King of hearts
The king of hearts is a face card in decks of French-suited playing cards, depicting a king of the hearts (♥) suit and associated with the King of Franks Charlemagne. The card is also sometimes called the "Suicide King" due to an optical illusion where it appears the king is stabbing himself with a sword, leading to interpretations of sacrifice or the end of old orders.[3] The king of hearts is also the only king without a mustache. This was due to the fact it was lost during the reproduction of the original design due to the wear and tear on the original wooden printing blocks used for mass production.[4]
Features
The king of hearts is one of the card games using the French and German suits (or it is called Herzkönig). In France, it is found in 32-card, 52-card and tarot decks.[5]
Generally speaking, the king of hearts is the highest card of hearts or immediately follows the ace of hearts; in belote, pinochle, soixante-six and other similar games, the ace and ten of hearts are higher than the king. The card precedes the queen of hearts in French-suited games, the Ober of hearts in German-suited games.[6]
In other regional varieties of card games, the equivalent of the king of hearts is the king of cups (Latin suits) or roses (Swiss suits, Rosenkönig).[7]
The king of hearts is called "bearded" in the game of the same name, an older version of the game of the Queen of Spades. In Nain Jaune, the king of hearts is one of the five cards for which a bet is allocated (along with the seven of diamonds, the ten of diamonds, the jack of clubs and the queen of spades).
Card reading
In cartomancy, the king of hearts symbolizing a kind, spiritual, and honest man, or it can symbolize leadership and emotional intelligence, often associated with compassion and wisdom.[8]
Encoding
The king of hearts is encoded into Unicode with the code point U+1F0BE, as part of the playing cards Unicode block.[9]
| Preview | 🂾 | |
|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | PLAYING CARD KING OF HEARTS | |
| Encodings | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 127166 | U+1F0BE |
| UTF-8 | 240 159 130 190 | F0 9F 82 BE |
| UTF-16 | 55356 56510 | D83C DCBE |
| Numeric character reference | 🂾 |
🂾 |
See also
References
- ^ "The Four King Truth" at the Urban Legends Reference Pages
- ^ Who are the court figures? at the International Playing-Card Society. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
- ^ "The Origin of the "Suicide King"".
- ^ "Why Does The King Of Hearts Have No Moustache? Blame 15th-Century France".
- ^ "The Rouen Pattern".
- ^ "The History of Playing Cards".
- ^ "Games played with French suited cards".
- ^ "King of Hearts Meaning".
- ^ "Playing Cards" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 May 2023. Retrieved 2023-07-14.
External links
Media related to Kings of Hearts at Wikimedia Commons