Re: Rhean Flag (was: Conlang flag design)

Steg Belsky wrote:

>Cool flag!  What do the various parts of it symbolize?
   The big yellow thing in the middle is the Sun crest, the primary symbol
of official Rhean-ness. It's been around since the days of the old Rhean
pantheon, when "Rhe" the Sun was the chief deity. Most of Rhea is
(nominally) monotheistic now, but God ("Yad") is strongly associated with
the Sun in symbology.
   The four colours in the background represent four major geographic
regions. To the north is a desert, represented by red. There's a mountain
range and a lot of forest in the west, symbolised in green on the left of
the flag. On the south coast is an ocean (I'm still not sure which one), the
blue on the bottom. The east is flat and prairie-like, and the black
triangle was originally meant to represent soil and, by extension,
agriculture. But since the flag was officially adopted about a century and a
half ago, a new and more grim explanation for that black quarter has
appeared: Rhea has been in something of a cold-war stalemate with the Ishtol
Republic to the east for about sixty years, ever since a brief battle over
the Shelez province (it also has to do with the side that the Republic took
in the last anti-monarchist revolution). Some think of the black on the flag
as a reminder that the country is under the "shadow" of possible attack from
the east, or as a symbol of the deserted DMZ.

>While we're at it, here's the Rokbeigalmki flag:
>
>http://boroparkpyro.free.fr/stuff/rokbflag.jpg
Nice! Kind of has the look of an Olympic emblem. Kind of. I think it's the
colours.

>The five colors and shapes represent various things, including the Five
>Life Elements:
[snip]

Damn. That's a lot of symbolism... everything means at least two things!
Well done.
Compare with the Ishtol flag - http://suzsoiz.free.fr/irflag.jpg - which has
exactly zero layers of symbolism. I'll come up with some excuses later.

M