1/8 Rupee - Alamgir II

Alamgir II died in 1759, murdered on the orders of his own vizier Imad ul-Mulk, yet the East India Company continued striking coins in his name for decades afterward. The practice was deliberate policy: Mughal imperial types inspired greater commercial trust among Indian populations than openly British issues, so the fiction of Mughal authority was maintained on the coinage long after it had ceased to exist in any meaningful political sense. By 1823, the actual Mughal emperor was Akbar II, making this coin's attribution a calculated anachronism.