The Imperial Seal (传国玉玺, chuánguó yùxǐ, ‘Seal of the Realm’) was the jade seal traditionally used to authenticate imperial decrees and symbolise the Mandate of Heaven. According to tradition, it was created for the First Emperor of Qin and passed down to the Han. Its possession was seen as a sign of legitimacy; its loss or capture was politically charged.
Sun Jian and the seal
When Dong Zhuo burned Luoyang and the court fled, Sun Jian was among the forces that entered the ruins. Sources report that his men found the Imperial Seal in a well or in the palace. Sun Jian kept it; after his death it passed to Sun Ce, who later gave it (or a seal) to Yuan Shu in exchange for troops. Yuan Shu, who had imperial ambitions, used possession of the seal to justify declaring himself emperor. After Yuan Shu’s defeat and death, the seal was said to have been returned to the Han court and later to Cao Cao’s control when the emperor was in his hands.
Significance
The seal’s movements in the late Han and early Three Kingdoms were closely tied to claims to the throne. Sun Jian’s recovery of it is a key episode in the Romance and in popular accounts of the period. Historians debate whether the seal Sun Jian found was the same as the Qin–Han imperial seal and how often it was copied or lost; in any case, the idea of the seal as a token of legitimacy was central to the politics of the age.