It is perhaps only possible to learn so much from a jeans patch, but the symbolic weight of that shape, wherever it is displayed, pins the wish for Hungarians to have a clearly defined, ethnically complete state. But the ‘Crown Lands of St Stephen’ are a fantasy, giving a sense of ancient destiny to an arena of political power for Budapest that in practice only existed from 1867 to 1918 and which therefore has no more God-given legitimacy than any other random date bracket. It would be an eccentric history lesson, but with scissors one could come up with jeans patches of pretty much every
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