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| Heraldry; Comments welcome! | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 21 2011, 04:57 PM (487 Views) | |
| Yasutomi | Jul 21 2011, 04:57 PM Post #1 |
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My little tale about Bob the Transxokyyrian encouraged me to take a fresh look at my current spot. If the geography doesn't make sense for a conventional nation-state, could it have formed in another way? What if it was a conglomeration of different territories and estates, united essentially by accident? This got me thinking about the various pre-WW1 German principalities, with their wonderful coats of arms displaying the various territorial claims of their rulers, and after an exchange of PMs with Xos, I drew up the following: ![]() Here we have the lesser arms of the Principality of Xosaia-Vesturmork, a small, independent country ruled by a junior branch of the Xosaian imperial family. These arms would be blazoned as follows: Quarterly, 1 Per Fess fir-tree topped Argent and Sable, 2 Azure a Pile issuant from sinister Argent, 3 Argent a Chief dancetty Azure and a Plain Point Vert, 4 Sable a Bend dancetty Argent, overall an inescutcheon Azure a Falcon Argent and in sinister chief a Crescent Moon of the same all within a Bordure Or for difference. That probably won't mean a great deal to you unless you are a fan of heraldry, like me! Basically, the little shield in the centre (known as an inescutcheon) contains the arms of the ruling family- in this case a variation on the arms of Xosaia. Before I go any further, I should state that as I couldn't find any conventional arms for Xosaia, just for the time being I had to make them up myself! I chose a silver falcon on a blue background, with a crescent moon in the upper left corner, to represent a Kuuhaukka or Xosaian Moon Falcon. The arms here have been modified with a gold border to show that this is a junior line of the family. The four quarters on the main shield represent the four main territories ruled by the family. The Top-right quarter represents Vesturmork, whose name means 'western forest or border', so it is divided horizontally with a special line of partition in the form of stylised fir-trees (a recent invention in Finnish heraldry). The top-left quarter is for Vestkapp, or 'west cape' and is a stylised representation of the geography of that region, with a silver 'pile' or triangle emerging from the left-hand edge on a blue background. The bottom-right quarter is for Transxokyyria, and again contains a stylised depiction of the local geography, in this case green fields with the snow-covered mountains of the Xokyyr range behind. Finally, the bottom-left quarter is for Stromsdal, Bob's home, and, appropriately enough for a place whose name means 'valley of the stream', uses a jagged bend to suggest a raging mountain torrent. It goes without saying that this is all just an outline at this stage- I would need to check a few things with Xos, in particular. However I thought I would post it and see what you guys think. Also, I would be interested to know if any of your nations have coats of arms, and if so, why you chose them.
Edited by Yasutomi, Jul 21 2011, 05:00 PM.
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| Demoness | Jul 21 2011, 05:43 PM Post #2 |
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Amoratae Dea Augusta
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I love heraldry, even if I don't understand the intricacies (and annoyingly, it only seems to be for Europe). I think you did a fine job. I'll probably edit this post later to add my crests, though they certainly aren't as fancy as yours. |
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| Xosaia | Jul 21 2011, 06:21 PM Post #3 |
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Scientific Research State
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Love it. One of the points I was trying to make earlier was that, although in ic chronology this type of thing would have come after Xosaia had their own, irl I'll probably wait for you to do most of the historic-cultural stuff and then reverse-engineer it into my own history. |
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| Florinthus | Jul 21 2011, 08:37 PM Post #4 |
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Resident Comic Relief
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Good job turning nothing into something! I like the interesting history it makes for. |
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| Stefannica | Jul 22 2011, 03:49 PM Post #5 |
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International Relations Adviser
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Congrats! I hope I could also come-up with my own, given that Stefannica also maintains the peerage, heraldry is somewhat a necessity then |
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| Yasutomi | Jul 22 2011, 04:07 PM Post #6 |
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Thanks for the positive comments, everyone!
Oh, you would be surprised! European heraldry has proven surprisingly adaptive to local conditions in many parts of the world. For example, many African states incorporate native symbols in their heraldry and many non-European monarchies in the Middle East and Asia have coats-of-arms, albeit in the local style. Japan of course has its own system of heraldry. So heraldry is really for everyone!
I'm glad you approve, Xos. In terms of historical and cultural matters, for me the key is collaboration: I'm happy to suggest ideas which you can then retroactively apply to Xosaia (like the coat or arms, for example), but I'll continue to check with you first before introducing anything in my country that is likely to directly affect yours. I know you're busy with committee work at the moment, but at some point (probably when I'm back from holiday) I'd like to discuss the situation in greater depth (if possible with Festus and Lyv as well).
This is one reason why I like to design my own heraldry, wherever possible. In NS, people often take a RL coat-of-arms to represent their nation and whilst I appreciate that not everyone has the time or interest to create their own heraldry, I personally am not a fan of this. For one thing, in some countries you can actually be prosecuted for the unauthorised use of arms you are not entitled to, but even if this is unlikely to happen in practice, it's still a wasted opportunity to reveal something about your nation. The beauty of heraldry is that it does tell a story. A well-designed shield will frequently reveal details about a place or person and may even provide clues to their names! This doesn't mean that you shouldn't take inspiration from existing coats of arms. For example, the design I came up with for Xosaia- a silver falcon and crescent moon on a blue field- is based on the 1804 arms of Iceland. If anyone would like help designing arms for their country, I'm happy to lend a hand. I should warn you though that I'm better at designing arms than drawing them...so I'm limited to symbols I can find online. ![]() |
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| Florinthus | Jul 22 2011, 04:23 PM Post #7 |
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Resident Comic Relief
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Unfortunately Florinthus is a little too innovative to allow something like that. Our nation is too new and doesn't have the existing nobles to warrant a coat of arms, but I do admire them a lot. Mostly it's the rich people who want to look fancy who have coats of arms in Florinthus. |
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| DeLux | Jul 22 2011, 05:43 PM Post #8 |
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The Dominion of Lux de Bestias
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Hmm, I wonder if I could warp the use of heraldry to fit the 24 Noble Tribes in Lux? Each tribe already has their own symbol. Of course than means designing 24 coat-of-arms O.o |
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| Yasutomi | Jul 22 2011, 09:09 PM Post #9 |
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Indeed! Are you going to have a system of different coronets of rank for each grade in your peerage? because that's always fun. ![]()
How is that warping the use of heraldry? Of course you can! In fact, Polish heraldry was organised around the extended noble clan rather than the individual family, and made heavy use of geometric symbols that evolved from traditional runes. |
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| Demoness | Jul 23 2011, 01:40 AM Post #10 |
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Amoratae Dea Augusta
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I see. The primary time I come into contact with heraldry is at renaissance festivals, so it's quite obvious it would be European-based. However, it also seems to be primarily English/French-based as well with the possibility of German or Ireland. I have a great difficulty finding mine, though it is of uncertain heritage, and I seem to see no Italian or other European coat-of-arms. I was definitely not aware of heraldry in other parts of the world, unless you are speaking of something I'm unaware is classified as heraldry. Now for the banners. The colors were chosen for the "definitions" stated below unless otherwise indicated: Black: power, elegance, formality, and mystery. Blue: trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, constitution, tranquility, power, integrity, and seriousness. Brown: stability and the positive qualities of both sexes. Gold: prestige, illumination, wisdom, understanding, and wealth. Green: growth, harmony, and fertility. Grey: formality, mystery, willpower, and determination. Orange: enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. Purple: honor, power, nobility, ambition, wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, seriousness, and magic. Red: vigor, willpower, leadership, courage, wrath, energy, strength, power, determination, passion, and love. Silver: prestige, wealth, control, willpower, determination, and ambition. White: purity, goodness, innocence, and perfection. ![]() This is the old banner for the Imperial Family, though sometime in the modern era it was switched to what became the national flag. Purple (royalty) is representative of Daemonesu-sumae, who fits the role as the background as she more or less supports Daemonesu-kae. Kae is represented both by red (blood) and the silver dragon; the dragon is fairly self-explanatory, as this is the kind of dragon I mean when I refer to them, but the direction it's facing has no real purpose. The red is a sun because even though Kae is the earth, the sun is also representative of all life. However, the true reasoning was working backward from the current national flag and trying to find its origins. ![]() Nedia's is represented by the cheetah (chitael) primarily because of its ambition to become the new Imperial Family through bloodline, though working backwards it was given because chitaels are loyal and so were the Nedia characters (Xel, Ariana, etc). Green was added simply for contrast in this particular design and the Clan's colors are purple and white. ![]() Hayashibara selected the wolf as its new symbol likely because of the Clan's predatory nature, but official reasoning was that it represented loyalty to the Crown (hunting down the traitorous Ruadhans), intelligence, and vigilance. I chose this design more or less to be visually striking and be somewhat possible as a banner on a battlefield, though looking at it now makes me think of the Boy Scouts... ![]() Though foxes represent cunning and adaptability, both traits that served Ruadha well in surviving their war with Nedia-Hayashibara, the real reason they chose the fox was to honor the supposed marriage of one of their founders to the goddess Vultania, who is represented by a black fox. For this reason the fox is black, but the Clan's colors are red and gold. Or maybe I just really like red and black. I chose a what was described as a "celtic" fox simply because Ruadha is supposed to be a Celtic clan. ![]() Welcome to my technicolor nightmare! The cross means nothing; it's for flavor, but at least everything is a shade of blue and gold. Okay, that's more orange than gold, but that's what it's meant to be. >.> The tiger faces the other way simply because all the other banners had the animals face the other direction and I hope this doesn't mean something terrible in heraldry. In any case, the tiger is long extinct in Demoness but represented strength, courage, and loyalty, though in this case it was the ability to survive in the desert rather than strength of arms or courage in battle. However, their fierce and wild nature seems to match the majority of Morikubi. ![]() The Surudhannor are represented by asps. OOCly, it's because they're sons of bitches; ICly, asps are actually rather ritualistic in their behavior, like the Surudhannors, as well as cunning, dangerous, and slow but aggressive. It rather fits the characterization of the Clan quite well. Black means nothing, but it makes the snakes look interesting, and I chose it primarily to be visually interesting rather than what I could say, which is that the snakes form a Celtic knot - again a tie to the Clan's origins. ![]() Falcons were actually chosen for Katsuragi because of falconry in which a bird of prey is used to take down quarry; it's similar to what Katsuragi's purpose was as a House of Hayashibara: it was its specialized army and dispatched to cut off forces from the main body. ICly, the metaphor is still appropriate but is justified by its status as a watchdog in some societies. However, Katsuragi has shifted most of its focus into diplomatic channels rather than military ones, so it is less appropriate than it was in the past. And if you actually read the whole rambling post, I congratulate you! |
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