Three Flag Groups: Related? You be the Judge

First I have a pair of flags that have differing canton scenes, but because of their color scheme and regional proximity I lumped them together, just so I could see them together. The first is the Central American country of Panama:

Next is the Dominican Republic, with the odd negative space creating color-checked cantons:

Now the next two are both from the Caribbean, are both island nations, and are both associated with the Dutch. Their designs are quite similar. They both have a star(s) in the canton, and use blue for the sea and sky and gold for the sand.

First up is Aruba. The four-point star is a rarity in flag design, and this star has a complex set of things it represents. I won't go through all of them, just the one I find most interesting. The soil on the island is red, and the beaches are, for the most part, white sand, and of course the ocean is blue, so one of the symbols it represents is the island itself, complete with beaches and surrounded by sea.

This next flag is Curacao, and it was the winner of a contest. The island nation was granted the ability to design a flag after Aruba chose their own. There probably had been some kind of influence from the Aruba design bleed over.

Now, in the title of this post I make the statement, or rather imply, that the groups are related. What I meant was that each group was related to itself to some degree, but not to the others.

Well, what really happened, was that I was getting a few too many flag post ideas, and then smashed three together into one long(ish) post. The main reason, aside from having lots of ideas, is that there just wasn't enough stuff with each of these sets to really talk about without too much Wikipedia plagiarism.

This next set are the three famous vertical Tribands of Europe.

The first is France, which had a profound design influence over all subsequent tri-color tribands:

The next is Ireland, where the white is for peace and the colors represent the two main religions on the island: green for the Catholics and orange for the Protestants:

The last to show up temporally was Italy's green red and white. Funny thing about this flag is that because of the late unification of the country and adoption of this flag, Italy has to get the thumbs-up from Mexico for certain variants. Seriously. The nation of Italy has to check with Mexico if they want to do something special for a parade or inauguration.

Mexico's flag is older, and they've laid claim to many variations without their centered national seal, which is pretty much Italy's flag.