Internet goofballs are having a field day with King Charles’ portrait

polygon.com:

The purpose of art is to inspire and incite discourse, and the recently unveiled portrait of King Charles has certainly done that. The current monarch of the United Kingdom was coronated last year, and it’s a common tradition for painters to sit down with heads of state to create a personalized portrait of them. On May 14, King Charles’ portrait by artist Jonathan Yeo was revealed to the public, and while some art critics wanted to debate the heavy use of red in the portrait and the symbology therein, other people decided to just make some banger memes out of the painting.

There’s the very obvious comparison to Soulsborne games. FromSoftware designers seem to love nothing more than decorating a crumbling castle with massive, ominous portraits. (Actually, some members of FromSoftware might love poison swamps slightly more than ominous paintings, but it’s debatable.)

https://t.co/a8vSCFGg6O pic.twitter.com/HeCpTUejLM

this the type of shit you see hanging on top of a guy's throne in Elden Ring and then the dude's called 'Morgorem, Bloodrot Baron' and he lives in the 'Sanguine Temple of Decay' https://t.co/jUn0Fs77wk

Of course, a painting this ominous can fit into a whole smorgasbord of settings. Consider this mod for Dishonored, which allows you to steal King Charles’ portrait in-between murdering Corvo’s many enemies. The image would also fit nicely in the original Doom, as this mock-up proves.

King Charles' portrait looks like Doom 1's weird ass interactable face walls you'd find https://t.co/uP2X9E4yS0 pic.twitter.com/qbNn2Fm9JP

Personally, I’m a fan of this Disco Elysium interpretation of the portrait created by Stivkun on X.

pic.twitter.com/E2bHU6d9WB

The portrait is also easily substituted into movies. Ghostbusters 2’s painting of Vigo the Carpathian is an easy example here. Or the painting could fit neatly into the environment of The Shining, which is a notoriously unsettling hotel. Some artists are even taking the portrait’s style — which I personally find