Weekly Flag Challenge: Discussion & Entries

Krall

Banned
Noone else has clicked like on my 300x600 yet.
But since the only entry is outside the 200x400 I'll bow to your lobbying and use it. I'm also extending the challenge til end of Monday.
Ah, excellent! I'm going to have no free time this weekend, so I was hurriedly trying to get my entry finished today - I've gotten the main flag done, but not the regional one. The extension will give me some time to finish it off on Monday. Thank you. :)
 
Holy Roman Empire

In this TL, the flag of the Holy Roman Empire went through a number of changes during the unification process led by the Kingdom of Burgundy between 700-1000. The first Burgundian flags were simple red and blue war banners, where both red cross on blue and blue cross on red were used. With the conquest of Kingdom of Aquitaine, the design was consolidated to a red cross on a blue field with a red border, fimbriated with white. The arms of Burgundy and Aquitaine were quartered on the flag.

This design was to last for more than a century. However, the conquests of Neustrasia, Austrasia and Westrisia in a quick succession added yet more arms to the flag. Then, instead of quartering the arms yet again, it was decided that each field shall bear the separate arms of all four kingdoms, with the arms of Burgundy in an escutcheon above them in the center. This design was to last until Lothere the Pious of Burgundy, the first Emperor.

It is said that after the conquest of Kingdom of the Lombards and the coronation in Rome, Emperor Lothere had an epiphany that made him devote his empire to the glory of God. This had profound impact to his entire reign, but also to his arms and the Imperial banner as a result.

Lothere ordered to clear his arms of all designs accumulated over the previous centuries, leaving only the red cross on blue field, bordered by red and bearing an escutcheon. To this, he added the papal cross, stating: "Only the arms of the Most High should stand above all." This would become the Imperial Banner for centuries to come.

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Kingdom of Aquitaine

In this TL, the Kingdom of Aquitaine was dominated by the Basques. Their war banners were originally green and red, often bearing the Basque cross. Before Emperor Lothere, the Aquitaine arms stood in the upper left field of the Imperial banner, bearing the red Basque cross on white.

The banner for the Kingdom alone, after Emperor Lothere, became a field quartered between Burgundian blue and Basque green, bordered by red to recall their position on the original Imperial banner. In the center stands the ancient Basque cross in red, on a white roundel.

Basque_Aquitania.png
 

Krall

Banned
Holy Roman Empire

In the early Medieval era Christian religious and temporal authorities clashed repeatedly for control of Europe's social and political institutions. This was exemplified by the conflict between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor sought the power to invest Bishops, Cardinals, and other clergy, thus exercising control over the church; the Pope sought to assert their independence from the Emperor as temporal ruler of the Papal States, and thus their supremacy over all of Christendom. The two positions became increasingly intertwined as time went on starting with the Iurgium, a civil war in which a disputed succession erupted into a grueling, bloody conflict. One claimant claimed legitimacy via election by the Empire's senior nobles, whereas the other claimed legitimacy due to appointment by the Pope. Ultimately the latter would succeed and it became accepted that the Pope should have sole power to appoint Emperors and, though the Pope was subservient to the Emperor in temporal matters, the Emperor was a vicar of the Pope appointed to defend all of Christendom. Conversely, the investiture controversy was resolved in favour of temporal rulers, allowing the Emperor to appoint many of the clergy eligible to become and able to elect the Pope.

As Emperors increasingly leaned on the Papacy for support and legitimacy they adopted increasingly religious trappings. This can be seen most clearly in the banners used by the Emperors which, starting in the 1100s, consistently depict the Archangel Michael. The exact design varied over time, even within the reign of a single Emperor, before being set in the late 1400s as a light blue flag hung from a crossbar with three streamers, edged with gold and depicting the Archangel Michael holding a spear and scales below an aquila. Though the Empire would not last forever, the design and colours of this flag would come to influence those of Europe and countries across the world for centuries to come.

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Principality of Favonia

Rumours of land beyond the Atlantic Ocean, tall tales of ships swept off-course and reports of Guinean traders heading west, first occur in Europe no later than the early 1200s, but it wasn't until the mid-1300s that Oltremar was discovered by Moorish explorers on an expedition funded by the Emperor himself. Seeking trade, the Empire did not attempt to assert direct authority over any of the newfound land, but various nobles - disgruntled by the increasing centralisation of the Empire and longing for the "good old days" of centuries past - attempted to relive the "Peregrinations" that had seen their forebears invade and assert control over the Levant, but now heading West instead of East, and formed a variety of states on the shores of Oltremar. Their independence lasted a century and a half until the Emperor asserted his control over these colonies, reorganising them as the Principality of Favonia - a name taken from the Latin name for the West Wind. The flag of this new province consisted of five bars, alternating blue and green, with a compass rose placed in each one next to the hoist and each bar tapering and ending in separate points at the fly. Though the compass rose fell out of use as a symbol of Favonia, the colours of this flag would be used by the Oltremar United Polity and later inspire designs for many flags across Oltremar and the world.

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Krall

Banned
Xanthoc, Mirror, and I have decided on a joint challenge for the next round! Here it is:

FLAG CHALLENGE #163: City Upon a Crater

"We don't remember much from the before-times. We don't remember why, but we do remember how the world ended; angels falling from heaven, wielding a sickening, divine light. Some claim the world has been cleansed of sin, but if that's the case then the innocent have already begun to sin anew. All we know for sure is when the light's gone out of the world, a city that is set on a crater cannot be hidden."

Create a flag of a post-apocalyptic city-state, which includes an existing OTL symbol that has been reinterpreted to have a different or distorted meaning.

Submissions Open: Now
Submissions Close: 5th April 2017
Voting Period: after 5th April, for 7 days
 
Ainu Rebuilder Community
アイヌ再建コミュニティ - Ainu Saiken Komyuniti
Айну Перестроное Сообщество - Aynu Perestroynoye Soobshchestvo

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After the Final Plague (so called because it was the last great plague recorded by the developed world before its collapse) destroyed all but a few remaining nations on Earth, several survivors in more rural parts of the world managed to band together and create their own towns and settlements where old ones used to be.

One of the more powerful factions are the Ainu, which in OTL lived in parts of Japan and Russia. A few decades after the Final Plague completely died away and withered, the Ainu created a movement to reclaim parts of what used to be Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kurils. Although the ARC's population is predominately indigenous Ainu peoples, all survivors of the plague are welcome to live and work in their land. While not as warlike as some other survivor camps, they spend most of their time fighting off the elements and hunting while not focusing on developing their settlements. Efforts to expand the ARC have been successful, despite nature overrunning most of the long since abandoned Japanese and Russian Cities.

The flag features the Emblem featured on the OTL Ainu flag reduced to navy blue and white, as well as a three fold tomoe above it. This tomoe in particular would normally symbolize the Ryukyu islands in OTL, but it is used on this flag for a union of Ainu, Japanese and Russian Culture. The square pattern on the left has been inspired by the Wiphala which is used by many native communities in various countries in the Americas. The USSR star on the right is not used for ideological purposes and is instead intended as a cultural symbol representing some of the Ainu people living in numerous places owned by Russia where they are indigenous.

After the Final Plague came and went, many people only associate symbols left behind by previous peoples with their nations and very few know the actual symbolism behind them or their meaning.

Some people have interpreted the yellow and red star as a symbol for the cosmos and the symbol to the left therefore being a spacecraft made by an old nation pointed to a planet above.

Others have interpreted it as a monument beneath the moon standing for years to come, outliving its original builders and living on as a testament to lost cultures.

Apart from mere speculation, it seems that the original meanings behind these symbols have been lost to the sands of time.
 
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Hmmm... While it wasn't explicit, are we making nuclear warfare the cause of the apocalypse? That's what I got from the flavor text.

However, I gotta say I don't really see where in the ARCs flag a symbol has become distorted in meaning. Maybe the star, but that's been a "Russian" symbol for a while now. I'd have to get the input of @Mirror and @Krall, but Im not sure if this goes far enough. I was more envisioning a symbol where the meaning has been lost almost entirely, and repurposed by the survivors
 
Hmmm... While it wasn't explicit, are we making nuclear warfare the cause of the apocalypse? That's what I got from the flavor text.

However, I gotta say I don't really see where in the ARCs flag a symbol has become distorted in meaning. Maybe the star, but that's been a "Russian" symbol for a while now. I'd have to get the input of @Mirror and @Krall, but Im not sure if this goes far enough. I was more envisioning a symbol where the meaning has been lost almost entirely, and repurposed by the survivors

Really? Well, the apocalypse was supposed to be because of diseases killing nearly everyone in urban areas. As for the meaning, I could write more about each of the symbols, if you want.
 
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Well, I'm fine with an apocalypse caused by biological weapons, instead of nuclear. It can be made to fit the flavor text as well (I'm sure there are ICBM's with biological warheads).

But I agree, that the idea was to distort the meaning of a symbol almost beyond recognition. For example, if the red star of USSR stood for something else entirely. But that can be fixed in the writeup :)
 
Well, I'd better add some more flavor text to my entry, just to make the symbolism more in tune with the challenge. If you see text in a different color, then it's an edit :)
 

Krall

Banned
Hmmm... While it wasn't explicit, are we making nuclear warfare the cause of the apocalypse? That's what I got from the flavor text.

However, I gotta say I don't really see where in the ARCs flag a symbol has become distorted in meaning. Maybe the star, but that's been a "Russian" symbol for a while now. I'd have to get the input of @Mirror and @Krall, but Im not sure if this goes far enough. I was more envisioning a symbol where the meaning has been lost almost entirely, and repurposed by the survivors
Well, I'm fine with an apocalypse caused by biological weapons, instead of nuclear. It can be made to fit the flavor text as well (I'm sure there are ICBM's with biological warheads).

But I agree, that the idea was to distort the meaning of a symbol almost beyond recognition. For example, if the red star of USSR stood for something else entirely. But that can be fixed in the writeup :)

I'm fine with any sort of apocalypse - I added the flavour text mostly because I didn't want to post a one-line challenge; it's not meant to be part of the challenge restrictions in any sense.

I think FlyingParafin's flag meets the requirements for the challenge, especially so now with the added green text.
 
Angeleon
"It is said that Men and Angels once lived in harmony, however they longed for a third partner. Some talked of raising from beasts, much as Men once were and perhaps Angels too; some talked of constructing like their tools around them. We do not know what was tried only that it caused war to befall our Eden and all were cast down. The Angels were forced to depart but the greatest of them was loath to leave his human friends undefended. The Prince of the Morning gave them a shield - the Holy Star - that they might survive the oncoming storm. Since then our Shahs have borne the Holy Star and protected the holy places of the Prince's favoured city. In the shadow of Angelopolis they have preserved a semblance of former Eden, an oasis among the deserts: Angeleon."

Banner of the Grand Shah of Angelopolis, Protector of the Holy Warden and Valley of Eden:
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