[brobdingnagians]

One of the things I like about C++ is that there is the std::string for common uses, but then you can design your own string classes with defined conversions to std::string. Qt adds QString with lots of nice utility methods, UnrealEngine adds optimized string types, etc. So you can have custom tailored classes for the task at hand, but easy to convert around to the different types with std::string conversions defined.

[the_why_of_y]

One of the things I dislike about C++ is that any large project will have lots of code converting between a dozen custom and gratuitously different string types.