Legend has it that at the end of the 10th century, in a war with the Venetians, Croatian King Stjepan Držislav was captured and taken to Venice. Venetian Doge Peter II. Orseolo heard that the Croatian king played chess well and challenged him to 3 games of chess. If the king won, the doge guaranteed him freedom. According to legend, Stjepan Držislav won and was released from prison to return to Croatia. As a thank you for his freedom, he decided to choose a chessboard for his coat of arms and the coat of arms of Croatia.
Of course this is just a legend. The red and white chessboard in Croatia began to appear as the state coat of arms only in the 15th century, and probably the most important document with the Croatian chessboard is the one in which the Croatian nobility chose Ferdinand I of Habsburg as their and Croatian king on January 1, 1527. This was after the last Hungarian-Croatian king Louis II of Jagel was killed in the battle of Mohacs in 1526.
There are several interpretations of what the white and red fields on the coat of arms mean … One of them is that they mean White and Red Croatia. White Croatia was the ancestral home of the Croats in the area of today’s northern Czechia and southern Poland to beyond the Carpathians, and Red Croatia is today’s Croatia, which was inhabited by Croats at the beginning of the 7th century. There are interpretations that white fields signify peace, and red blood and war, but neither of them has been confirmed with certainty. Throughout history, the color of the initial field has changed. It used to be white, and sometimes red …
HISTORY OF CROATIA and related history 