Why are there no handsome historical kings?

I

idleautarch

Chieftain
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Mar 27, 2004
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Why are all the famous kings and consuls and so forth always these weird looking little men? I can understand that Caesar was an old guy, and so were Sulla and Ivan the Terrible, but what about Augustus or Alexander? Augustus was a short little dweeb with liverspots, and Alexander was nearly exactly the same, although he was in better physical condition. I've heard lots of books on Alexander refer to him as 'handsome', but if you read the more historically accurate (IE less romantic) ones, people at the time thought he was a little funny looking guy with odd mousy hair. Heck, just look at the pictures of him. Even idealised he looks a bit funny.

So the question is why don't the famous empire builders ever look like anything but nerds?
 
Actually I think most powerful rulers came from a family which was in control for some time. Not sure about the Eastern world but the western world had lots of incest. Families wanted pure blood for the next ruler and such... This created crotesque features. One that is most commonly know is the long chin in some French rulers.. But it was all through out Europe really.
 
PlutonianEmpire said:
Jay leno has a big chin! Could he be usa's next prez?
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LOL.. Can't you just picture his presidential speeches.. he would start them out by ripping on the French Prime minister and talking dirt about germany. Then he would bring out guests and then have a band or stand up comic to finish the 'speech' off. Now that would be a good presidential term :goodjob:
 
I say kings are not handsome because of probabilities.
1. Handsome men are not that common. If they were, they wouldn't be handsome, Q.O.D.
2. Kings also are, by definition, not common. Actually, rumour has it kings are in much shorter supply than handsome men. :) To be specific : while there can be several hundreds of handsome men in a kingdom, there can only be one king.

Now when you combine 1. and 2., the odds of a king being handsome are really, really low.

Of course, this is totally true for queens and princesses also. So no need to droll upon princesses.

The obvious exception that confirms this rule is when royal family, instead of keeping the blood pure and blue, marry proletarian lasses involved in the babylonian movie industries. Example : Prince Rainier of Monaco and Grace Kelly. Their daughters are, if not handsome, quite good looking.

And finally, it's much more fun for a designer to sketch ugly-looking civheads such as Gandhi or Gengis Khan :lol:
 
Oni said:
But it was all through out Europe really.
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Even earlier than that, the Egyptian pharaohs used to have children with their sisters to preserve the royal blood.
 
There have been plenty of very handsome kings in History...In Spain we had Felipe el Hermoso (Philippe the good looking hunk, loose translation), Alexander the Great was famous for being handsome, Richard the Lionheart had women drooling (and men...), etc...and nowadays you can just look at any glossy mag and see that still holds true for many bluebloods of our day all over Europe. I mean have you seen Carlotta(barely 19 y.o.), the daughter of Carolina of Monaco, she's a traffic stopper. And the Princess of Sweden, Rania of Jordan (not a bread princess though..) is of another World....to mention but a few. :king:
 
Masquerouge said:
And finally, it's much more fun for a designer to sketch ugly-looking civheads such as Gandhi or Gengis Khan :lol:
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I think that was their take on it :crazyeye:
 
Of course, this is totally true for queens and princesses also. So no need to droll upon princesses.
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Not exactly...a number of the small German states became quite influential by 'breeding' nice daughters. Was their by far most important export. Best example is Anhalt-Zerbst (Catherine the Great, who was quite nice-looking in her youth!), and at foremost the House of Saxon-Coburg-Gotha, with offsprings married to several European Kings (the English branch renamed themselves 'Windsor' later...). And the daughters of that house were really always described a 'handsome' (and they were, as some photos show).

However, a lot of Rulers were also reported to be in fact good looking (like Frederic II of Germany, stupor mundi, or Charlemagne, who was most likely called 'The Great' during lifetime because he actually was nearly 2m tall..) and even intelligent.
But nobody would find an average->good-looking ruler worth mentioning; dwarfs, hunchbacks, long-nosed, huge lower lips, that's what people want to talk about.

btw, the ancient rulers like Alexander weren't remarkable small; just consider the average Roman was 1.45m....
 
I really find it difficult to believe that Alexander or Charlemagne were good looking. Our only sources are historical texts, not pictures :) So french king Philippe was called Le Bel (= beautiful, = hermoso ;) ) ? Big deal ! Le Bel compared to who ? And you can expect the women of the court to always find their king handsome ; who'd dare to say "Majesty, you're ugly ?" :)
 
Doc Tsiolkovski said:
Not exactly...a number of the small German states became quite influential by 'breeding' nice daughters. Was their by far most important export. Best example is Anhalt-Zerbst (Catherine the Great, who was quite nice-looking in her youth!), and at foremost the House of Saxon-Coburg-Gotha, with offsprings married to several European Kings (the English branch renamed themselves 'Windsor' later...). And the daughters of that house were really always described a 'handsome' (and they were, as some photos show).

However, a lot of Rulers were also reported to be in fact good looking (like Frederic II of Germany, stupor mundi, or Charlemagne, who was most likely called 'The Great' during lifetime because he actually was nearly 2m tall..) and even intelligent.
But nobody would find an average->good-looking ruler worth mentioning; dwarfs, hunchbacks, long-nosed, huge lower lips, that's what people want to talk about.

btw, the ancient rulers like Alexander weren't remarkable small; just consider the average Roman was 1.45m....
Click to expand...

Hey, my last name is Frederick and I am in fact good looking :mischief: .

So I know that rumor is probably true :D ;) :p
 
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