[2] During the Middle Ages and in a political environment centered on oaths, participating in another lord's banner or standard signified changing allegiance and loyalty.

[3] As head of House Capet, Philip II adopted a single white flag as the family's emblem, still closely identified with the Kings of France for several generations.

[5] The color white, synonymous with the royal Capet flag, demonstrated the way medieval visual symbolism intertwined with feudal expressions of submission and dominance.

Thus, the original meaning of waving a white flag was deeply tied to feudal custom, acknowledging and pledging loyalty or sanctuary to a specific lord and his noble standard.

By the later Middle Ages, however, the distinct connection of the white symbol to House Capet and French royalty diminished as it gained wider currency as a gesture indicating any general surrender or truce between opposing armies regardless of feudal loyalties.

Through diffusion over time and across Europe, the white flag of the Capets, became divorced from a strict embodiment of Capetian suzerainty in war.

[11] Its use may have expanded across continents, e.g. Portuguese chronicler Gaspar Correia (writing in the 1550s), claims that in 1502, an Indian ruler, the Zamorin of Calicut, dispatched negotiators bearing a "white cloth tied to a stick", "as a sign of peace", to his enemy Vasco da Gama.

[14][15] For the same reason, the color white was adopted by other Shia regimes, like the Qarmatians of Bahrayn, the and the Zaydi rulers in northern Iran and Yemen.

[16] During the period of the Ancien Régime, starting in the early 17th century, the royal standard of France became a plain white flag as a symbol of purity, sometimes covered in fleur-de-lis when in the presence of the king or bearing the ensigns of the Order of the Holy Spirit.

It would be featured on a white scarf attached to the regimental flag as to recognize French units from foreign ones and avoid friendly fire incidents.

Commerce and private ships were authorized to use their own designs to represent France, but were forbidden to fly the white ensign.