I freaking love flags! I love using a national symbol to designate a certain region/group of people who share the same governmental state! I love seeing these flags side by side on war boards or on Olympic stages.
But goddamn do some flags suck.
So, what I’m doing, is a series of articles where I first rate a flags and possibly come with objectively better replacements. Now for me, I always like maps with a simple symbol and color scheme that should be able to translate what nation it belongs to in a self-explanatory fashion. You’ll see what I mean, I don’t want to use any examples here. I will say, the symbols should be easy enough for a child of that country to draw or at least recognize. And the color scheme, well I wanna stray away from the cliché “red means blood” thing. In fact, I don’t want my flag colors to have meanings. Just if the country holds that aura. I also like that some countries that are similar may hold a theme between their flags. These themes include;
- Catholic, Nordic, Orthodox, or Coptic crosses for countries of that religion.
- The use of green or the crescent moon for Muslim countries.
- Socialists/Communists can have their hammer and sickle or at least a red and yellow color scheme.
Also I’ll try to make each as unique as possible. I mean it’s only a little over 200 flags, can’t be that hard. So those are my rules for this.
Now this is great! Complicated symbol but great. While Afghanistan fell to Taliban just a couple of months ago, there was once a decent flag representing the government of Kabul. The color scheme is inspired by the German tricolor (about a century ago) but as you can see, there is green. The symbol is a mosque within a wreath of wheat. No improvements to be had, 9/10.
This is hands down one of the most badass flags in contemporary times. Albanians go hard sometimes but it is not original. The symbol is a double-headed eagle which I will refer to as the Reichsadler (German for ‘Imperial Bird’). It is not a German symbol but one hailing from the ancient Hittite Kingdom which lay in Anatolia. And it existed even before then in carvings and probably in folklore. After the Bronze Age Collapse, the symbol wasn’t revived until Medieval Byzantium times. It has always been associated with Empire-ship and since then it was used by both Christian and Islamic countries. Which is easy to remember as the European-West Asian-North African region viewed birds as royalty since they could fly. So imagine a bird with two heads. The Albanians adopted the flag during John Hunyadi’s campaigns against the Ottoman Turks. Despite never becoming a powerful empire, the crimson background has allowed Albania’s sadler to remain iconic even though the Holy Roman Empire and Russian Empire used the bird as well. No, I am not touching this.
Hmmmmmmmm. Well, there were two flags that were pretty good so at least my point isn’t mute anymore. Algiers was a city that became more important in the late Medieval and early Modern periods as piracy spurred from there. It was a city of Muslim Berbers who were basically hired by the Ottoman Empire to pirate the Christen kingdoms to the north of them. During this time, pirates (or corsairs) used crescents of red, black, green, and white. And before them was the country of Tlemcen that used a blue crescent. But there is no blue on this freaking flag. So I think the background should be green and blue. The moon can still be red but the star could be white.
Now there are some countries I will simply skip. Like Andorra, right now. I have no reason other than their ten civilians will do nothing about it.
Yo I did not come into this thinking some flags would go so hard. Angola, for those who don’t know, was a Portuguese colony in southeast Africa bordered by Congo. In the life time of Robert Downey Jr, the country successfully rebelled against Portugal (who had a deep lust for the colony they’ve held onto for 400~ years) and then held a civil war for about 27 years. It only ended just a month before the release of Sam Rami’s first Spider-Man. The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola won this war so this new flag took inspiration from them. Even if it is not completely socialist anymore, if can keep the gear and machete.
It does not go hard but only because it feels so chill. Like the sun doesn’t have shades or a big smile. It’s just content. Now Argentina’s name is derived from the Latin “argentum” for silver due to the abundance of silver that Spain collected from the colony. But it may be hard to replace the blue with silver. The sun is inspired by Inti, the Incan god of solar bodies, who is also referenced in other countries of the Andes Mountains. So it’s nice to see that there is a ‘sunset country’.
Okay here we go. This is exactly the type of flag that pushed me into making this. The tricolors! Boring ass…there is a variant flag for Armenia with a crest. I like that one despite how complicated it is. Now over the last 2000 years, Armenians had to deal with ambitious neighbors, namely the Roman and Persian Empires. And then much later on, the Russian Empire. In their early history, different dynasties used different animals ranging from birds to lions. Under the Arsacid Dynasty, the nation adopted Christianity (301 AD) being the first to officially do so. And so I imagine a different tricolor; red for Persis on the right, purple for Rome on the left, and gold for Moscow in the middle. And then a white cross completely throughout the background as they have over come the three of them. Not many countries even use purple either so it wouldn’t even be confused without the cross.
Yes Britain, we know you owned this county, you don’t need to have your stain all over it. And of course, Australia is a pleased member of the Commonwealth but damn. ‘Australia’ is a term used since ancient times that was to be used to denote any southern land that may be found in the future (outside of the Mediterrean) and eventually the British landed on it. Funny thing about the Australia’s experience with the Brits; they stocked the island with criminals and neerdowells, were never strict on how they colonized, and Australia officially declared to rely more on USA than UK during WW2. Before we uh joined. So anyways, at least for stuff outside of the Commonwealth, I don’t wanna see the Union Jack. The constellation on the right side is the Southern Cross. To be honest, not the most iconic symbol but it will make due. And without that star in the bottom left of course.
Not a bad color scheme but no fucking symbol. When you see Poland later, you see why I would specify for such a thing. There is a variant of the Austrian flag with a black eagle. This is due to the county dominating the Holy Roman Empire since at least 1519. The HRE of course used the Reichsadler and Austria as well used it at the time. Then, during the Austrian Empire days, the country used a simple black and yellow flag. Before the current day, the Hapsburgs Dynasty of Austria’s motto was “let other’s wage war, Austria will wage love”. The Austrians would continue to spill much Franco and Turko blood anyways. So with the contemporary flag, I like the white Danube crossing through the red seas of blood. But in the middle of that, there should be a minimalist black eagle. It should fit within the white representing Vienna.
Another Caucasian country but made up of Islamic Turks with a not so bad flag. The blue is supposed to representing their Turkic ancestry as the Turks hail from the Eurasian Steppe. This long flat ground has usually good enough weather for clear blue skies so Turkic/Mongolic countries have used blue as much as Arabic have used green. It’s a nice sky blue not like the dark sea blue Europeans use. I would maybe only remove the red and enlarge the crescent and star.
tdwriter 