Colours of royalty and power

Among the Igbo, a red cap marks a titled man. Only chiefs and men who have taken the ozo title may wear it, sometimes with an eagle feather.

Crimson was the colour of the Polish nobility. Only nobles could wear it, and karmazyn, crimson man, came to mean a noble of old family.

The red feathers of the purple-crested turaco, called ligwalagwala, may be worn only by the king and the royal family.

Coral beads, in shades from orange to deep red, are the regalia of the Oba of Benin and his chiefs. Edo brides wear a crown and collars of coral.

Orange is the colour of the royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau. On King's Day, 27 April, the whole country dresses in orange for street markets and parties.

On the King's birthday and other royal days, an orange pennant is flown above the national flag.

The flag is yellow, the colour of the Sultan. By custom, ordinary people did not wear yellow in the ruler's presence.

Men wear a long scarf, the kabney, on formal occasions, and its colour shows rank. Saffron yellow is kept for the King and the Je Khenpo, the chief abbot.

Yellow was the emperor's colour. Under the Ming and Qing dynasties bright yellow robes and yellow glazed roof tiles, as on the Forbidden City, were reserved for him.

Yellow is the colour of Malay royalty. Under old court rules commoners were forbidden to wear it, and the crescent and star on the flag are yellow for the rulers.

Each day of the week has a colour, and Monday's is yellow. King Bhumibol and King Vajiralongkorn were both born on a Monday, so yellow is worn to honour the monarchy.

Yellow was the colour of the emperors. The Nguyen rulers at Hue wore yellow robes, and yellow was the main colour of their flags.

The ancient Maya prized green above all colours. Jade and the long green tail feathers of the quetzal were kept for kings. The quetzal is the national bird and gives the currency its name.

The English word turquoise comes from the French for Turkish, because the stone reached Europe through Ottoman lands. Tiles from Iznik made the colour a mark of Ottoman mosques.

Lapis lazuli has been mined in the mountains of Badakhshan for more than six thousand years. Ground to powder it gave ultramarine, the costliest blue in European painting.

Royal Copenhagen porcelain is hand-painted in cobalt blue on white. Its first pattern, Blue Fluted, has been made since the factory opened in 1775.

Blue was the colour of the French kings, whose arms were gold lilies on blue. It is the first band of the tricolour, and national sports teams are called Les Bleus.

Before green took over, blue was the colour tied to Ireland and its patron saint. A shade called Saint Patrick's blue is still used on the President's flag behind the gold harp.

National sports teams play in blue and are called the Azzurri. Blue was the colour of the House of Savoy, which ruled Italy until 1946, and does not appear on the flag.

The flag has blue bands above and below a red one, with Angkor Wat in white. Blue stands for the king, red for the nation and white for religion.

Light blue is the colour of Friday and of Queen Sirikit, the Queen Mother, who was born on a Friday. Her birthday, 12 August, has long been kept as Mother's Day, when people wear it.

A child born to a reigning Byzantine emperor was called porphyrogennetos, born in the purple. The birth took place in a palace room lined with purple stone.

Purple dye from the murasaki plant was costly and hard to make. In the court rank system set up under Prince Shotoku, the highest officials wore purple caps.

The Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon made Tyrian purple from sea snails. The dye was so costly that it became the colour of kings and Roman emperors.

Pink is Tuesday's colour. When King Bhumibol left hospital in 2007 in a pink blazer, pink shirts sold out as people wore them to wish him good health.

The batik of the Javanese courts at Yogyakarta and Surakarta is dyed in soga brown with indigo and cream. Some court patterns were once reserved for the royal family.

White was the colour of the Bourbon kings. In the tricolour it sits between the blue and red of Paris, and after 1815 the restored monarchy flew a plain white flag.

French queens once mourned in white, a custom called deuil blanc. Mary, Queen of Scots, was painted in white mourning after the death of her husband, Francis II.

The flag is white, red and green. Red and white were the royal colours of the Merina kingdom of the highlands, and the green band was added when the flag was adopted in 1958.

White is the colour of royal mourning. When a ruler dies, men wear a white band around the songkok, the black cap worn with Malay dress.

Black and yellow were the colours of the Habsburg monarchy. They come from the black double-headed eagle on a gold ground used by the Holy Roman Emperors.

Under Philip II in the sixteenth century, plain black became the dress of the Spanish court and was copied across Europe. The deep black dye came from logwood shipped from the Americas.

The ancient Egyptians held that the flesh of the gods was gold, which never tarnishes. Royal coffins and masks, like Tutankhamun's, were made of it.

Gold is the colour of Asante kingship. The Golden Stool holds the soul of the nation, and in kente cloth gold threads stand for royalty and wealth.

For the Incas gold was the sweat of the sun and silver the tears of the moon. Both were kept for the gods and the ruler, not used as money.

Talha dourada is carved wood covered in gold leaf. It lines the altars of baroque churches in Porto and Lisbon, and much of the gold came from Brazil in the 1700s.