King George and Tsar Nicolas Looked a Lot Alike | Hacker News Reader

King George and Tsar Nicolas Looked a Lot Alike

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Meh. They're the same height and have the exact same nose, but the other eye-catching similarities (same hair color, same haircut, same beard/stache, same regal countenance) are superficial. If they had different haircuts, shaved faces, and were captured in a more candid scene, I'm not sure that we'd see much of a similarity.

Here's another image[0] of them in which they look less like twins (ignoring the over-the-top superficial similarities). [0]https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/106/590x/King-G...

Yes, the eyes and the shape of the brow are totally different. It's interesting that the uniform of nobility, like that of a soldier or a fast-food worker, deemphasizes individuality.

But emphasizes rank which is logical. We are the same, but I am better.

It subordinates the person to the office.

That's what life was supposed to be until recently. You were your role, and in most cases you were born into it. The current middle class idea that you can assume different roles in different situations is the weird exception.

they could still be brothers. I know couples of brothers that look way more different than they did.

Seriously. I have one brother with olive skin, jet black hair and black eyes (like our mother) while I have extremely pale skin, very blond hair and light blue eyes (like our father). I don't think anyone would ever think we are related.

I know of two colors for olives, shiny black and bright green. I never quite understood which of those two colors are meant by "olive skin", but if I met anyone with skin of either color it would be a first for me. Maybe there's another color of olive that I'm unfamiliar with.

https://i.imgur.com/VZ6Slh6.jpg

Sorry for the total non-sequitur, that phrase has always just tickled my brain in a funny way and I would love to get to the bottom of that particular mystery.

I've thought the same, but reading your comment made me realize it's probably the wood.

https://imgur.com/gallery/TpA1e

Or the oil?

Olive oil is transparent with a slightly green tint right? That seems even weirder.

Why is that even weirder? The term generally indicates skin with a slight ~green cast.

> "It's interesting that the uniform of nobility, like that of a soldier or a fast-food worker, deemphasizes individuality."

In this photo they're both wearing German military uniforms. It was taken in Berlin in 1913.

I don't think this image is helping your case.

> they look less like twins

I've met twins that looked less alike than those cousins do.

Look like non twin brothers to me.

Not only they were cousins, in their private correspondence right before the outbreak of WWI they were addressing each other as Willy and Nicky[0]. By the way they fought against each other.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy%E2%80%93Nicky_correspond...

edit: I meant the correspondence between the third cousin, Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas.

Kaiser Wilhelm doesn't look too different either.

"War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other."

Very much the case in 19th century Europe, where most of the royalty was related.

There's a beautiful poem in roman dialect called "the war lullaby"[0] from this period. The last two stanzas speak of this, and go something like:

    Sleep tight, my darling
    while this mess goes on
    sleep well, as tomorrow
    we'll see the kings again
    
    exchanging pleasantries
    good friends as before
    they're cousins, and amongst relatives
    you don't need formalities,
    again will turn friendly
    the personal relations.
    
    And reunited among them
    with no sign of remorse
    they'll give a nice speech 
    on Peace and Labour
    to that dumb people
    spared by the gun.

[0] in italian/romanesco http://www.la-poesia.it/poesie-di-trilussa/trilussa-ninna-na...

I wouldn't translate "popolo cojone" as dumb people.

I became interested in this Italian word and found this[0] casual translation: "cojone: bad word, but very useful! referring to someone who's an asshole, and stupid persons in general".

Some of the older English references[1] also seem negative: "English had it as cullion a 16c. term of contempt for a man, "a mean wretch" (Shakespeare) also "a testicle" (Chaucer), from Middle English coujon, coilon (late 14c.), from Old French coillon "testicle; worthless fellow, dolt," from Latin coleus."

I find that I can quite easily imagine the poet seeing people dying for these 'friends' while the stupid public (popolo cojone) attends a nice speech.

0: https://hinative.com/questions/10051415?locale=en-US#answer-...

1: https://www.etymonline.com/word/cojones

How would you translate it?

A "coglione", which is the Italian word for the dialectal "cojone", is literally a testicle. Anyway you can also call someone a "coglione" and it means they are somewhere between dumb, jerk and ignorant.

"fucking people" would be closer since its supposed to be a curse word.

but it's not a generic curse word, it's an insulting way of saying you're stupid, which is the more important part in this context.

But yeah, I could not think of a better word in english, "traduttore traditore" as the saying goes :)

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nine-kings-one-photo/

family reunion time!

This is a well commented upon outcome[0]. White males in similar clothing, hair-style, and beard = doppelganger.

0: https://i.redd.it/9kap3p05rpg41.png

I mean, are these not doppelgangers?

I mean, the pictures aren’t super clear, but I don’t know. When the qualities that are in common between the two people are themselves quite common and not particularly distinct, I’d hardly call them doppelgängers. Being in the same broad range of BMI and having roughly the same hair color and eyeglasses color isn’t really enough. Maybe the long dreadlocks are distinct enough to count.

I suppose specific scenarios like being sat next to someone on an airplane also lowers the threshold of notability. The guys with light hair and a beard probably justifies a selfie, but I still wouldn’t use the term “doppelgänger.” To me a doppelgänger is someone who looks so much like you that if you caught a glimpse of them in a crowd you’d think “whoa, I can’t believe there’s someone out there who looks that much like me.”

Given that the two monarchs that are the subject of this thread are very closely related, I don't get all the dismissals of this being a superficial likeness.

They literally have extremely similar genetics. They should look similar. There aren't any gotchas.

Yes, that is the joke. The fact that there is an internet meme that describes common traits of people that come across their "doppelganger" in the wild and these two related men exhibit them save for the glasses is the joke.

You would be surprised how similar someone looks to another when they dress alike, have a covering that obscures half their face(beards that are similar in this picture) and have a similar haircut/skin tone. Looking at that picture if you look at just their eyes and eyebrows you can then see the differences, I think if they were clean shaven they may look more dissimilar.

I disagree. There has always appeared to me to be a wide variety of beard sizes and shapes.

I know men who cannot grow a beard. I can only grow a thin, straight beard, and I have friends with thick beards that curl around.

The archetypal gym junkie with beard and top knot all look the same to me

And when they're multi-generationally incestuous first cousins ...

Yea ofc they did. They were cousins.

They were cousins on paper. Given the breeding history of the European nobility, they may have been near-clones as a result of pedigree collapse.

that family tree looks more like a wreath.

The family braid.

Reminds me of this Instagram account that people were talking about a while ago (and indeed the title of this article has the same naming format as the Instagram account) [0]. Hint, it's usually the opposite of what you might initially suspect.

[0] https://www.instagram.com/siblingsordating/

Is it just me or do they don't actually look a lot alike? I can't see a single facial feature that the both of them share.

Seriously? they both have attached earlobes.

As does half the human population. What is even your point?

He was responding to this statement:

> I can't see a single facial feature that the both of them share.

Context is important. They both also lack a proboscis, but that also doesn’t count.

Context is important. The only claim made was that the original commenter was unable to find a shared facial feature. The respondent gave an example of one. Everything else was just people expressing their surprise at what other people do or do not see because of what they do or do not see.

That's how you can tell none of them are the real Count de Bleuchamp.

(This is a plotline from the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service.)

If you look at other pictures, it's easy to see they don't look any more alike than any two relatives, even at the ages they are in this photo.

In this photo I think several effects combine to convince people they share similar looks. The first is the power of suggestion: We've been told they look alike. The second is the same beard style covering half their faces. The third is that the light is soft and washes out their features, leading to any of their features seeming not too dissimilar even if they aren't the same. Since this happens for basically all of their features, the effect can make it seem like they look alike and to the extent it doesn't, see the power of suggestion above.

Very misleading. Cover their moustaches and you see the diffences. The pics are not even color. Nicolas was goodlooking

So do Prince Charles (Windsor) and Vlad the Impaler.

They were relatives

Yes, but it takes a lot of inbreeding for all of them to look alike.

like this? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53059527

They were 3rd cousins, meaning they had the same 2nd great grandparents.

1st cousins actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia#:~:text=...

They were first cousins, they were both grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

Actually their common grandparent was not Queen Victoria, but rather King Christian of Denmark.

Yeah, it gets a bit confusing when you add in the German Emperor, Wilhelm II.

* George V and Nicholas II share Christian IX of Denmark as a common grandparent

* George V and Wilhelm II share Victoria as a common grandparent

* Nicholas II and Wilhelm II are more distantly related to each other (second cousins once-removed through Frederick William III of Prussia)

Also Nicolas’s wife Alexandra was Victoria’s granddaughter and a cousin of George and Wilhelm.

Funny enough, both seemed to have carried their haircuts through all, or at least most of life since late adolescence (dunno about earlier). Perhaps so that they could be told apart by that detail.

The leaders of two of the most horrific empires in history are related? This used to be spammed on reddit years ago. They were apparently cousins.

Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia were far away from the most horrific empire in history.

They were leaders of imperial britain and imperial russia, not imperial germany. Though both were of mostly ethnic german stock. I don't think anyone would disagree that the british and russian empires were two of the most terrible empires in history. The british empire easily being the more horrible as the british empire was far more successful than the russian empire.

Aren't all empires horrific? At least for their victims?

Those beards are pretty hip.

No doubt, but the 'stache? How did either one of them even eat without making a mess? (asking for a friend)

How does it feel to wear all that "stuff"?

They were recently both portrayed (along with their third cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II) by Tom Hollander in The King's Man (2021).

FYI, probably downvoted because this is the first line of the article.

Maybe they’re related?

They were cousins.

Why is reincarnation such a difficult concept to grasp for Westerners?

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