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National and civic emblems of Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. What holds the group together is that each is a mark a state uses for itself and that most carry a documented fact contradicting the account usually given: that the Faravahar's meaning is unresolved and its per-feather readings are twentieth-century inventions, that the liberty cap was adopted on a mistaken identification, that Sweden's three crowns have never been explained, that Ireland's state harp faces left because a brewery already owned the other orientation, that Canada's maple leaf has eleven points because of a wind tunnel. Two members are genuinely sensitive and say so: the Croatian chequerboard, whose first-square colour distinguishes the republic's arms from a fascist wartime state's, and the hammer and sickle, lawful in most of the world and prohibited in several named jurisdictions.
A bearded figure rising from a winged disc with a ring in hand.
A calligraphic monogram with three tall vertical strokes and a looping tail.
Two overlapping squares forming an eight-pointed star.
A stylised eagle facing left with a shield on its breast.
A green cedar tree with horizontally layered branches.
A cross whose vertical arm is shifted towards the hoist.
Three gold crowns arranged two above one.
A skeletal globe of intersecting rings on a stand.
A crowned white eagle with gold beak and talons on red.
A gold crown with a visibly bent cross on top.
A red and white chequered shield of twenty-five squares.
A cross with four curved shapes in its quarters.
A continuous line folding back on itself at right angles.
Three armoured legs joined at the hip, bent at the knee.
A red dragon passant on a green and white field.
A gold harp with a straight forepillar and silver strings.
A red maple leaf with eleven points.
An eagle with a shield, arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other.
A soft conical cap with the tip folded forward.
A golden sun with a human face and alternating straight and wavy rays.
An eagle on a prickly pear cactus devouring a snake.
A star-shaped shield with a blue sphere on a coffee and tobacco wreath.
A crossed hammer and crescent-bladed sickle.
An eagle with two heads facing opposite ways.
A standing cockerel, often crowing, with raised comb and tail.
Two columns wound with a scrolling banner.