Why does the red heart emoji require two code points, but the other colored hearts require one?

Question

It appears that the red heart emoji (❤️) \"\\u2764\\uFE0F\" requires two Unicode codepoints, specifically Heavy Black Heart followed by a Variation Selector. However, blue

Answer 1

For historical reasons. Originally, there was only U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART which the first applications that supported Emojis decided to render as a red heart. These early applications always rendered U+2764 as Emoji. Later it was realized that this was a bad idea and the variation selectors for Emojis were standardized. When additional heart emojis were added, there was no need for another red heart, so it was omitted. Instead there's a separate black heart emoji U+1F5A4