User blog comment:Aandrew07/Discussion of the Week: Flagship Monsters/@comment-1011548-20120721192943/@comment-3062343-20120721224942

For the first question (monsters that should have been flagships but weren't), I'd say Yian Garuga for Freedom 1. It's the only new monster in Freedom 1, it shows up in an early quest, it's notoriously difficult for new players (I swear they turned down its AI in future games) and has the fleeing mechanic like some Elders. It also gets bigger every time you kill it in the village, and eventually (after 7 times or something, I can't remember exactly) goes up in rank. They clearly put a lot of effort into making Garuga unique in Freedom 1, but it still lost out to Rathalos as flagship (maybe they wanted it to be a surprise to players, like an "evil Kut-Ku" or something, and making it the flagship would ruin the surpsrise of fighting it). As for flagships of Frontier, I'm going to go with what others have said, and say Raviente and Espinas.