So the challenge is to design a flag for a constituent kingdom of a restored HRE/Francia under the Carolingian Dynasty. Ok, thanks!
Weekly Flag Challenge: Discussion & Entries
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Are there any specific storylines or writings regarding Arnold’s ATL on AH.com?
Saint Arnold - Wikipedia
there are three Saint Arnolds, which one? Or none of them?
Considering I only recently invented him probably not. But may be worth checking out threads on alternate Francias for ideas.
None. He's an invention.Saint Arnold - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
there are three Saint Arnolds, which one? Or none of them?
Sorry, but I need to ask one more question: when did Charles die? This is the earliest date for me in deriving a constituent state, and it would be helpful to know.
Anytime after he became Emperor OTL (800 CE).
The main point is that none of his sons were successful in retaining the title, despite claiming it against each other and others, leaving a bunch of successor kingdoms.
OTL he died c814 but he could live until 830s perhaps or die early 800s.
The banner of the Duchy of Neustria is a three tailed pennon.
The hoist displays a blue field upon which rests two crests. All Duchy banners within the Carolingian Kingdom are required to display these two crests upon a blue field at the hoist. The remaining banner represents the individual Duchy.
The upper crest is that of St. Arnold which is white with two Carolingian crosses in honor of his Carolingian Dynasty heredity and to honor the two August Emperors of the Western Roman Empire, himself and his Great, Great Grandfather, Charlemagne. A single Fleur de Lis represents all of the Franks within the Carolingian Kingdom. There is a blue chevron above the Fleur de Lis which signifies the protection of the Franks that Arnold has vowed to uphold.
The second crest is that of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Duchy of Neustria is represented by the vertical wavy lines representing the western coast of The Kingdom. The crowned red lion represents Duke Pepin II, youngest brother of Arnold. The lion is facing the sea which indicates his charge of defending The Kingdom from seaborne invaders.
The hoist displays a blue field upon which rests two crests. All Duchy banners within the Carolingian Kingdom are required to display these two crests upon a blue field at the hoist. The remaining banner represents the individual Duchy.
The upper crest is that of St. Arnold which is white with two Carolingian crosses in honor of his Carolingian Dynasty heredity and to honor the two August Emperors of the Western Roman Empire, himself and his Great, Great Grandfather, Charlemagne. A single Fleur de Lis represents all of the Franks within the Carolingian Kingdom. There is a blue chevron above the Fleur de Lis which signifies the protection of the Franks that Arnold has vowed to uphold.
The second crest is that of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Duchy of Neustria is represented by the vertical wavy lines representing the western coast of The Kingdom. The crowned red lion represents Duke Pepin II, youngest brother of Arnold. The lion is facing the sea which indicates his charge of defending The Kingdom from seaborne invaders.
Lehoi Gorria - the Red Lion
After the death of Charles the Great, his empire rested in the hands of his sons, split into three kingdoms as Charles had planned. However, years of famine and negligence had sown the seeds of discontent in many areas. Little rebellions and uprisings became more common. Louis the Pious, ruling the West, called for increasingly harsh measures from the dukes appointed to represent the interests of the crown in suppressing these revolts, but the dukes were often sympathetic to the people, having grown up in the areas they ruled. Louis decided to make an example of the Duke of Bordeaux for failing to be sufficiently harsh in his responses to a local uprising. Duke Seguin was deposed, and a new ruler assigned to the region, Duke Centullo.
The local uprising became a full scale rebellion as the deposed Duke joined the fight against Louis and then drew alliances from neighboring lands, eager to see the Western Realm crumble. While Duke Seguin was killed in the rebellion, his able son, then known as William of Septimania, took up the banner and led the rebel forces to several decisive victories at Bordeaux, Agen, and Tolosa. His exploits in battle, as well as his livery, led to the men calling him Vasconiako Lehoi Gorria, the Red Lion of Vasconia. William's victories carved out the small kingdom of Vasconia (later called Gascony) and crucially took control of the Garonne River. The northern border of Gascony was settled at the Dordogne.
William of Septimania was declared King William I, the Red Lion of Gascony. Those who had followed his banner in battle now used it as a flag to unite the kingdom. A blue strip on the fly border of the flag was added to symbolize dominion over the Garonne River, and that flag design remained unchanged for centuries.
After the death of Charles the Great, his empire rested in the hands of his sons, split into three kingdoms as Charles had planned. However, years of famine and negligence had sown the seeds of discontent in many areas. Little rebellions and uprisings became more common. Louis the Pious, ruling the West, called for increasingly harsh measures from the dukes appointed to represent the interests of the crown in suppressing these revolts, but the dukes were often sympathetic to the people, having grown up in the areas they ruled. Louis decided to make an example of the Duke of Bordeaux for failing to be sufficiently harsh in his responses to a local uprising. Duke Seguin was deposed, and a new ruler assigned to the region, Duke Centullo.
The local uprising became a full scale rebellion as the deposed Duke joined the fight against Louis and then drew alliances from neighboring lands, eager to see the Western Realm crumble. While Duke Seguin was killed in the rebellion, his able son, then known as William of Septimania, took up the banner and led the rebel forces to several decisive victories at Bordeaux, Agen, and Tolosa. His exploits in battle, as well as his livery, led to the men calling him Vasconiako Lehoi Gorria, the Red Lion of Vasconia. William's victories carved out the small kingdom of Vasconia (later called Gascony) and crucially took control of the Garonne River. The northern border of Gascony was settled at the Dordogne.
William of Septimania was declared King William I, the Red Lion of Gascony. Those who had followed his banner in battle now used it as a flag to unite the kingdom. A blue strip on the fly border of the flag was added to symbolize dominion over the Garonne River, and that flag design remained unchanged for centuries.
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The poll is now up:
Flag Challenge 247 Poll
The Challenge: Flag Challenge 247 : Sons of the Frankish Hydra With the death of the August Emperor Charles the Great the brief 2nd Western Roman Empire fell. Though many among his sons and sons of sons would claim Caesar none would obtain August until centuries later with the rise of St Arnold...
www.alternatehistory.com
Rad! This neatly dovetails with a random one-off flag that popped into my head earlier today
The Commonwealth of Jerusalem's Lot
In the wake of the Stuart Restoration and the return of Charles I to the throne from his exile in France, there came a question of what to do with the radical sects and political groups that had supported the Interregnum once their leaders had been hanged, drawn and quartered. The solution would be a massive wave of transportation to the North American colonies, seen as an effective way to remove these groups from proximity to power while simultaneously Anglicizing territory disputed with the French in North America. While these involuntary colonists, almost all of them various flavors of dissident Puritans, would settle almost entirely in New England by far the highest concentration would be in the territory historically known as Maine.
Within the new Puritan communities by far the strongest faction would be the group known as the Fifth Monarchists, with a radical plan to create a "heavenly society" inspired both by the age old eschatology of the Four Kingdoms of Daniel and the numerological importance of the year 1666. Establishing a radical and borderline theocratic regime on the small colony, renaming it Jerusalem's Lot in the process, the grip of the Fifth Monarchists would begin to wane after the promised year came and went without some sort of divine sign or revelation. With the fall of the Fifth Monarchists from grace other dissenting sects would exert their independence from the central authority of the colony even as its government fell under the sway of those few Leveller thought leaders that had escaped the noose in the mother country.
As time went on, this history of religious pluralism and populist governance would attract other heterodox religious groups, and while the colony was folded into Massachusetts on paper as a means of subverting the so-called "Radical Colony", locals would exercise a fair amount of autonomy throughout the eighteenth century. With the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and the colonies, 'Salem's Lot would send its own delegation separate from that of Massachusetts in the hope of finally achieving political independence. The colony would prove itself throughout the American Civil War, as the conflict would become known, overcoming an attempt to carve a loyalist province out from within its borders and expanding into the neighboring land territory of Nova Scotia, cutting the island off from the mainland. Having fought off both New Ireland and Nova Scotia, the colony's pleas would be answered, becoming the fourteenth state in 1790 as the Commonwealth of Jerusalem's Lot.
In the early republican period, the Commonwealth would prove one of the loudest voices for religious toleration and natural rights, born both of a staunchly Leveller political culture and a deep memory of the vulnerability created by religious infighting inherited from the early years of the colony, attracting groups such as the Society of Universal Friends and a variety of French and English utopian socialists. As the nineteenth century bore on, 'Salem's Lot would become a hotbed of abolitionist fervor even compared to the rest of New England, and would vehemently oppose the persecution that had driven the Latter Day Saints from New York State to Illinois. Although there were few LDS members in the state and some were opposed to his plans for compensated manumission of slaves, the Commonwealth went heavily for Smith in the 1844 election, fighting on the Union side in the resulting American Wars of Religion.
Union victory and the death of slavery would see the expansion of the Leveller ethos beyond the Commonwealth as a massive influx of European radicals driven out of the continent in reaction to the failed 1848 revolutions and the spirit of the times during the Third Great Awakening would combine to see the flowering of new religious movements, political models and intentional communities throughout the United States. In the modern day, the influence of Salem's Lot is largely seen as a positive one, having provided a longstanding bastion of religious pluralism and political freedom that has undoubtedly steered its neighbors and the nation as a whole steadily between the twin perils of the reactionary retrenchment of the old aristocratic classes and the atheistic radicalism of the Nihilist International.
What do you all think? The initial idea popped into my head today as an AHC to create a more diverse and tolerant religious and political landscape in the early US, and try and puzzle through some of the resulting knock on effects. This challenge came along and it seemed to fit nicely so here it is! It's relatively simple all told, I started with the flag of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, used the blue field from the existing Maine flag, flipped the colors of the St. George's cross to represent New England, and added a red lion to represent the Fifth Monarchists, just not the incredibly complicated one the group used historically. They're widely regarded as extreme by 'Salem's Lot nowadays but their rhetoric about creating a pure and good society worthy of God's Kingdom has lingered in the state ever since even as the concept migrated from "ironclad Puritanism" to "Leveller-inspired liberalism".
To that end I also changed the Fifth Monarchist slogan from "...will rouse..." to "...has roused...", a change made following the Commonwealth's strong abolitionist stand leading up to the American Wars of Religion, an earlier but slightly longer Civil War/Mexican-American War hybrid based on President Smith's religion as well as his support for Texas annexation and proposals to end slavery that had so fragmented the American religious landscape between Northern and Southern branches of the major protestant denominations. Made up of the territory of OTL Maine and New Brunswick, Jerusalem's Lot is an important leftward influence in the United States, held up as an example by more idealistic liberals, religious dissenters and utopian socialists across the country even as the politicians of the Commonwealth have taken a hard line against the Nihilist school of Anarchism that has spread like a cancer out of Russia ever since the 1920s. Fun fact!- Texas has been governed under Fourierist principles since its annexation, having fought with the Union against Mexico and the Christian States of America during the AWR and Illinois remains the heartland of the LDS church instead of Utah.
*EDIT- Since the first one was too large here's a smaller version in case it gets grandfathered in:
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