Specifically, I’m talking about their signet rings, seals, etc.
Couldn’t someone just make a copy? Or make one that looks extremely similar?
Imagine “hacking” the king. You could start wars or do whatever you wanted just by getting a letter sent somewhere.
I understand it’s not as easy as it sounds and one would have to first obtain said seal or wax imprint from a letter or something but I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it being done.
EDIT: Anyone else now wanna see a movie get made about someone (or some team) pulling off a ‘heist’ like this?? Obviously set back in the olden days.
In: 2491
There are several examples of official documents that are important parts of history that, on scientific examination, were found to have been tampered with and altered after the fact to push a certain narrative. I think that should tell you all you need to know.
I rather suspect that the security of the seals, etc were secondary and mostly ceremonial. The people carrying the messages were often trusted emissaries. Of course, that could and sometimes did backfire as well.
Making an exact copy of a signet ring would require expert craftsmanship – not something any random person could do.
The number of expert jewelers was relatively small, and each would be well known in their area.
A signet ring forgery would be discovered eventually, and the number of suspects would therefore be very small. Getting caught for such a crime would result in a very painful death.
Therefore, the risk/reward would be quite poor.
It almost certainly did happen quite a few times in history, especially when you’re looking at thousands of years of history. But it would be sufficiently rare that the seals were “good enough” for their purpose.
Copying a seal would be a lot more difficult than you seem to think it would be. They were intricately designed to make it so that they couldn’t be easily “hacked” as you say. And starting a war would be a lot harder than just sending a letter with a fake seal. Maybe you could get one regiment to move somewhere new, but they couldn’t start a war. The king sending letters isn’t how they started wars. The king would tell his general(s) he wanted to go to war, and the general would talk to all of his colonels, and only then would letters be sent as the colonels would need to notify their majors, and the majors their captains, etc. So it a general got a letter from the king, he would simply ask the king “wtf is this?” in person. Not to mention he would likely know the kings handwriting. A colonel receiving the letter and wonder why tf the king is sending him anything and go ask his general. A major the same thing. Perhaps one stupid major or sergeant would be stupid enough to fall for it, but like I said, they wouldn’t start a war, they would just move to a new position at most and send letters to their superiors for more details.
Faking a signet ring would also do less than nothing. A king didn’t go around by himself, he would have a group of like a hundred traveling with him. So literally no one would be stupid enough to think one person with a signet ring was a king just because he had it. More likely they would think that guy stole it from someone.
They were, but typically directives by the king were meant to be followed up and of course the people operating in these theaters were aware of forgeries.
Wars are typically preceded by, well, issues to go to war about. If your closest ally sends you a single letter that says “Hey lol we’re going to war k bye” you’re going to use your own network of contacts and functionaries to atleast do some homework to ***verify*** that it is authentic.
Are they marching an army?
Have they attacked something?
Why are they even attacking us?
Similarly while short term scams were and are common (think check cashing scams) eventually the perpetrators could slip up and be caught if they got greedy enough. A “letter from the king” only goes so far when your local lord sends a messenger to verify it, or when members of the court appear locally.
In other words, yes these things could be forged, but eventually you had to “prove it”
This is a good question and a corollary would be … how would the viewer be able to positively identify the seal as the kings without having an authenticated imprint of the signet on file.
I think that knowing the messenger would be very important as well.
Well, at the same time, you have to remember that most of the population was not literate. Even if you copied the seal (a difficult task with low / risk reward ratio as others have said), most people would not be able to write an official sounding document to which the seal would be affixed.
Forged documents and seals were pretty common, and people knew to be on the lookout for them. There were some really huge political controversies over suspect documents, like the Donation of Constantine.
> Imagine “hacking” the king. You could start wars or do whatever you wanted just by getting a letter sent somewhere.
If a random person turns up with a document purporting to be an unexpected order to go to war, people are going to be suspicious, no matter how realistic it is. And in most societies, if you’re caught impersonating the king and trying to start wars, you’re probably going to be horrifically tortured and executed. And in practice, it can be pretty difficult to forge these things authentically.
Also a wax seal was intended to show that the letter had been unopened and the information was therefore secure.
I imagine in a lot of instances, some ‘trusted’ advisors in court probably secretly had their own copies of rings to allow them to intercept communications.
So yeah, hacking in a sense.
You probably could but it’s a lot of effort for.. what exactly? Start a war… how? Send a mean letter and the guy reading it is like “huh, thats weird. This letter didn’t come from the usual currier, isn’t in Henry’s handwriting and doesn’t read like something he’d say. I’ll reply back through the usual channels and see what’s up.”
Or maybe “Hey I own this town now – see? I have a letter from the King!” Sure bro, sure you do. So, I’ll be throwing you in the river now.
Probably a lot more to be gained from learning how to open and reattach seals without damaging them and then trading on the information within.
Latest Answers