Confident Year Royal

A late-Latin participle, confidens, trusting — borrowed into English in the sixteenth century. As a color modifier, confident implies saturation combined with poise: a confident red doesn't try too hard, just sits at the level of its hue without overreaching. Sits in the bold-bucket center near bold and resolute.

Old English gēar, year. As a color modifier, year implies an annual-cycle quality, the visual register of agricultural-and-pastoral yearly-rhythm seedtime-and-harvest seasonal-cycle pasture-and-arable surfaces under year-long pastoral-and-agricultural sky. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to cycle and phase in usage.

The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.