Talk:First Bulgarian Empireball/@comment-1189400-20190329145420/@comment-1189400-20191007180155

That's the trouble, it did. Boris I wrote to the Pope for advice on how to adapt his laws to Christian canon and among other things he asked about the war flag. The Pope told him to switch from the horse tail to the Holy Cross. Some people took that and ran with it, making some flag that's red with a golden cross (think Byzantium without the B's), but that's based on conjecture. Another source is the chronicle of Constantine Manasses, in which the flag is red with a black border, but it's from a later time and the flag designs are very generic - most are plain red and even if not, they almost look the same in all of history depicted there, from ancient Egypt to the Byzantines, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Russians. In the Russian Razdiwill chronicle, the Bulgarian Empire under Boris I's son is depicted under a red flag, or, in one instance, a plain white flag with a crescent and a six-pointed star, which is usually how Arabs are depicted. (Bulgaria was at the time Christian and in its golden age, with Simeon spamming churches everywhere.)

So the only real clue I have is red, with or without details. And a golden cross. Bulgaria probably didn't change its flag upon becoming an empire, so I guess I'll just plop a crown on its head.