How RGB images are formed when normalized between 0 and 1
Let's suggest an analogy. I have a distance of 1 centimeter and 2.54 centimeters. If I transform the latter distance to inches, then it's 1 inch. This has the same value as the first distance.

But 1 inch is still longer than 1 centimeter, no matter the fact that they both use the numeral 1. These numbers are attached to different units, so simply comparing their numerical values is meaningless.

So it doesn't matter if the 8-bit unsigned, normalized value of 255 happens to have the same value of 1. Because you cannot compare them when they are in different spaces like that. Your original values were both in 8-bit normalized, unsigned integer space. If you want to compare them in a floating-point space, you have to transform both of them.