World-Building and Reading

 I haven't done much work this week, mostly because I discovered a love for alternate history novels and finished reading Days of Infamy by Harry Turtledove and began the sequel End of the Beginning. I did, however, get a few things done regarding the world-building that I've been doing on this project. Last time I posted about the project, I mentioned that I made flags and said that I might share them. This is the time.

Now, much like flags and coats of arms in our world, the colors and symbols on the flags in this world have meanings. In most cases, the meanings are the same as they are in the real world. There are a few symbols on the flags that I couldn't find any meaning for so I had to make one up, and those I'll indicate as we come to them. 

For information about symbols seen on coats of arms, I used this website and for flag color information, I went here. 

The first flag I'll be sharing is also the coat of arms for the Arnuanna family, which if you've been following the history lessons, you'll remember are the royal family of Preycia. 

The purple stands for nobility, sovereignty, and justice while the white (which is also considered silver in coat of arms) stands for sincerity, purity, peace, and harmony. The blue seen on the goat represents determination, liberation, alertness, good fortune, strength, and loyalty. The goat itself stands for practical wisdom, victory through diplomacy rather than force, working hard to achieve high honors, and a belief of having god on their side while the swan shows perfection, beauty, grace, a lover of poetry and harmony, and a learned person. 

As you can tell, all of that stands for everything the Preycia royal family represents: education, diplomacy, the belief that they are destined to rule by gods-given right. It is interesting in that while Preycia isn't the only monarchy, they are the only country to have the color purple in their flag and for their flag to be the coat of arms of their royal family. 

I'll only discuss one more flag in this post and that is the flag of the Vesmain Empire. 

The red stands for bloodshed, military prowess, war, power, and domination while the black stands for determination and defeat of enemies. The white, as was stated before, stands for sincerity, purity, peace, and harmony, which, given what we know about the Vesmain Empire seems completely wrong and inaccurate. Except, remember, their religion is Order of the White Wolf. In this case, the color is chosen more to represent their deity than for what it means. The wolf itself stands for loyalty, ferociousness, mercilessness, and a deadly enemy to have as well as representing their deity. 

As with the Preycia flag, this flag stands for everything the Vesmain Empire represents. Vesmain allows the conquered nations to continue flying their flags, though flags that contain animals will have to remove them as animals--barring the white wolf seen in their flag--are forbidden from being represented as that would take worship from their deity. The conquered nation of Zethea has yet to remove the crane from their flag and, so far, Vesmain hasn't pressed the issue.