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Annapolis, Maryland (U.S.)

Anne Arundel County

image by Rick Wyatt, 15 August 2000

Description of the flag

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Description of the Flag

The white background of the flag was the militia flag selected by Sir Francis Nicholson, the royal governor responsible for Annapolis becoming the capital. The crown on the flag is a tribute to Queen Anne who chartered her colonial namesake as a city in 1708. The two flowers represent two British royal families. The rose was the symbol of the Tudor family, the dynasty that preceded Queen Anne's family, the Stuarts. The thistle, a flower native to Scotland, represents the Stuarts, who are Scottish.
Joe McMillan, 16 August 2000

There are actually a number of variations of the Tudor rose, including that shown on the Annapolis flag (which is really a small white rose centered on a larger red rose, not just the five dots that show up on the image above) as well as a version that has each of the five petals divided into red and white halves by a line radiating from the center.
Joe McMillan, 7 January 2002

The rose depicted on the arms of Annapolis appears to be red with a white dot on each petal. The actual Tudor Rose has red and white petals interleaved, representing the Houses of Lancaster (red rose) and York (white rose). These were the two claimants to the English throne, both branches of the Plantagenet family. Henry Tudor, the founder of the dynasty which bears his name and who ruled England as Henry VII (and who was himself Welsh!), was the last claimant of the Lancastrian line. He married Elizabeth of York, the last of that branch of the family, and Henry adopted the Tudor rose with its interleaved petals as the badge of his new dynasty in order to demonstrate the new unity of England. The Lancastrians and the Yorkists had fought a bitter civil war in England during much of the 14th and 15th Centuries, known as the Wars of the Roses because of their respective badges.
Ron Lahav, 6 January 2002