Or: Why should you see Thor and Loki as adoptive twins? What does this reading add to the story? (Part one [evidence] here)
Thor and Loki don't look related, much less like twins. But the idea of them being twins would help deflect accusations of bastardry, because if you question Loki's parentage, you (apparently) have to question Thor's too. Even if you doubt it, what are the chances of a bastard being the exact same age as a legitimate son? It's almost a mind game on Odin and Frigga's part - telling such an obvious lie that surely it has to be the truth, because how else could they be getting away with it?
Thor and Loki each look far more like their birth fathers than they do each other. They are, arguably, the Jotun/Asgardian rivalry incarnate. Copies of their fathers, generational cycles, intertwined histories... I've long held that Odin and Laufey's enmity seems personal, and by making Loki his son, Odin made it even more so.
But at the same time, Loki has been made to look much more like Odin and Thor than he naturally would... He is an artificial twin and an artificial copy of an Asgardian.
Thor and Loki's signature colours (red/green) are complementary. Jotun and Asgardian pigmentation are also complementary colours. They look so different on the surface, but beneath the surface, there's so much symmetry.
The perception of Thor and Loki (in fandom and in-world) includes this pervasive (but not very well-founded) idea of them as strong vs weak, and healthy vs sickly. In-world, perhaps people have been assuming that some of their differences came out about via Thor leeching all of Loki's nutrients in utero - which projects their rivalry back to before they were even born.
Twinhood intensifies everything about their relationship -codependence, rivalry, power struggles... They are inseparable, mutually-defining opposites, and they always have been. They are each how the other learnt to relate to other people in general. Their very first and closest companion; possibly each other's first memories.
Twinhood means they will have grown up sharing everything - friends, birthdays, bedrooms, symbols from Odin's helmet - even, in theory, an inheritance. But they can't share forever. Only one of them can be crowned. They walk side by side, until they can't any more. The succession crisis is inevitable! You cannot have twin princes and expect it not to cause problems!
The idea that Thor is not actually older adds a real edge to the times when he acts like he is, and a weight to Loki saying that he wanted to be Thor's equal. Like, if they're twins... why are they demonstrably not equals? Why can Thor even say "know your place" - Why is Loki's place known to be beneath Thor? The power struggle is far from one-sided, and far from spontaneous. Thor keeps Loki down as much as Loki tries to overthrow Thor. There is something larger and deeply sinister at work here.
(Of course age dictating rank is always unjust (everything about monarchy is unjust!) - But that injustice will be so much more visceral and maddening for Loki if the age difference is allegedly minutes, not years. A tiny, meaningless accident of birth, defining them both forever...)
There's also the question of how real their relationship is. We pretty much all agree that adopted brothers can be "real" brothers... but can adopted twins be "real" twins? How deep does the bond have to go to count? Is being infants together enough? Newborns? Do they have to actually have shared a womb to claim to bond they always thought they had?
Resonance with Thanos and the idea of cutting the world in half. Thor and Loki as two halves of a whole, one destined to die (over and over) and one to live (on and on no matter how many loved ones he loses.) A cruel supposed-necessity of the myth that is their lives.
Weren't Vili and Ve twins [in comic canon]? Twins are genetic. This would also lend credence to the lie.
And if Loki and Thor are Vili and Ve... Does that not make Odin Hela?
I'll admit that many of these things aren't strictly twin-specific, but I feel like the twins reading just adds a little extra power to it all! It's not a hill I'd die on, but I do REALLY enjoy rotating it in my mind.
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