloodlines with concepts, nothing is saying that you can't have a bloodrager who wanted to be a Paladin until she found out that there are some fiends in her ancestry that she increasingly emulates when she gets mad.
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Classes do evoke certain imagery and ideas for the basis of their existence, but so long as it doesn't affect mechanics you can RP your character's background however you want.
Agreed. The class imagery is a starting point, not a boundary.
My bloodrager is a martial artist who was adopted and trained by a hermit in the wilderness. Her magical abilities are related to her suli heritage and still-unfolding heroic destiny - almost all of my spells involve elemental manipulation, but I picked the Destined bloodline because I didn't want to commit to one element and the GM dropped some hints. I sometimes jokingly refer to my bloodrage as "avatar state."
For me the bloodrager falls firmly into the category of classes (including but not limited to fighters, barbarians, warpriests, kinecticists, hunters and rogues) not known by the official class name.
It hasn't come up in the game I'm running but if ever it did bloodragers are most likely to be referred to as "sorcerers" or if recognised as clearly distinct form sorcerers they would have some name specific to the group which recognises them as such.
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Agreed. 'Barbarian' (and 'bloodrager') are convenient ways to refer to the class, but in-character, you're pretty much a warrior, or a fighter, or a sellsword, or something like that. Personally, I'm a bit of a fan of the 'Princess Berserker' trope, and wouldn't mind trying to put it into play sometime: an actual pink frilly dress girly to the hilt princess ... and past the hilt is a metre and a half of sharp steel enchanted to resonate with her regal fury!