The Emblems
National Flag
The Gap
Adopted 14 July 2026 · ratio 3:2
A navy field crossed by two gold bars that never meet, with a white star resting in the void between them.
Why: The bars are the boundary of 1899 and the boundary of 1902. The void between them is the ground that neither Egypt nor Sudan will claim. The star is Valdor Point. The flag is simply the founding fact, drawn.
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Coat of Arms
The Arms of the Republic
Blazoned by the Registrar of the Realm
Azure, two bars Or, in the void between them a mullet of five points Argent; for crest, a mullet Or; supporters, a fennec fox and a desert lark proper; motto, Terra Nullius, Spes Omnium.
Why: The shield carries the same device as the flag. The supporters are the two creatures that actually live where we claim to be — the Republic is supported by what was already there.
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The Great Seal
Seal of the Republic
Applied to certificates and instruments of state
A circular seal bearing the device of the Republic within a ring reading REPUBLIC OF VALDORIA · MMXXVI.
Why: Every certificate, writ and honour of the Realm is sealed with it, so that a Valdorian document can be recognised at a glance and verified by its serial.
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The emblems of Valdoria are free for citizens and press to reproduce.
Living Symbols
Each one genuinely native to the desert where our claim lies.
National Animal
The Fennec Fox
Vulpes zerda
The smallest fox on Earth, native to the Sahara and the Nubian Desert, including the region of our claim. It sleeps through the heat and hunts by night, and needs almost no standing water to live.
It survives where survival looks impossible, and its enormous ears exist to hear what everything else misses. The Republic would like to be that kind of listener.
National Bird
The Desert Lark
Ammomanes deserti
A plain, sand-coloured lark of North African and Arabian deserts, so well matched to the gravel that it is usually heard long before it is seen.
It sings over ground that nobody values, in a colour nobody notices. That is very nearly the national character.
National Plant
The Rose of Jericho
Anastatica hierochuntica
The resurrection plant. In drought it curls into a dry grey ball and appears entirely dead — for years, if it must. When water finally reaches it, it unfurls and grows again.
No emblem could suit us better. Valdoria was founded on land declared worthless by everyone who saw it. Nothing is finished merely because it looks finished.
National Tree
The Umbrella Thorn
Vachellia tortilis
A flat-crowned acacia that endures extreme heat and drought, and is often the only shade for many miles in the deserts of North Africa.
Shelter offered in the least sheltering place there is. The Ministry of Environment takes it as its working emblem.
Anthem, Letters & Games
The songs, verse and pastimes of the Republic.
National Anthem
Across the Quiet Sand
Words from the notebooks of Anwar Sahl
The anthem of the Republic, sung at the opening of Parliament and on Foundation Day.
Its verses were taken from the notebooks that became Valdoria''s founding literature, and set to music for the first Foundation Day.
National Poem
The Unwanted Ground
Anwar Sahl, from the notebooks
The poem read at the founding of the Republic, and at the seating of every Parliament since.
It is the shortest statement of what Valdoria is for: to keep company with something nobody else wanted.
National Poet
Anwar Sahl
The Poet of the Quiet Sand · 1954–2019
A schoolteacher and desert walker whose small notebooks — part weather record, part verse — were collected after his death and adopted by the Republic as its founding literature. The anthem and the national poem are both drawn from them.
Anwar Sahl belongs to Valdoria''s own letters rather than to any nation''s recorded history: the Republic invented its poet, exactly as it invented its holidays. We would rather say so than have anyone go looking for his grave.
National Game
Chess
Adopted as the game of the Republic
Chess is the national game of Valdoria, and the game of the inaugural Founder''s Cup in the National Esports League.
A nation with no territory needs a sport that needs no ground. Chess is played identically in Karachi, Cairo and Khartoum, requires nothing but attention, and crosses every border we do not have.
Everyday Symbols
The smaller things a country collects along the way.
National Colours
Navy, Gold and Sand
Navy #0d1424 · Gold #b8912f · Sand #efe7d3
The three colours of the flag, the arms and the seal: the navy of the desert night, the gold of the two boundaries, and the sand between them.
Chosen so that the emblems of the Republic read clearly at the size of a postage stamp and at the size of a flag.
National Dish
Dates and Salt Bread
Served at every state occasion
Flat bread, salt, and dates — the traditional welcome of the desert, offered to any traveller who arrives, without asking who they are.
The oldest law of the desert is that you feed whoever reaches you. For a nation of citizens scattered across the world and joined by nothing but choice, it seemed the right thing to put on the table.
National Instrument
The Reed Flute
The ney
An end-blown reed flute of great antiquity, played across North Africa, the Levant and South Asia. The anthem is traditionally opened on it.
It is made of a hollow reed and nothing else — an instrument of almost nothing, which is a fair description of the Republic''s resources.
National Stone
Nubian Sandstone
The bedrock of the National Territory
The pale, iron-stained sandstone that forms the plateau of the Nubian Desert, and the ground of Valdor Point itself.
It is the actual rock our claim sits upon, and the stone from which the Concord Stone will be cut, if a citizen ever stands there to set it.
National Anthem
Across the Quiet Sand
Words from the notebooks of Anwar Sahl
Two lines were drawn across the sand, and neither line would hold this land. Where empires turned their eyes away, we found a home and chose to stay. Across the quiet sand, across the quiet sand, a country made of open hand. No soil beneath, no crown above — we hold this ground because we love. No border guards our little square, no army waits, no anthem''s blare; only the lark above the stone, who sings to what is left alone. So raise the gold, and raise the star, and tell them plainly what we are: a nation honest, small and true, that speaks for sand, and speaks for you.
National Poem
The Unwanted Ground
Anwar Sahl, from the notebooks
They asked me what I found out there where neither flag had cared to fly. I said: a wind, a stone, a hare, and half a mile of open sky. They asked me who it all belonged to. I said that no one came to say. And so I sat with what was left, and kept it company all day.
Fly the flag
Citizens are encouraged to display the emblems of the Republic wherever they happen to be. Photographs sent to the Ministry of Media may appear on the Territory page.