Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Regalia gathers three sets of ceremonial objects whose possession has long been treated as inseparable from the right to rule, one from ancient Rome, one from Japan and one from the United Kingdom, and each ties the sacred and the political together in its own way.

The Ancilia were twelve figure of eight bronze shields kept in the Temple of Mars at the center of Roman state religion. Tradition held that one fell from the sky in the reign of the second king, Numa Pompilius, as a sign of Rome's destiny, and that eleven identical copies were made so no thief could ever identify and steal the true one. They were counted among the pledges of empire and brought out only for the festivals of March, an insignia of the city's own survival rather than of any single ruler.

The Imperial Regalia of Japan, the Three Sacred Treasures, are a mirror, a sword and a curved jewel said to have been bestowed by the sun goddess Amaterasu on her descendants and passed to the first emperor, embodying wisdom, valour and benevolence in turn. They are among the most closely guarded objects anywhere: never displayed in public, never photographed, and, so far as is known, never seen even by most emperors, who receive them wrapped and boxed.

The Coronation Regalia of the United Kingdom, commonly the Crown Jewels, are used in a coronation rite that is itself a religious sacrament of the Church of England, centered on anointing the monarch with holy oil before the crowning. That rite makes the regalia sacred objects of state in the fullest sense, comparable in function to the other two despite belonging to a different faith and a different age. What unites all three is not shared origin but a shared logic: legitimacy made visible in a small set of objects no ruler may simply commission anew.