Android Room parses pre-packaged SQLite DB incorrectly

Question

This boggles the mind.

I have created a pre-populated SQLite database to use with Room.

Here's the DDL:

CREATE TABLE "us_cities" (
  "id" INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
  "gnis_feature_id" INTEGER,
  "city_name" TEXT,
  "state_code" TEXT,
  "state_numeric" TEXT,
  "county_name" TEXT,
  "county_numeric" TEXT,
  "latitude" REAL,
  "longitude" REAL
);

And here's my entity definition:

@Entity(tableName = "us_cities")
data class UsCity(
    @PrimaryKey
    var id: Int,
    var gnis_feature_id: Int? = null,
    var city_name: String? = null,
    var state_code: String? = null,
    var state_numeric: String? = null,
    var county_name: String? = null,
    var county_numeric: String? = null,
    var latitude: Float? = null,
    var longitude: Float? = null
) {
    constructor() : this(1)
}

As soon as I run the app, Android slams me with Pre-packaged database has invalid schema error, with the expected columns in the correct order, but the found columns in this UTTERLY WRONG order:

data class UsCityWRONG(
    var gnis_feature_id: Int? = null,
    var city_name: String? = null,
    var state_code: String? = null,
    var state_numeric: String? = null,
    var county_name: String? = null,
    var county_numeric: String? = null,
    /**
     * Android fails to correctly parse the embedded SQLite database
     * It COMPLETELY ignores the actual column definition ordinal position, 
     * demanding that `id` appear in THIS EXACT position, despite the fact that 
     * it is clearly defined as the FIRST column
     */
    @PrimaryKey
    var id: Int,
    var latitude: Float? = null,
    var longitude: Float? = null
) {
    //thus also requiring a convoluted no-arg constructor
    constructor() : this(null, null, null, null, null, null, 1)
}

For the life of me, I can't figure out why Android cares which ordinal position the columns vs. entity props are defined in.

Yet another day of my life sucked away.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. I've uninstalled the app, cleaned project, rebuilt project, deleted and re-copied the .db file to my assets directory, ad infinitum.

In addition, I prefer to use lat and long as column names - perfectly valid in SQLite, but when Android parses the .db file and finds a column named long, it simply skips the column completely, thus also slamming me with the invalid schema error.