Sunday, March 21, 2010

The new flag of the Duchy of Indur

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps, the older units can keep the older flag with some mark to show their antecedents as more senior regiments?
    :)
    A

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  2. AH, there it is! (I really should've looked through all of the posst before submitting comments! ha!)
    Very nice flag!

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  3. The old flag has been given to the 1st Guard Hussars.

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  4. A nice flag indeed, soon so dear to the Indurian (?) heroes for sure.

    Now, if I may... as I annoyed other 'alternate' 18th C. rulers before...this pattern of 3 bands'does not 'look' typically 18th C., looks somehow too 'modern'. Such type of flag appeared with the French Revolution, and at first the 3 colors were arranged in a bewildering diversity of positions: the 'definitive' pattern stabilized during Napoleonic times.
    Maybe a white cross of St Andrew, with e.g. 'gold' upper & lower triangles and 'blood' left & right ones, would look more 'Lace Wars'?


    Most creators of Imagi-Nations design a 'national flag' for their country: of course, their brainchild needs a flag! Their army needs a standard to follow and die for, and it contributes greatly to the visual homogeneity and 'individuality' of the force. And their artistic creativity can express itself on the flag as well as on the uniforms.
    But actually, the concept of 'national flag' was rather alien to the 18th C., at least on land: it appeared with 'people's nations', with the American and French Revolutions. Previously, ruling lines, not countries, had their banners, the feudal nobles's retinues, later regiments, had their own colours. Of course, for 'Identifying Friend from Foe' purposes -even after the introduction of uniforms, since they were variegated within an army, and more often than not occured to be rather similar in opposite forces- from Late Renaissance to ECW / TYW times, flags displayed a 'national' or 'party' device (English red cross, French lys, Scot white X on blue...) but it was generally restricted to the upper corner of the flag close to the flagpole -the part almost always visible, even if the wind unfolded the flag only a little.

    'National flags' appeared *at sea* as national identification 'jacks' -common to merchantships and warships- allowing to quickly know who was neutral and who was a potential prey (or predator). It's not coincidental that these navy jacks began to be used on land as 'national flags' by countries with a strong maritime tradition. It began probably with Great-Britain's 'Union Jack' after the Act of Union -maybe as a permanent reminder of this very novelty, the union of the two rival kingdoms?

    Without a 'national flag', for field identification and to give the army a sense of 'identity', an esprit de corps, flags of a given country shared a given pattern structured around a permanent heraldic device: e.g. for infantry, the French white cross, Spanish crossed red staffs, Prussian black eagle on was to become the 'iron cross'... but more often than not (at least for the 'regimental' flags if not for the Colonel / King's / Leib colour) the main field was not uniform across the whole army but of a 'regimental' color.
    That they were not (even the -generally white- Colonel / King's / Leib colour) a form of 'national' flag is illustrated by the fact that cavalry standards followed a pattern of their own -again, homogeneous within an army, but (probably because they were far smaller) different from that of the infantry.



    Well, I suppose it's not uncommon among the elderlies to flaunt at lenght their knowledge in front of a defenseless young audience?

    Cheers,
    Jean-Louis

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