WC vs. History: The Ring's the Thing

Fans of the Wing Commander movie may remember that Paladin proves his loyalty to the Tiger's Claw crew early on by showing a ring given to him by Admiral Tolwyn. Captain Sansky explains that the "ring has been in Tolwyn's family for sixteen generations and any man who carries it has the admiral's full confidence!"

While we only catch a glimpse of Tolwyn's ring a few times during the film, you can get a pretty good idea of what the prop used in the movie actually looks like in the next batch of screenshots from the HD version of the movie. For those keeping track you can catch a glipse of it, first, when Paladin gives it to Sansky, then when it's on Sansky's desk immediately after Manaic and Rosie's stunt on the flight deck, and then Sansky is wearing it during the Tiger Claw's jump into the Ulysses Corridor and a little later during the Claw's ambush.

So--what is that ring? The novelization, based on the shooting script, explains:

Between his fingers rested a gold class ring, its surfaces worn, its emerald dull. Sansky held it to the holograph's light and read the inscription: Annapolis Naval Academy, 1941.

... and now that we know that, whe can rightly ask the big question: what does a 1941 United State Naval Academy ring really look like? Take a look! The stone here is a sapphire instead of an emerald (that detail doesn't exist in the script at all--it was added by Peter Telep):