Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

Before a soldier learns how to carry, guard, troop, or lay up a Colour, that soldier must understand what a Colour is, because every movement of the hand and every rule of the parade ground is only the working-out of an idea. A Colour is not a fine flag. It is a consecrated emblem that gathers a unit's identity, its honour, and its loyalty to the Crown into a single object made of cloth, and once a soldier grasps that, the reverence owed it follows of its own accord. This lesson is the foundation on which the rest of the course is built.

The Drill and Ceremonial course (RMT 130) introduced the Colours and set the great distinction between Colours and flags. This course takes that up and goes deeper. Here you will learn what truly makes a Colour a Colour, the firm difference between the consecrated Colours and ordinary flags, the act of consecration that sets a Colour apart and why it can happen only once, the stand of Colours and what each of the two embodies, the battle honours a Colour may bear and the honesty by which they are earned and never invented, and the cypher, Crown, and devices a Colour carries, all granted by the Institute of Heraldry. The detail of handling and parade belongs to Lessons 02 and 03; the meaning belongs here, and it comes first because it is what the handling serves.

By the end you will be able to explain what the Colours are and what they embody, draw the firm distinction between a consecrated Colour and an ordinary flag and say why it matters, describe the act of consecration and why it makes a Colour sacred and is never repeated, set out the stand of Colours and what each Colour represents, explain how battle honours are earned and why the Army records the mechanism but invents no honour, and name the cypher, Crown, and devices a Colour bears and the authority that grants them.

Key Terms

Colour: a consecrated ceremonial flag that embodies a unit, its identity, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown; carried on a pike, saluted as the unit itself, and dipped only to the Sovereign. Never a synonym for the National Flag.
Consecration: the single religious ceremony in which a Colour is dedicated and set apart, after which it is sacred to the unit and is never consecrated again.
Stand of Colours: the two Colours an entitled unit carries together, the Sovereign's Colour and the Regimental Colour.
Sovereign's Colour: the senior, royal Colour, based on the National Flag and bearing the Sovereign's cypher and crown, representing the Crown, the State, and the Army's loyalty to the Sovereign; always in the position of honour on the right.
Regimental Colour: the Colour representing the unit's own identity, history, and esprit de corps, bearing its badge, its motto, and any battle honours it has earned.
Battle honour: the name of a battle or campaign a unit is officially permitted to bear, emblazoned on its Regimental Colour, awarded by the Crown for real operations and never invented.
Sovereign's cypher: the reigning Sovereign's initial and regnal style intertwined and ensigned with the crown, marking devices and property as the Sovereign's.
Institute of Heraldry: the Organ of State that grants and regulates every armorial device, badge, Colour, ensign, and flag of the Army.

What the Colours are

Understand this first, because everything else rests upon it. A Colour is not a flag that happens to be richer, larger, or more ornate than the rest. It is a consecrated emblem that embodies the unit: the unit's honour, its spirit, its identity, and its loyalty to the Crown gathered into a single object and made visible. When a unit looks upon its Colour it does not see a decorated piece of silk; it sees itself, its own honour and history, and the bond that ties it to the Sovereign it serves. A soldier who holds that will arrive at the right bearing toward the Colours without being told; a soldier who misses it will keep the forms and never know why they matter.

Three ideas together make a Colour what it is, and a soldier should be able to name all three. First, a Colour is consecrated, set apart in a religious ceremony from all ordinary cloth, so that it is sacred to the unit and not merely owned by it. Second, it embodies the unit and all who have served under it, so that to honour the Colour is to honour every soldier who has marched behind it, and to fail the Colour is to fail them. Third, it stands for the unit's loyalty to the Crown, the very loyalty a soldier's oath expresses, made tangible in an object the whole unit can see and salute. A flag identifies; the Colour embodies. That single contrast is the hinge of the lesson.

From this one truth every convention follows by plain logic, and it is worth seeing the logic now so that the rules never seem arbitrary. Because the Colour embodies the unit, it is saluted as the unit itself, and the compliment paid to it is paid not to cloth but to the unit, its service, and its honour. Because it is consecrated, it is dipped only to the Sovereign, for it would not lower the unit's honour to any lesser thing. Because it embodies those who served under it, it is never allowed to touch the ground or to fall, and at the end of its life it is laid up to fade with dignity rather than thrown away. None of these rules is invented for its own sake; each is the necessary consequence of what the Colour is. The course teaches the meaning before the movement for exactly this reason: the reverence is not in the drill, it is in knowing what the drill is paid to.

The Colours and the flags: the distinction that must hold

Two great classes of cloth emblem are commonly confused, and they must never be, for the confusion is the surest sign of not understanding either. Colours are consecrated. They are the ceremonial emblems that embody a unit, blessed in a religious ceremony, carried on a pike, and lowered, or dipped, in salute to the Sovereign and to no one else. Flags, which include the National Flag of Kaharagia and the Army Ensign, are pieces of bunting flown for identification. They are not consecrated, they are not carried as a stand, and they are never dipped in salute. The word "Colours" is therefore never a loose synonym for the National Flag, and a soldier who calls the National Flag "the Colours", or speaks of dipping a flag, has shown that they do not understand the things they handle. This care over words is not pedantry. The distinction marks the difference between a consecrated emblem of the Army's loyalty and a piece of bunting, and the reverence a soldier owes follows entirely from getting it right.

The distinction reaches furthest, and is most often got wrong, in the matter of mourning, so fix it now and hold it for the rest of your service. Flags are flown, and in mourning they are half-masted: the National Flag and the Army Ensign are hoisted to the peak and then lowered to the half-mast position as the Principality's public sign of grief, on the order of the Royal Court. The Colours are not flown at all, and they are never half-masted, because they are not flown to begin with; they are carried on a pike. When the Colours take part in mourning, at a military funeral or a day of mourning, they are draped with a band of black crepe or cased, never half-masted, for a thing that is carried cannot be half-masted, and a consecrated emblem is not treated as bunting. To half-mast a Colour, or to speak of doing so, is to have understood nothing of what a Colour is. The fault is common precisely because the words sound near to one another; the soldier of this course does not make it.

Set the two side by side in a single picture and the difference is plain. A Colour is consecrated, embodies the unit, is carried on a pike, is saluted as the unit itself, is dipped only to the Sovereign, is draped or cased in mourning, and at the end of its life is laid up to fade with dignity. A flag is none of these: it is hoisted and lowered as daily routine, used for identification, honoured at colours but never dipped, half-masted in mourning, and replaced when worn out.

   A COLOUR  (consecrated)                 A FLAG / ENSIGN  (bunting)

    +===========================+          +---------------------------+
    |  *  fringed, on a PIKE  *  |          |                           |
    |   +---------------------+  |          |   National Flag or        |
    |   |   Crown             |  |          |   Army Ensign:            |
    |   |   Sovereign's cypher|  |          |   identification only     |
    |   |   regimental badge  |  |          |                           |
    |   |   motto on a scroll |  |          |   FLOWN on a halyard      |
    |   |  .................  |  |          |   hoisted briskly,        |
    |   |  : honour scroll  : |  |          |   lowered with ceremony,  |
    |   |  :  EMPTY, waiting : |  |          |   HALF-MASTED in mourning |
    |   |  :  to be earned  : |  |          |                           |
    |   |  .................  |  |          +---------------------------+
    |   +---------------------+  |
    +===========================+          NOT consecrated
                                           CARRIED?  no, FLOWN
    CONSECRATED once                       NEVER dipped
    EMBODIES the unit                      HALF-MASTED, never draped
    SALUTED as the unit
    DIPPED only to the Sovereign
    DRAPED or CASED in mourning
    (never half-masted)
    LAID UP to fade with dignity

Figure 1. A Colour distinguished from a flag. The Colour is a consecrated emblem carried on a pike, bearing the Crown, the Sovereign's cypher, the badge, the motto, and an honour scroll that on the Army's Colours is still empty; it is dipped only to the Sovereign and draped or cased in mourning. The flag is bunting flown on a halyard for identification, never consecrated, never dipped, and half-masted in mourning. The figure shows the distinction in principle; the exact armorial design of any Colour is settled by the Institute of Heraldry.

Consecration: what sets a Colour apart

A Colour does not become a consecrated emblem by being made, however fine the silk, nor by being costly, nor by being old. It becomes one by consecration, the single religious ceremony in which it is dedicated and set apart. This is the hinge of the whole subject, because consecration is what turns rich cloth into a sacred thing. Until a Colour is consecrated it is only new bunting, beautiful perhaps, but bunting; once consecrated it embodies the unit and is treated as sacred to it. Nothing in the cloth changes, but the cloth is dedicated, and the dedication is everything.

Consecration happens upon the presentation of new Colours, ordinarily in a ceremony built upon the review parade. The unit is drawn up; the new Colours are uncased and laid upon a base, commonly a pile of drums dressed for the purpose, so that the Colours rest upon the instruments of the Army itself; a chaplain conducts the act of dedication; prayers are offered, dedicating the Colours to God and to the unit's service of the Crown; and the Colours are then presented to the unit and received by the officers who will carry them, after which the unit may troop and march past with its new Colours for the first time. The full choreography of that parade is rehearsed and certified in person and is not the business of this lesson. What the soldier must understand here is the meaning of the act: that it dedicates the Colour, sets it apart from all ordinary cloth, and makes it sacred to the unit, and that this is precisely why a consecrated Colour is reverenced and a mere flag is not.

Because consecration is the source of the Colour's sanctity, two consequences follow, and both are exact. First, consecration happens once in a Colour's service life and is never repeated. When ceremony is wanted in later years the Colour is not consecrated again but trooped, paraded before the unit so that every soldier knows it by sight, a matter Lesson 03 takes up in full. Second, the sanctity fixed at consecration is not disturbed afterwards, whatever changes around it. When the Crown is renewed on a demise and accession, or when devices change, a Colour already consecrated is not altered and not re-blessed; it is carried to the end of its natural life as it is, and only its eventual replacement will bear the new style. This is why a unit treasures the very threads of an old Colour: they were made sacred once, and nothing since has unmade them. A Colour is not refreshed, re-dedicated, or modernised; it is consecrated once and then honoured to the last fold.

The stand of Colours: what each embodies

A unit entitled to Colours carries a stand of Colours, two Colours together, and the soldier must know both and never confuse the one with the other. The first is the Sovereign's Colour, the senior, royal Colour. It represents the Crown, the State, and the Army's loyalty to the Sovereign. It is based upon the National Flag and bears the unit's title together with the Sovereign's cypher and the crown, and within the stand it always takes the position of honour, on the right of the Colour party, which is the spectators' left. Where British and Commonwealth practice styles this Colour the Queen's or King's Colour, in the Principality it is the Sovereign's, or the Prince's, Colour, for the Sovereign of Kaharagia is H.R.H. The Prince, the Supreme Commander of the Army. The second is the Regimental Colour, which represents the unit's own identity, its history, and its esprit de corps, and bears the regimental badge, the motto, and any battle honours the unit has earned.

Between them the two Colours embody the things an army holds dearest, and there is a division of meaning worth holding firmly in the mind. The Sovereign's Colour looks upward and outward, to the Crown and the State the unit serves; it is the unit's loyalty made visible. The Regimental Colour looks inward and backward, to the unit's own character and to what it has done; it is the unit's identity made visible. The stand carries both at once, the loyalty and the identity, which is why a unit parades the two together and not either alone. To carry only the Sovereign's Colour would be to show loyalty without identity; to carry only the Regimental Colour, identity without loyalty; the unit is both, and so it carries both.

        THE STAND OF COLOURS

   SOVEREIGN'S COLOUR            REGIMENTAL COLOUR
   (senior, right of the         (the unit's own,
    line, position of honour)     left of the Sovereign's)

   based on the NATIONAL FLAG    the unit's distinctive field
   bears the CROWN               bears the BADGE
   bears the SOVEREIGN'S CYPHER  bears the MOTTO
   the unit's title              the unit's title
                                 the BATTLE HONOURS earned
                                 (on the Army's Colours: EMPTY)

   looks UPWARD and OUTWARD      looks INWARD and BACKWARD
   -> the CROWN and the STATE    -> the unit's IDENTITY
   -> LOYALTY made visible       -> HISTORY made visible

        \                               /
         \                             /
          carried TOGETHER as one stand
          loyalty AND identity, never one alone

Figure 2. The stand of Colours and what each embodies. The Sovereign's Colour, senior and in the position of honour, carries the unit's loyalty to the Crown; the Regimental Colour carries the unit's own identity and history. A unit parades the two together because it is both at once. The exact armorial design of each is granted by the Institute of Heraldry.

Battle honours: earned, never invented

The Regimental Colour may bear battle honours, and this is the part of the subject that calls for particular honesty, which the course keeps exactly. A battle honour is the name of a battle or campaign that a unit is officially permitted to bear, emblazoned upon its Regimental Colour to record its operational history. Battle honours are awarded by the Crown against settled criteria, and only a selected number are emblazoned, so that the Colour is not a crowded list but a chosen record of the unit's hardest and most honoured service. They commemorate real engagements, and the cardinal rule, from which the course will not move, is that they are earned, not designed. A battle honour is a fact about what a unit has done, not a decoration a unit may choose for itself, and it is granted, like every device the Colour bears, under proper authority and never assumed.

The Royal Kaharagian Army is young, founded in 2010, and it has not fought the battles that would earn such honours; nor, being a small, lightly armed, humanitarian home-defence force, does it seek them. This course therefore records only the mechanism by which an honour would be granted and emblazoned. It names no battle honour, because the Army does not anticipate honours it has not won, and to inscribe an invented name upon a Colour would dishonour the Colour at the very point it exists to honour, which is the unit's real history. There is a hard discipline in this, and it is the same the whole College teaches: to treat the honours of the Crown with the seriousness that truth requires. A soldier should be proud, not embarrassed, that the Army's Colours bear only what the Army has truly earned.

That honesty has a visible form on the Colour itself, and it teaches the meaning of the Colours better than any rule. On the Regimental Colour the spaces where battle honours would be emblazoned are, on the Army's Colours, empty. The honour scroll bears the badge and the motto but no honour names, because none has yet been earned. This emptiness is not a lack to be ashamed of, and still less a space to be quietly filled with names the Army has not won. It is an honest record, and a kind of promise. The scroll waits, and it will one day bear only what is truly won in real service to the Crown, and not one name before. A unit that carried false honours would carry a lie at the heart of the very thing that exists to carry its truth; a unit that carries an empty scroll carries the truth, and there is more honour in a true blank than in a designed lie. The space waiting to be earned says exactly what the Army is: young, honest, and building a history it means one day to deserve.

The Crown, the cypher, and the devices a Colour bears

A Colour is not blank cloth with an honour scroll upon it; it carries the identifying devices of the Crown and the unit, each with its own meaning, and the soldier should be able to name them and say what each one stands for. The Crown above a badge or a cypher denotes royal authority: it marks the device, and through it the unit, as the Sovereign's, and on a demise and accession the style of crown is renewed across the Army's insignia, though, as we have seen, Colours already consecrated are not altered but carried to the end of their natural life. The Sovereign's cypher is the reigning Sovereign's initial and regnal style intertwined and ensigned with the crown; it marks devices and property as the Sovereign's, and it appears on the Sovereign's Colour, on badges, and on warrants of appointment. Together the Crown and the cypher are how a Colour says, in heraldry, that this unit belongs to the Sovereign and serves the Sovereign.

The unit's own devices stand beside the Crown's. The regimental badge is the single most important identifying device of the Army, worn on the headdress and appearing on the Regimental Colour, on buttons, on vehicles, and on stationery; it is the unit's face. The motto, borne on a scroll with the badge, expresses the unit's ethos in a few words and is not altered casually, for it is a settled statement of what the unit holds itself to. Around these the Colour carries its fringe, its tassels, and its cords, and the unit's title in proper form. Every one of these devices, the Crown, the cypher, the badge, the motto, and the arms, is part of the heraldry the Colour bears, and not one of them is a matter of taste or convenience.

For this is the point a soldier must hold above all in the matter of devices: the heraldry of the Army is granted, not chosen. The Colours, the badge, the cypher, the motto, the arms, and the flags are those authorised by the Sovereign, ordinarily through the Institute of Heraldry of the State, and they are not to be altered, copied, or used without authority. A unit does not design its own Colour, invent its own badge, or add a device because it pleases the eye; it bears what it has been granted, exactly as it has been granted it. This is the same truth that governs the battle honours, carried into every device the Colour bears: that the Colour records what is real and authorised, and nothing assumed. To misuse the arms, the badge, or the cypher of the Army, or to alter a Colour without authority, is inconsistent with the honour of the Service and is a matter the Sovereign's Regulations treat as a fault, because it falsifies the very thing the Colours exist to keep true.

In Practice: The Young Soldier and the Empty Scroll

A recruit on her first visit to the place where a unit of the Royal Kaharagian Army lodges its Colours stands before the Regimental Colour with a sergeant, and she asks, plainly and without meaning any harm, why the honour scroll is empty when the Colours of older armies she has seen in pictures are crowded with names. It is a fair question, and the sergeant does not brush it aside, because the answer is the whole of the lesson.

He tells her first what she is looking at. This is not a flag, he says, however much it resembles one. It is a Colour, consecrated once in a ceremony she may one day take part in, and from that day it has embodied the unit, its honour, its history, and its loyalty to the Crown. It is carried on a pike, never flown; it is saluted as the unit itself; it is dipped only to the Sovereign, to The Prince and to no one else; and one day, long after his own service, it will not be thrown away but laid up to fade with dignity. He has her look at the devices it bears: the Crown and the Sovereign's cypher, which say the unit is the Sovereign's; the badge and the motto, which say who the unit is. None of these, he tells her, did the unit choose for itself. Every one was granted by the Institute of Heraldry, and the unit bears exactly what it was granted and not a thread more.

Then he comes to her question. The scroll is empty, he says, because a battle honour is the name of a real battle the Crown has granted the unit leave to bear, and this Army, young and lightly armed and made for the defence and the care of home, has not fought such battles and does not pretend to have. She should be proud of the blank, not ashamed of it, because a unit that wrote false honours on its Colour would put a lie at the very heart of the thing that exists to carry its truth, and there is more honour in a true blank than in a designed lie. The scroll waits, and it will one day bear only what is truly won, and not one name before. She looks at the empty scroll differently after that. She has understood that the Colour is not a decoration but a record kept honest, and that the empty space is not a gap but a promise.

Check Your Understanding

Explain what the Colours are and name the three ideas that together make a Colour a Colour. Then draw the firm distinction between a consecrated Colour and an ordinary flag, using the matter of mourning to make it concrete: what is done to a flag, and what is done to a Colour, and why a Colour is never half-masted.
Describe the act of consecration and explain why it makes a Colour sacred when nothing in the cloth itself has changed. Why does consecration happen only once and never again, and why is a Colour already consecrated carried to the end of its life unaltered even when the Crown is renewed or devices change?
Set out the stand of Colours and explain what each of the two Colours embodies and why a unit parades both together. Then explain how battle honours are earned, why the Army records only the mechanism and names no honour, and why the lesson says an empty honour scroll is a thing to take pride in.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson argues that a Colour is not a fine flag but a consecrated emblem that embodies the unit, and that every convention governing it, consecration once and never again, the Colour dipped only to the Sovereign, the Colour draped or cased and never half-masted, the empty honour scroll, flows from what the Colour is rather than being a rule imposed from outside. Choose one of these conventions and explain what it expresses about the reverence owed the Colours, and why a soldier who treated the Colour as merely the unit's grand flag would miss something important. Then consider the empty honour scroll of a young Army: why is carrying a true blank more honourable than emblazoning honours that were never earned, and how does understanding all of this change the bearing you would bring to the Colours before you ever lay a hand on them?

Summary

A Colour is a consecrated emblem that embodies the unit, its honour, its history, its identity, and its loyalty to the Crown; it is not a grand flag but a sacred thing, saluted as the unit itself. Three ideas together make it what it is: it is consecrated, it embodies the unit and all who served under it, and it stands for the unit's loyalty to the Crown. From this one truth every convention follows.
The Colours and the flags must never be confused. Colours are consecrated, carried on a pike, dipped only to the Sovereign, and draped or cased in mourning; flags, including the National Flag and the Army Ensign, are flown, never dipped, and half-masted in mourning. The Colours are never half-masted, because they are not flown, and "Colours" is never used for the National Flag.
Consecration is the single religious ceremony that dedicates a Colour and sets it apart, turning rich cloth into a sacred thing; it happens once on the presentation of new Colours and is never repeated. A Colour already consecrated is carried to the end of its natural life unaltered, even when the Crown is renewed or devices change; thereafter it is trooped, not re-consecrated, and at the last laid up to fade with dignity.
A unit's stand of Colours is the Sovereign's Colour, the senior royal Colour based on the National Flag, bearing the Crown and cypher, always in the position of honour on the right, which embodies loyalty to the Crown; and the Regimental Colour, bearing the badge, motto, and any battle honours, which embodies the unit's own identity and history. A unit parades the two together because it is both at once.
Battle honours are the names of real battles a unit is permitted to bear, awarded by the Crown for true operations and emblazoned on the Regimental Colour; they are earned, never designed. The young Royal Kaharagian Army records only the mechanism, names none, and carries an honest empty honour scroll that waits to be earned, which is a thing to take pride in.
The Crown, the Sovereign's cypher, the badge, the motto, and the arms a Colour bears are all granted, not chosen, ordinarily through the Institute of Heraldry; a unit bears exactly what it has been granted and may not alter, copy, or assume a device without authority, because the Colour exists to keep the unit's identity and history true.

The Colours: Identity, Consecration, and Meaning