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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 142 ms ] thread* 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)
> I can't see a single facial feature that the both of them share.
(This is a plotline from the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service.)
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.
family reunion time!
0: https://i.redd.it/9kap3p05rpg41.png
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.”
They literally have extremely similar genetics. They should look similar. There aren't any gotchas.
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...
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.
https://imgur.com/gallery/TpA1e
In this photo they're both wearing German military uniforms. It was taken in Berlin in 1913.
I've met twins that looked less alike than those cousins do.
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.
Very much the case in 19th century Europe, where most of the royalty was related.
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
But yeah, I could not think of a better word in english, "traduttore traditore" as the saying goes :)
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.
[0] https://www.instagram.com/siblingsordating/
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Dzldde7rwJDwke-Mop_9rk6aggs=...