What are the smaller flags underneath the 4 main City States in the Eorzean map?

[myahele]

If you look into the Eorzean map you'll see in the bottom corner you'll see Gridania, Limsa, Ul'dah and Ishgard's insignia, but underneath those 4 you'll see smaller insignias.

I always assumed they were the insignias for the previous city-states that have fallen: Sil'hih, Ala Mhigo, Gelmorra, Belah'dia, and maybe even some of the beast tribe territories.

But even so, there's simply too many to account for the fallen city-states.

[Enkidoh]

You know, 1.0 players asked the very same question years ago, and alas... no answer was ever forthcoming. The general belief at the time was that they were the crests of hamlets in Eorzea along with the crests for the Sharalyan Colony and Ala Mhigo... but if they were, they have been retconned, as the flags for both of the later have been revealed naturally in ARR and HW (Ala Mhigo's flag is a blue griffin holding a sword on a purple background, while Sharalyan's seems to be... a light blue spiral shell), and neither match the logos on that flag. And none of the hamlets seem to identify themselves as anything other than being a part of their nearest citystate.

So, unless Ferne and the rest of the writing/lore/localization teams know something that we don't, I'm just going to chalk it up to being just an embellishment by the artist who made that beautiful map and has little to no actual lore connection sadly.

[Magis]

If you look into the Eorzean map you'll see in the bottom corner you'll see Gridania, Limsa, Ul'dah and Ishgard's insignia, but underneath those 4 you'll see smaller insignias.

I always assumed they were the insignias for the previous city-states that have fallen: Sil'hih, Ala Mhigo, Gelmorra, Belah'dia, and maybe even some of the beast tribe territories.

But even so, there's simply too many to account for the fallen city-states.

You took like the smallest picture you could find of the map.

[Straii]

I'm not sure myself what they may be. After studying the map, I found one of the symbols at the bottom under three ships appearing to be sailing away from Vylbrand. The text was way too small for me to figure out what it says, but figuring it out could perhaps provide context to at least what some of the flags might represent.



I also discovered a red flag symbol used twice on the map, one off the south-western coast of Thanalan and the other off the southern coast of Sharlayan. However the symbol used is not represented in the legend in the bottom left of the world map.

[Enkidoh]

Sadly though, as Moose and the other Loremasters sadly concluded in this thread back on the old 1.0 forum, it appears the very small writing is actually just gibberish designed specifically not to be legible to the viewer - additionally the logo of the 'three ships' near Limsa Lominsa, have what appears to be an old 1.0 'linkshell crest' icon, which makes even less sense.

However, those second images you posted Straii - those red icons I think are meant to show port towns, as the lower one is more or less in the same area as Vesper Bay - so what the second one is on Dravania's west coast is anyone's guess.