Family research · Hub · Phase 6 of the world atlas
Five nations woven through nine centuries of conquest, personal union, incorporating union, and partition — and, below, one map that shows exactly who governed whom at eight real turning points, one slider-turn at a time.
Country-by-country deep dives are coming in a future pass, the same way every other hub in this atlas was built out. For now, drag the map's slider to see the whole archipelago's story at a glance.
A real, traced map — actual coastlines, not schematic shapes, built from the same boundary data used across this atlas. Northern Ireland is drawn as its own traced fragment, separate from Great Britain, since it is geographically part of the island of Ireland even though it has been politically part of the United Kingdom since 1922. Small outlying islands (the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands) are simplified out of the traced outline — this is a hub-level orientation map, not a survey.
Real traced coastlines (simplified; small outlying islands removed). Great Britain is split into Scotland, England, and Wales along the historical Anglo-Scottish and Anglo-Welsh borders; Ireland is split into Northern Ireland and the rest of the island only from 1922 onward — before that the two share one color because they were, in fact, one polity. France's northern coast is shown faint for context only, across the Channel — relevant throughout this map's story, from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the centuries of Anglo-French war and rivalry that followed.
Maps are bad at showing when; timelines are bad at showing where. This uses real transition years instead of the eight arbitrary snapshots above — one horizontal band per region, colored the same way as the map, so you can trace exactly how long each arrangement actually lasted and compare regions directly.
Every region keeps its true color, but anything unchanged from the previous frame fades to low opacity; only the region(s) that actually changed hands stay bold with a solid outline. A caption under each frame spells out exactly what flipped. No slider to operate — scan left to right, top to bottom, and watch the map redraw itself like a flipbook.
This started as a family history project: tracing the flags that flew over the lands our ancestors came from, close enough to paint accurately — correct colors, correct proportions, correct dates. The British Isles hub follows the same rules as every other region here: real traced coastlines, real transition years, and borders that mean something rather than just decorate.
Country pages for England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland will each carry their own timeline of flags with paint-ready color specs and a per-era location map, the same way Croatia, Germany, and the rest of the atlas already do. Colors are close historical approximations; pre-modern swatches especially are informed reconstructions rather than official specifications (the gold-harp Irish banners and the Welsh dragon in particular predate any single codified design), and are labeled as such throughout. The regional map above simplifies nine centuries of messy, overlapping, and disputed control into eight snapshots — useful for orientation, not a substitute for the detail each country's own page will eventually carry.
This hub is one region in a larger set. See the other phases here: