Danubian Federation Grunge Flag

As some might have noticed, I'm something of an Austrophile. I've become really fascinated with the history of Austria and the Habsburgs over the past two years or so, and that interest has carried over into its heraldry.

This is a concept flag for the Danubian Federation/United States of Greater Austria. It's a nation that appears in two excellent mods for Paradox Interactive games: Kaiserreich (for Darkest Hour/Hearts of Iron 2) and A POP Divided (for Victoria 2), respectively, and is based upon the real-life proposal for a United States of Greater Austria which was, alas, never realized in our history.

I decided to use the flag of Spain as a base, not only because it allowed me more room for the coat of arms, but also because the Habsburgs ruled Spain for nearly two centuries during the height of its power, and the historical connection was amusing to me. Black and gold were the traditional symbols of the Habsburg monarchy (the others were white and red, as on the flag of the Republic of Austria today), and they can be seen on the flag of the Austrian Empire and were used on a number of medals and citations throughout the Empire; for this reason they were sometimes referred to as the "black-gold monarchy."

The 16 stars represent each of the 15 states called for in Popovici's proposal for the USGA, with one extra star for poor Bosnia, which wasn't considered in the original proposal at all.

Credit goes to the excellent efforts of [link] and [link] for the usage of their amazing grunge brushes. The coat of arms itself came from the Wikicommons; it's the coat of arms of Austria-Hungary as rendered by the talented Sodacan. I did most of the work editing, touching up, and recoloring of the imperial eagle in Inkscape (which I am slowly teaching myself to use), and the remaining "photoshopping" was done in GIMP. And yes, it's grunge-ified, though admittedly perhaps not in the best way.